IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/14210.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Electoral Competition with Fake News

Author

Listed:
  • Helpman, Elhanan
  • Grossman, Gene

Abstract

Misinformation pervades political competition. We introduce opportunities for political can- didates and their media supporters to spread fake news about the policy environment and perhaps about partiesÂ’positions into a familiar model of electoral competition. In the baseline model with full information, the partiesÂ’positions converge to those that maximize aggregate welfare. When parties can broadcast fake news to audiences that disproportionately include their partisans, policy divergence and suboptimal outcomes can result. We study a sequence of models that impose progressively tighter constraints on false reporting and characterize situa- tions that lead to divergence and a polarized electorate.

Suggested Citation

  • Helpman, Elhanan & Grossman, Gene, 2019. "Electoral Competition with Fake News," CEPR Discussion Papers 14210, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:14210
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP14210
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Edward L. Glaeser & Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2005. "Strategic Extremism: Why Republicans and Democrats Divide on Religious Values," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(4), pages 1283-1330.
    2. Assar Lindbeck & Jörgen Weibull, 1987. "Balanced-budget redistribution as the outcome of political competition," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 52(3), pages 273-297, January.
    3. Stephane Wolton, 2019. "Are Biased Media Bad for Democracy?," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 63(3), pages 548-562, July.
    4. Bernhardt, Dan & Krasa, Stefan & Polborn, Mattias, 2008. "Political polarization and the electoral effects of media bias," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(5-6), pages 1092-1104, June.
    5. Filip Matějka & Guido Tabellini, 2021. "Electoral Competition with Rationally Inattentive Voters," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(3), pages 1899-1935.
    6. Hunt Allcott & Matthew Gentzkow, 2017. "Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election," NBER Working Papers 23089, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Jimmy Chan & Wing Suen, 2008. "A Spatial Theory of News Consumption and Electoral Competition," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 75(3), pages 699-728.
    8. Gregory J. Martin & Ali Yurukoglu, 2017. "Bias in Cable News: Persuasion and Polarization," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(9), pages 2565-2599, September.
    9. Simon P. Anderson & John McLaren, 2012. "Media Mergers And Media Bias With Rational Consumers," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 831-859, August.
    10. Baron, David P., 1994. "Electoral Competition with Informed and Uninformed Voters," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 88(1), pages 33-47, March.
    11. James M. Snyder & David Strömberg, 2010. "Press Coverage and Political Accountability," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(2), pages 355-408, April.
    12. Sendhil Mullainathan & Andrei Shleifer, 2005. "The Market for News," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1031-1053, September.
    13. Krosnick, Jon A. & Brannon, Laura A., 1993. "The Impact of the Gulf War on the Ingredients of Presidential Evaluations: Multidimensional Effects of Political Involvement," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(4), pages 963-975, December.
    14. Gene M. Grossman & Elhanan Helpman, 1996. "Electoral Competition and Special Interest Politics," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 63(2), pages 265-286.
    15. Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2011. "Ideological Segregation Online and Offline," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(4), pages 1799-1839.
    16. Leonid Peisakhin & Arturas Rozenas, 2018. "Electoral Effects of Biased Media: Russian Television in Ukraine," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 62(3), pages 535-550, July.
    17. Baron, David P., 2006. "Persistent media bias," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1-2), pages 1-36, January.
    18. Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2010. "What Drives Media Slant? Evidence From U.S. Daily Newspapers," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(1), pages 35-71, January.
    19. 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.
    20. Luis R. Martínez, 2022. "How Much Should We Trust the Dictator’s GDP Growth Estimates?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 130(10), pages 2731-2769.
    21. David Strömberg, 2004. "Mass Media Competition, Political Competition, and Public Policy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(1), pages 265-284.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Samuel S. Santos & Marcelo C. Griebeler, 2022. "Can fact-checkers discipline the government?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 42(3), pages 1498-1509.
    2. Yohei Yamaguchi & Ken Yahagi, 2024. "Law enforcement and political misinformation," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 36(1), pages 3-36, January.
    3. Rozo, Sandra V. & Vargas, Juan F., 2021. "Brothers or invaders? How crisis-driven migrants shape voting behavior," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).

    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. Piolatto, Amedeo & Schuett, Florian, 2015. "Media competition and electoral politics," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 80-93.
    2. Sobbrio, Francesco, 2014. "Citizen-editors' endogenous information acquisition and news accuracy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 43-53.
    3. Junze Sun & Arthur Schram & Randolph Sloof, 2019. "A Theory on Media Bias and Elections," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 19-048/I, Tinbergen Institute.
    4. Sobbrio, Francesco, 2009. "Indirect Lobbying and Media Bias," MPRA Paper 18215, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Strömberg, David & Prat, Andrea, 2011. "The Political Economy of Mass Media," CEPR Discussion Papers 8246, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Piolatto, Amedeo & Schuett, Florian, 2015. "Media competition and electoral politics," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 80-93.
    7. Miura, Shintaro, 2019. "Manipulated news model: Electoral competition and mass media," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 306-338.
    8. Germano, Fabrizio & Sobbrio, Francesco, 2020. "Opinion dynamics via search engines (and other algorithmic gatekeepers)," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    9. repec:tiu:tiucen:2013072 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Edmond, Chris & Lu, Yang K., 2021. "Creating confusion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    11. David Strömberg, 2015. "Media and Politics," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 7(1), pages 173-205, August.
    12. Jo Thori Lind & Dominic Rohner, 2017. "Knowledge is Power: A Theory of Information, Income and Welfare Spending," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 84(336), pages 611-646, October.
    13. Federico Vaccari, 2023. "Influential news and policy-making," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 76(4), pages 1363-1418, November.
    14. Felix Chopra & Ingar K. Haaland & Christopher Roth, 2019. "Do People Value More Informative News?," CESifo Working Paper Series 8026, CESifo.
    15. Donati, Dante, 2023. "Mobile Internet access and political outcomes: Evidence from South Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    16. Lin Hu & Anqi Li & Ilya Segal, 2019. "The Politics of Personalized News Aggregation," Papers 1910.11405, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2022.
    17. Marcel Garz & Jonna Rickardsson, 2023. "Ownership and media slant: Evidence from Swedish newspapers," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 76(1), pages 18-40, February.
    18. Jacopo Perego & Sevgi Yuksel, 2022. "Media Competition and Social Disagreement," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(1), pages 223-265, January.
    19. Cagé, Julia, 2020. "Media competition, information provision and political participation: Evidence from French local newspapers and elections, 1944–2014," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    20. Petrova, Maria, 2012. "Mass media and special interest groups," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 17-38.
    21. Prabal Roy Chowdhury, 2024. "Persuasion in social media: smoke and mirrors," Discussion Papers 24-03, Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Electoral competition; Fake news; Policy positions;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation

    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:cpr:ceprdp:14210. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    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.