IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/109634.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Troll Farms and Voter Disinformation

Author

Listed:
  • Denter, Philipp
  • Ginzburg, Boris

Abstract

Political agents often attempt to influence elections through "troll farms" that flood social media platforms with messages from fake accounts that emulate genuine information. We study the ability of troll farms to manipulate elections. We show that such disinformation tactics is more effective when voters are otherwise well-informed. Thus, for example, societies with high-quality media are more vulnerable to electoral manipulation.

Suggested Citation

  • Denter, Philipp & Ginzburg, Boris, 2021. "Troll Farms and Voter Disinformation," MPRA Paper 109634, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:109634
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/109634/1/MPRA_paper_109634.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Barrera, Oscar & Guriev, Sergei & Henry, Emeric & Zhuravskaya, Ekaterina, 2020. "Facts, alternative facts, and fact checking in times of post-truth politics," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    2. Ozan Candogan & Kimon Drakopoulos, 2020. "Optimal Signaling of Content Accuracy: Engagement vs. Misinformation," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 68(2), pages 497-515, March.
    3. Hunt Allcott & Matthew Gentzkow, 2017. "Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election," NBER Working Papers 23089, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Ludmila Matyskova, 2018. "Bayesian Persuasion with Costly Information Acquisition," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp614, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    5. Dirk Bergemann & Stephen Morris, 2016. "Information Design, Bayesian Persuasion, and Bayes Correlated Equilibrium," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(5), pages 586-591, May.
    6. Benjamin Hermalin & Michael Weisbach, 2017. "Assessing Managerial Ability: Implications for Corporate Governance," NBER Working Papers 23121, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Philipp Denter & Martin Dumav & Boris Ginzburg, 2021. "Social Connectivity, Media Bias, and Correlation Neglect," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 131(637), pages 2033-2057.
    8. Little, Andrew T., 2017. "Propaganda and credulity," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 224-232.
    9. Carl Heese & Stephan Lauermann, 2021. "Persuasion and Information Aggregation in Elections," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 112, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    10. Marco Ottaviani & Francesco Squintani, 2006. "Naive audience and communication bias," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 35(1), pages 129-150, December.
    11. Hunt Allcott & Matthew Gentzkow, 2017. "Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(2), pages 211-236, Spring.
    12. Yiangos Papanastasiou, 2020. "Fake News Propagation and Detection: A Sequential Model," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(5), pages 1826-1846, May.
    13. Daniel Stone, 2011. "A signal-jamming model of persuasion: interest group funded policy research," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 37(3), pages 397-424, September.
    14. Kartik, Navin & Ottaviani, Marco & Squintani, Francesco, 2007. "Credulity, lies, and costly talk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 134(1), pages 93-116, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Edmond, Chris & Lu, Yang K., 2021. "Creating confusion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    2. Mohamed Mostagir & James Siderius, 2022. "Learning in a Post-Truth World," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(4), pages 2860-2868, April.
    3. Charlson, G., 2022. "In platforms we trust: misinformation on social networks in the presence of social mistrust," Janeway Institute Working Papers 2202, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    4. Joël Cariolle & Yasmine Elkhateeb & Mathilde Maurel, 2022. "(Mis-)information technology: Internet use and perception of democracy in Africa," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 22010, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    5. Emeric Henry & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya & Sergei Guriev, 2022. "Checking and Sharing Alt-Facts," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 55-86, August.
    6. Tiziana Assenza & Alberto Cardaci & Stefanie J. Huber, 2024. "Fake News: Susceptibility, Awareness and Solutions," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 290, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    7. Besley, Timothy & Fetzer, Thiemo & Mueller, Hannes, 2019. "Terror and Tourism: The Economic Consequences of Media Coverage," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 449, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    8. Bertin Martens & Luis Aguiar & Estrella Gomez Herrera & Frank Muller, 2018. "The digital transformation of news media and the rise of disinformation and fake news," JRC Working Papers on Digital Economy 2018-02, Joint Research Centre.
    9. Sergei Guriev & Elias Papaioannou, 2022. "The Political Economy of Populism," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 60(3), pages 753-832, September.
    10. Kris Hartley & Minh Khuong Vu, 2020. "Fighting fake news in the COVID-19 era: policy insights from an equilibrium model," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 53(4), pages 735-758, December.
    11. Cantarella, Michele & Fraccaroli, Nicolò & Volpe, Roberto, 2023. "Does fake news affect voting behaviour?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(1).
    12. Robert Gold, 2022. "From a better understanding of the drivers of populism to a new political agenda," Working Papers 4, Forum New Economy.
    13. Ngo Van Long & Martin Richardson & Frank Stähler, 2019. "Media, fake news, and debunking," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 95(310), pages 312-324, September.
    14. Joël Cariolle & Yasmine Elkhateeb & Mathilde Maurel, 2024. "Misinformation technology: Internet use and political misperceptions in Africa," Post-Print hal-04423752, HAL.
    15. Bräuninger, Thomas & Marinov, Nikolay, 2022. "Political elites and the “War on Truth’’," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    16. Pierre C. Boyer & Thomas Delemotte & Germain Gauthier & Vincent Rollet & Benoît Schmutz, 2020. "Social Media and the Dynamics of Protests," CESifo Working Paper Series 8326, CESifo.
    17. Ka Chung Ng & Ping Fan Ke & Mike K. P. So & Kar Yan Tam, 2023. "Augmenting fake content detection in online platforms: A domain adaptive transfer learning via adversarial training approach," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 32(7), pages 2101-2122, July.
    18. Kerim Peren Arin & Juan A. Lacomba & Francisco Lagos & Deni Mazrekaj & Marcel Thum, 2021. "Misperceptions and Fake News during the Covid-19 Pandemic," CESifo Working Paper Series 9066, CESifo.
    19. Ali, Ayesha & Qazi, Ihsan Ayyub, 2023. "Countering misinformation on social media through educational interventions: Evidence from a randomized experiment in Pakistan," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    20. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/27dls12b6d8aor7i6sipg9ie3g is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Assenza, Tiziana, 2021. "The Ability to 'Distill the Truth'," TSE Working Papers 21-1280, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Mar 2022.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Fake News; Disinformation; Troll Farms; Elections; Social Media; Information Aggregation; Fact-Checking;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:109634. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.