Social Connectivity, Media Bias, and Correlation Neglect

Abstract

We propose a model of political persuasion in which a biased newspaper aims to convince voters to vote for the government. Each voter receives the newspaper's report, as well as an independent private signal. Voters then exchange this information on social media and form posterior beliefs, neglecting correlation among signals. An increase in connectivity increases the newspaper's bias if voters are ex ante predisposed to vote against the government, and reduces the bias if they are predisposed in favour of the government. While more precise independent signals reduce the newspaper's optimal bias, the bias remains positive even when connectivity becomes large. Thus, even with a large number of social connections, the election produces an inefficient outcome with positive probability, implying a failure of the Condorcet jury theorem.

Social Media and Democracy

“…Last, in other related literature, Denter et al (2021) study media bias when those it targets also have exogenous information, and share this information via a social network. They study the effects of the network's connectivity when voters suffer from correlation neglect on the optimal bias of media.…”

Campaign contests

“…While the above literature studied non-informative campaigns, some papers focus on candidates' incentives to provide information during campaign contests. Gul and Pesendorfer (2012) study how parties release information regarding a payoff relevant state variable over time and Alonso and Câmara (2016) or Denter et al (2020) study how a biased information provider may influence voters' decision at the ballot using Bayesian Persuasion. Polborn and Yi (2006) study informative positive and negative campaigning.…”