News or noise? Consumer susceptibility towards misinformation

Rishab Lodh () and Oindrila Dey ()
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Rishab Lodh: Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Kolkata Campus
Oindrila Dey: Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Kolkata Campus

Economics Bulletin, 2026, vol. 46, issue 1, 232 - 239

Abstract: In the post-truth era, consumer awareness is considered a critical defense against the rapid dissemination of misinformation; however, ‘love for information' might induce consumers to overlook manipulative content, referred as ‘fear of missing out' (FOMO). In this paper, we probe if high-aware consumer experiencing FOMO can lead to more dissemination of misinformation? Categorizing consumer on traits like, ideological sensitivity and level of awareness, we derive the pooling equilibrium condition under which misinformation propagates in a signaling framework. The results reveal that while greater awareness reduces incidence of misinformation, presence of FOMO can offset this effect by relaxing the pooling equilibrium conditions. Unlike the extant literature, our findings highlight the need to integrate behavioral factors into misinformation-mitigation strategies

Keywords: Misinformation; News Consumption; Fear of Missing Out (FOMO); Awareness; incomplete Information games (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C7 D8 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-03-30
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