“Fake news alert!”: A game of misinformation and news consumption behavior

Rishab Lodh and Oindrila Dey

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of behavioral factors in propagation of fake news. Using Spence (1978) framework, we find that the perfect Bayesian Nash equilibrium is pooling equilibrium, i.e., fake news producers to mimic actions of true news producer, which is influenced by factors like ideology, awareness, informational utility and fear of missing out information of news- consumers. Interestingly, the chain of fake news can be broken iff degree of awareness is significantly high. A threshold level of awareness level is determined using simulation, beyond which pooling breaks despite of high influence of other factors, which throws light on possible policy interventions.

Keywords: Fake news; Asymmetric Information; Bayesian games; Signaling; Fact checking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D82 L20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-08-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gth, nep-mic, nep-pay and nep-upt
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:118371

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