He Said, She Said: Who Gets Believed When Spreading (Mis)Information

Nuzaina Khan (), David Rand () and Olga Shurchkov ()
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Nuzaina Khan: University of Oxford
David Rand: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Olga Shurchkov: Wellesley College

No 17282, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We design an online experiment that mimics a Twitter/X "feed" to test whether (perceived) poster gender influences users' propensity to doubt the veracity of a given post. On average, posts by women are less likely to be flagged as concerning than identical posts by men. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that men are more likely to flag female-authored posts as the post's topic domain becomes more male-stereotyped. Female users do not exhibit the same bias. Actual post veracity, user ideology, and user familiarity with Twitter do not explain the findings. Flagging behavior on Twitter's crowdsourced fact-checking program is consistent with these findings.

Keywords: gender differences; misinformation; economic experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 D9 J16 L86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2024-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-gen
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