IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp17282.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

He Said, She Said: Who Gets Believed When Spreading (Mis)Information

Author

Listed:
  • Khan, Nuzaina

    (University of Oxford)

  • Rand, David

    (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

  • Shurchkov, Olga

    (Wellesley College)

Abstract

We design an online experiment that mimics a Twitter/X "feed" to test whether (perceived) poster gender influences users' propensity to doubt the veracity of a given post. On average, posts by women are less likely to be flagged as concerning than identical posts by men. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that men are more likely to flag female-authored posts as the post's topic domain becomes more male-stereotyped. Female users do not exhibit the same bias. Actual post veracity, user ideology, and user familiarity with Twitter do not explain the findings. Flagging behavior on Twitter's crowdsourced fact-checking program is consistent with these findings.

Suggested Citation

  • Khan, Nuzaina & Rand, David & Shurchkov, Olga, 2024. "He Said, She Said: Who Gets Believed When Spreading (Mis)Information," IZA Discussion Papers 17282, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17282
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp17282.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Olga Shurchkov, 2012. "Under Pressure: Gender Differences In Output Quality And Quantity Under Competition And Time Constraints," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(5), pages 1189-1213, October.
    2. Shelly Lundberg & Jenna Stearns, 2019. "Women in Economics: Stalled Progress," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 33(1), pages 3-22, Winter.
    3. Gordon Pennycook & David G. Rand, 2022. "Accuracy prompts are a replicable and generalizable approach for reducing the spread of misinformation," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-12, December.
    4. Hunt Allcott & Matthew Gentzkow, 2017. "Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election," NBER Working Papers 23089, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Gordon Pennycook & Ziv Epstein & Mohsen Mosleh & Antonio A. Arechar & Dean Eckles & David G. Rand, 2021. "Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online," Nature, Nature, vol. 592(7855), pages 590-595, April.
    6. Claudia Goldin & Sari Pekkala Kerr & Claudia Olivetti & Erling Barth, 2017. "The Expanding Gender Earnings Gap: Evidence from the LEHD-2000 Census," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(5), pages 110-114, May.
    7. Ester Almenar & Sue Aran-Ramspott & Jaume Suau & Pere Masip, 2021. "Gender Differences in Tackling Fake News: Different Degrees of Concern, but Same Problems," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 9(1), pages 229-238.
    8. Olga Shurchkov & Alexandra V.M. van Geen, 2019. "Why Female Decision‐Makers Shy away from Promoting Competition," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 72(2), pages 297-331, May.
    9. Hunt Allcott & Matthew Gentzkow, 2017. "Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(2), pages 211-236, Spring.
    10. Amal Dabbous & Karine Aoun Barakat & Beatriz de Quero Navarro, 2022. "Fake news detection and social media trust: a cross-cultural perspective," Behaviour and Information Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(14), pages 2953-2972, October.
    11. Tom Buchanan, 2020. "Why do people spread false information online? The effects of message and viewer characteristics on self-reported likelihood of sharing social media disinformation," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(10), pages 1-33, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Assenza, Tiziana & Cardaci, Alberto & Huber, Stefanie, 2024. "Fake News: Susceptibility, Awareness and Solutions," TSE Working Papers 24-1519, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Apr 2024.
    2. Coffman, Katherine & Flikkema, Clio Bryant & Shurchkov, Olga, 2021. "Gender stereotypes in deliberation and team decisions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 329-349.
    3. Lara Berger & Anna Kerkhof & Felix Mindl & Johannes Münster, 2023. "Debunking "Fake News" on Social Media: Short-Term and Longer-Term Effects of Fact Checking and Media Literacy Interventions," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 262, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    4. Apostolos Filippas & John Horton, 2021. "The Production and Consumption of Social Media," Papers 2104.00834, arXiv.org.
    5. Kerim Peren Arin & Juan A. Lacomba & Francisco Lagos & Deni Mazrekaj & Marcel Thum, 2021. "Misperceptions and Fake News during the Covid-19 Pandemic," CESifo Working Paper Series 9066, CESifo.
    6. Tuval Danenberg & Drew Fudenberg, 2024. "Endogenous Attention and the Spread of False News," Papers 2406.11024, arXiv.org.
    7. Lara Marie Berger & Anna Kerkhof & Felix Mindl & Johannes Münster, 2023. "Debunking “Fake News” on Social Media: Short-Term and Longer-Term Effects of Fact Checking and Media Literacy Interventions," CESifo Working Paper Series 10576, CESifo.
    8. Gonzalo Cisternas & Jorge Vásquez, 2022. "Misinformation in Social Media: The Role of Verification Incentives," Staff Reports 1028, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    9. Mohamed Mostagir & James Siderius, 2022. "Learning in a Post-Truth World," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(4), pages 2860-2868, April.
    10. Jiexun Li & Xiaohui Chang, 2023. "Combating Misinformation by Sharing the Truth: a Study on the Spread of Fact-Checks on Social Media," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 25(4), pages 1479-1493, August.
    11. Adrian Kwek & Luke Peh & Josef Tan & Jin Xing Lee, 2023. "Distractions, analytical thinking and falling for fake news: A survey of psychological factors," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-12, December.
    12. Gritsenko, Daria, 2024. "Advancing UN digital cooperation: Lessons from environmental policy and governance," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    13. Mohsen Mosleh & David G. Rand, 2022. "Measuring exposure to misinformation from political elites on Twitter," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-9, December.
    14. Daniel Ershov & Juan S. Morales, 2021. "Sharing News Left and Right: The Effects of Policies Targeting Misinformation on Social Media," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 651, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    15. Leopoldo Fergusson & Carlos Molina, 2020. "Facebook Causes Protests," HiCN Working Papers 323, Households in Conflict Network.
    16. Dean Neu & Gregory D. Saxton & Abu S. Rahaman, 2022. "Social Accountability, Ethics, and the Occupy Wall Street Protests," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 180(1), pages 17-31, September.
    17. Robbett, Andrea & Matthews, Peter Hans, 2018. "Partisan bias and expressive voting," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 107-120.
    18. Henrik Skaug Sætra, 2021. "AI in Context and the Sustainable Development Goals: Factoring in the Unsustainability of the Sociotechnical System," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-19, February.
    19. Fathey Mohammed & Nabil Hasan Al-Kumaim & Ahmed Ibrahim Alzahrani & Yousef Fazea, 2023. "The Impact of Social Media Shared Health Content on Protective Behavior against COVID-19," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(3), pages 1-16, January.
    20. Bartosz Wilczek, 2020. "Misinformation and herd behavior in media markets: A cross-national investigation of how tabloids’ attention to misinformation drives broadsheets’ attention to misinformation in political and business," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(11), pages 1-22, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    gender differences; misinformation; economic experiments;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C90 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - General
    • D9 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • L86 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Information and Internet Services; Computer Software

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:iza:izadps:dp17282. 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: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.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.