Social Media and Democracy

Ronen Gradwohl, Yuval Heller and Arye Hillman

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: We study the ability of a social media platform with a political agenda to influence voting outcomes. Our benchmark is Condorcet’s jury theorem, which states that the likelihood of a correct decision under majority voting increases with the number of voters. We show how information manipulation by a social media platform can overturn the jury theorem, thereby undermining democracy. We also show that sometimes the platform can do so only by providing information that is biased in the opposite direction of its preferred outcome. Finally, we compare manipulation of voting outcomes through social media to manipulation through traditional media.

Keywords: Bayesian persuasion; Political agenda; Information manipulation; Condorcet Jury Theorem; Biased signals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D82 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-06-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-mic, nep-pay and nep-pol
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:113609

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