Message just keeps getting clearer
Radio's on and I'm moving 'round the place
I check my look in the mirror
I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face
--Bruce Springsteen
One implication of of Crawford and Sobel's (1982) model of strategic information transmission is that politically motivated information sources are likely to exaggerate their messages in order to influence less biased consumers of information.
Cai and Wang (2006) subsequently conducted experiments to estimate the amount of information and the degree of bias.
In an average state of the world that was 5.0, senders sent a message of 5.894. On average, then, senders sent a message that was biased by 0.894 units from the truth.
The receivers, even though they know that the average state of the world would be 5.0, chose an average policy of 5.282. Thus, receivers were 'fooled' into choosing a policy that was 0.282 units higher than the truth.
The results demonstrate that the typical person underestimates the degree to which other prople are strategic. In the context of media bias, consumers of information are more 'trusting' of news sources than they should be.
Such findings do not support a rational choice theory basis for media consumption. Instead, the results argue for a 'media effects' explanation.
Even when consumers are on guard for bias in the information that they receive, bias emanating from media sources is still prone to distort the beliefs of information consumers.
References
Cai, H. and Wang, J.T. 2006. Overcommunication in strategic information transmission games. Games and Economic Behavior, 56: 7-36.
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3 comments:
There has always been a fertile market for biased media and sensationalism. The National Enquirer has been published for well over 50 years.
Yes, but the implication here is that even when information consumers seek unbiased 'truth,' they are likely to be fooled into accepting bias as truth.
Thus mainstream outlets can become institutional purveyors of bias and fly under the cognitive radars of many people who are duped into thinking that they are getting the truth (either as-is or after personal filtering).
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
~Albert Einstein
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