TY - JOUR
T1 - The making of the boy who cried wolf
T2 - fake news and media skepticism
AU - Kang, Myunghoon
AU - Sheen, Greg Chih Hsin
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of EPS Academic Ltd. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
PY - 2024
Y1 - 2024
N2 - Deceiving citizens is typically considered the main political motive behind the spread of fake news. Accordingly, strategies to debunk fake news, such as fact-checking, have been suggested to combat it. However, the spread of fake news persists despite these debunking strategies. We propose an alternative but underexplored motive behind the spread of fake news: Fake news aims not only to deceive citizens but also to induce media skepticism. To support our claim, we present a stylized formal model of media skepticism and demonstrate that the incentive to spread fake news persists even if citizens are not deceived by disinformation coming from fake news. Our model highlights the dilemma embedded in fact-checking.
AB - Deceiving citizens is typically considered the main political motive behind the spread of fake news. Accordingly, strategies to debunk fake news, such as fact-checking, have been suggested to combat it. However, the spread of fake news persists despite these debunking strategies. We propose an alternative but underexplored motive behind the spread of fake news: Fake news aims not only to deceive citizens but also to induce media skepticism. To support our claim, we present a stylized formal model of media skepticism and demonstrate that the incentive to spread fake news persists even if citizens are not deceived by disinformation coming from fake news. Our model highlights the dilemma embedded in fact-checking.
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U2 - 10.1017/psrm.2024.7
DO - 10.1017/psrm.2024.7
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85187372114
SN - 2049-8470
JO - Political Science Research and Methods
JF - Political Science Research and Methods
ER -