We consider situations in which every agent would like to take an action that is coordinated with those of others, as well as close to a common state of nature, with the ideal proximity to that state varying across agents. Before this coordination game is played, agents decide to whom they reveal their private information about the state. The information transmission occurring in the cheap‐talk communication stage is characterized by a strategic communication network whose links represent truthful information transmission. In equilibrium, whether communication takes place between two agents depends not only on the conflict of interest between these agents, but also on the number and preferences of the other agents with whom they communicate. In particular, communication to a large group of recipients may be feasible even though communication to a small subset of that group may not be. We show that agents who are more central in terms of preference tend to communicate more and to have a greater impact on decisions.

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International audienceThis paper studies strategic information disclosure when the sender may not observe the payoff-relevant state, and the receiver may interpret messages naively. We characterize equilibria as a function of the language available to the sender. The language is simple if an informed sender can either fully disclose the state or nothing. The language is rich if he can disclose any closed interval containing the true state. We show that an informed sender and a strategic receiver get a higher ex-ante equilibrium payoff when the language is rich. The reverse holds for a naive receiver and an uninformed sender. Overall, our work suggests that the design of language is key in situations where disclosure is voluntary