CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2016
| Author | Tislér, László |
|---|---|
| Title | The Effect of Fake News On Elections: A Model With Inattentive Voters |
| Summary | This thesis analyses how political leadership can use fake news to shroud its incompetence from the public. Fake news are distractive because voters find it costly to follow multiple media channels and are often satis fied with the information provided by the government. I fi nd that when having an incompetent governance decreases voters' utility substantially, they pay attention to the media and fake news cannot distract them. However, when incompetence has a moderate social cost the government effectively shrouds its incapability. My model also predicts that when attention to various media channels is too costly citizens will settle with the governmental media and are subject to distractive fake news. Additionally, prior uncertainty about the competence of political parties has a positive impact on news consumption which discourages the government from publishing hoaxes. |
| Supervisor | Adam Szeidl |
| Department | Economics MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2016/tisler_laszlo.pdf |
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