Controlling Collective Attention: Flooding versus Focusing by Politicians

Joshua Gans

No 33933, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We develop a model of strategic information provision where politicians choose how to allocate limited disclosure across multiple policy dimensions. Citizens are heterogeneous statistical learners who interpret data differently, following Liang (2021). Our key insight: spreading information thinly across many dimensions (“flooding the zone”) maximizes disagreement among citizens, preventing the coordination needed for collective accountability. We characterize equilibrium disclosure strategies and show that politicians with unfavorable private information flood to prevent investigation, while those with favorable information choose intermediate disclosure levels that balance reputation building with enabling scrutiny. The model yields both pooling equilibria that create “transparency theater”—where all politicians provide vast but shallow information—and separating equilibria where disclosure strategies reveal type. We derive threshold conditions showing that flooding dominates when investigation stakes are asymmetric, communication technology enables high dimensionality, and citizen populations are heterogeneous in their information processing. Extensions examine strategic interactions between competing politicians and the mediating role of information platforms in either amplifying or constraining flooding strategies.

JEL-codes: C72 D72 D80 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ict, nep-mic and nep-pol
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