Rumors and Social Networks

Francis Bloch (1) , Gabrielle Demange (1, 2) , Rachel Kranton (1, 2)

1 PSE - Paris School of Economics
2 PSE - Paris-Jourdan Sciences Economiques

Why do people spread rumors? This paper studies the transmission of possibly false information---by rational agents who seek the truth. Unbiased agents earn payoffs when a collective decision is correct in that it matches the true state of the world, which is initially unknown. One agent learns the underlying state and chooses whether to send a true or false message to her friends and neighbors who then decide whether or not to transmit it further. The papers hows how a social network can serve as a filter. Agents block messages from parts of the network that contain many biased agents; the messages that circulate may be incorrect but sufficiently informative as to the correct decision.

Mots clés: Bayesian updating; Rumors; Misinformation; Social networks

Domaines: Economies et finances

Francis Bloch, Gabrielle Demange, Rachel Kranton. Rumors and Social Networks. 2014. ⟨halshs-00966234⟩