ArticleScience advances2025
How media competition fuels the spread of misinformation.
Article in Science advances, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- How media competition fuels the spread of misinformation.Science advances · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Competition among news sources over public opinion can incentivize them to resort to misinformation. Sharing misinformation may lead to a short-term gain in audience engagement but ultimately damages the credibility of the source, resulting in a loss of audience. To understand the rationale behind news sources sharing misinformation, we model the competition between sources as a zero-sum sequential game, where news sources decide whether to share factual information or misinformation. Each source influences individuals based on their credibility, the veracity of the article, and the individual's characteristics. We analyze this game through the concept of quantal response equilibrium, which accounts for the bounded rationality of human decision-making. The analysis shows that the resulting equilibria reproduce the credibility-opinion distribution of real-world news sources, with hyperpartisan sources spreading the majority of misinformation. Our findings provide insights for policymakers to mitigate the spread of misinformation and promote a more factual information landscape.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.