Information manipulation and competition

In the last decade, social media and the Internet have amplified the possibility to circulate false information among an audience, which has become a serious threat to the credibility of politicians, organizations, and other decision makers. This paper proposes a framework for investigating the incentives to strategically manipulate the audience's belief under different institutions and in various competitive environments. We show that more rigorous institutions against information manipulation can lead to higher manipulation intensities in equilibrium. Complementary, we study what kind of competitive environment is particularly susceptible to the manipulation of information.