IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wut/journl/v2y2020p39-57id1480.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Game theoretic analysis of ideologically biased clickbait or fake news and real news

Author

Listed:
  • Kjell Hausken

Abstract

A decision and game theoretic model is developed for how one and two news organisations strike balances between producing clickbait or fake news, and real news. Each news organisation seeks to attract gullible consumers who consume more clickbait or fake news than real news, and non-gullible consumers who conscientiously consume only real news. Increasing a news organisation budget results in obtaining both more clickbait or fake news, and more real news. More clickbait or fake news is produced if the news organisation’s unit cost of effort to produce real news, the production efficiency for clickbait or fake news, and the fraction of consumers consuming clickbait or fake news, increase. In contrast, less clickbait or fake news is produced if a news organisation’s unit cost of effort to produce clickbait or fake news, and the production efficiency for real news, increase, and the gullible consumers consume real news with a higher frequency. Lower unit effort costs and higher budget and production efficiencies cause higher utility for a news organisation and lower utility for the competing news organisation. Higher weight assigned to the contest over clickbait or fake news induces both news organisations to exert higher effort to produce clickbait or fake news. When the gullible consumers of a news organisation consume a relatively large amount of real news in comparison to the consumers of another news organisation, then the first news organisation exerts higher effort to produce real news and obtains higher utility than the other news organisation.

Suggested Citation

  • Kjell Hausken, 2020. "Game theoretic analysis of ideologically biased clickbait or fake news and real news," Operations Research and Decisions, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Management, vol. 30(2), pages 39-57.
  • Handle: RePEc:wut:journl:v:2:y:2020:p:39-57:id:1480
    DOI: 10.37190/ord200203
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ord.pwr.edu.pl/assets/papers_archive/1480%20-%20published.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.37190/ord200203?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kjell Hausken, 2019. "A Game Theoretic Model of Adversaries and Media Manipulation," Games, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-15, December.
    2. Kjell Hausken, 2018. "A cost–benefit analysis of terrorist attacks," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(2), pages 111-129, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Daniel Menció-Padrón & Gemayqzel Bouza-Allende, 2023. "Simulating the propagation of rumours with spreaders of distinct characters," Operations Research and Decisions, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Management, vol. 33(3), pages 75-87.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chen, Shun & Zhao, Xudong & Chen, Zhilong & Hou, Benwei & Wu, Yipeng, 2022. "A game-theoretic method to optimize allocation of defensive resource to protect urban water treatment plants against physical attacks," International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection, Elsevier, vol. 36(C).
    2. Kjell Hausken & Jonathan W. Welburn, 2021. "Attack and Defense Strategies in Cyber War Involving Production and Stockpiling of Zero-Day Cyber Exploits," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 23(6), pages 1609-1620, December.
    3. Adam Behrendt & Vineet M. Payyappalli & Jun Zhuang, 2019. "Modeling the Cost Effectiveness of Fire Protection Resource Allocation in the United States: Models and a 1980–2014 Case Study," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 39(6), pages 1358-1381, June.
    4. Zhiheng Xu & Jun Zhuang, 2019. "A Study on a Sequential One‐Defender‐N‐Attacker Game," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 39(6), pages 1414-1432, June.
    5. Qingqing Zhai & Rui Peng & Jun Zhuang, 2020. "Defender–Attacker Games with Asymmetric Player Utilities," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(2), pages 408-420, February.
    6. Daniel G. Arce, 2019. "On the human consequences of terrorism," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 178(3), pages 371-396, March.
    7. Halkos, George & Managi, Shunsuke & Zisiadou, Argyro, 2017. "Analyzing the determinants of terrorist attacks and their market reactions," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 57-73.
    8. Bin Mai & Shailesh Kulkarni, 2018. "When Hackers Err: The Impacts of False Positives on Information Security Games," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 15(2), pages 90-109, June.
    9. Argenti, Francesca & Landucci, Gabriele & Reniers, Genserik & Cozzani, Valerio, 2018. "Vulnerability assessment of chemical facilities to intentional attacks based on Bayesian Network," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 515-530.
    10. Chen, Chao & Reniers, Genserik & Khakzad, Nima, 2019. "Integrating safety and security resources to protect chemical industrial parks from man-made domino effects: A dynamic graph approach," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 191(C).
    11. Grant, Matthew J. & Stewart, Mark G., 2017. "Modelling improvised explosive device attacks in the West – Assessing the hazard," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 345-354.
    12. Hausken, Kjell, 2021. "The precautionary principle as multi-period games where players have different thresholds for acceptable uncertainty," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    13. Jaspersen, Johannes G. & Montibeller, Gilberto, 2020. "On the learning patterns and adaptive behavior of terrorist organizations," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 282(1), pages 221-234.
    14. Halkos, George & Zisiadou, Argyro, 2016. "Exploring the effect of terrorist attacks on markets," MPRA Paper 71877, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wut:journl:v:2:y:2020:p:39-57:id:1480. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Adam Kasperski (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iopwrpl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.