Ideological Bias and Trust in Information Sources

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Gentzkow, Matthew; Wong, Michael B.; Zhang, Allen T.
• 署名单位: Stanford University; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Hong Kong
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MICROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7669
• DOI: 10.1257/mic.20210406
• 发表日期: 2025
• 页码: 162-213
• 关键词: posterior distributions; partisan media; Echo chambers; polarization; MODEL; fragility; BEHAVIOR; online; CHOICE; news

摘要

We study the role of endogenous trust in amplifying ideological bias. Agents in our model learn a sequence of states from sources whose accuracy is ex ante uncertain. Agents learn these accuracies by comparing their own reasoning about the states based on introspection or direct experience to the sources' reports. Small biases in this reasoning can cause large ideological differences in the agents' trust in information sources and their beliefs about the states, and may lead agents to become overconfident in their own reasoning. Disagreements can be similar in magnitude whether agents see only ideologically aligned sources or diverse sources. (JEL D42, D72, D83, L25, L82, Z13)