Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
减少社交媒体上的错误信息：两项政策干预的实验评估
Reducing misinformation on social media: an experimental evaluation of two policy interventions
摘要
The prevalence of false and misleading news has become an issue of great concern in recent years. Academic researchers, policymakers, and social media firms all continue to seek effective solutions to reduce the sharing of misinformation. In this paper, we evaluate the effectiveness of two policies in particular: competition among media firms and fact-checking of published news articles by independent organizations. We first develop a theoretical model that predicts the effect of each policy and then conduct a behavioral experiment to test those predictions. Our experimental findings indicate that media competition is most effective at nipping misinformation in the bud because media firms spend significantly more resources on improving the accuracy of their news when readers obtain news from multiple sources. We also find that fact-checking improves the overall quality of news available to viewers; however, it does not incentivize firms to improve the accuracy of their own news articles. Last, our results from an interaction treatment suggest that under competition, fact-checking adversely affects firms’ investment in news accuracy.
中文摘要
近年来，虚假与误导性新闻的泛滥已成为备受关注的社会问题。学术界、政策制定者及社交媒体平台持续探索减少虚假信息传播的有效方案。本文重点评估两项政策的实施效果：媒体企业间的竞争机制，以及独立机构对已发布新闻文章的事实核查机制。我们首先构建理论模型预测各项政策的影响效应，继而通过行为实验验证这些预测。实验结果表明，媒体竞争在遏制虚假信息萌芽阶段最为有效——当读者通过多渠道获取新闻时，媒体企业会显著增加资源投入以提升新闻准确性。研究同时发现，事实核查虽能改善受众可获取新闻的整体质量，但并未激励企业提升自身新闻的准确性。最后，交互处理组的实验结果显示，在竞争环境下，事实核查反而对企业的新闻准确性投资产生负面影响。