Creating Confusion "Abstract: We develop a model in which a politician seeks to prevent people from making informed decisions. The politician can manipulate information at a cost, but cannot commit to an information structure. The receivers are rational and internalize the politician's incentives. In the unique equilibrium of the game, the receivers' beliefs are unbiased but endogenously noisy. We use this model to interpret the rise of social media. We argue that social media simultaneously (i) improves the underlying, intrinsic precision of the receivers' information but also (ii) reduces the politician's costs of manipulation. We show that there is a critical threshold such that if the costs of manipulation fall enough, the politician is better off and the receivers are worse off, despite the underlying improvement in their information. But if the costs of manipulation do not fall too much, and if the receivers are also sufficiently well coordinated, the manipulation backfires. In this scenario, the politician would want to invest in commitment devices that prevent them from manipulating information."

Edmond, Chris; Lu, Yang K

Creating Confusion "Abstract: We develop a model in which a politician seeks to prevent people from making informed decisions. The politician can manipulate information at a cost, but cannot commit to an information structure. The receivers are rational and internalize the politician's incentives. In the unique equilibrium of the game, the receivers' beliefs are unbiased but endogenously noisy. We use this model to interpret the rise of social media. We argue that social media simultaneously (i) improves the underlying, intrinsic precision of the receivers' information but also (ii) reduces the politician's costs of manipulation. We show that there is a critical threshold such that if the costs of manipulation fall enough, the politician is better off and the receivers are worse off, despite the underlying improvement in their information. But if the costs of manipulation do not fall too much, and if the receivers are also sufficiently well coordinated, the manipulation backfires. In this scenario, the politician would want to invest in commitment devices that prevent them from manipulating information."

Chris Edmond and Yang K Lu ()
Additional contact information
Yang K Lu: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Department of Economics - Working Papers Series from The University of Melbourne

Keywords: persuasion; slant; bias; noise; social media; fake news; alternative facts. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C7 D7 D8 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45
Date: 2018-11
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