Electoral competition with lying, inattention and targeted narratives

我打算将应用理论和实证相结合，以帮助更好地理解不同政治话语的流行和流行。我尤其对后真相政治和政治两极分化现象感兴趣，目前我正在研究一种疏于关注和第三方事实核查的选举竞争模式。在我的模型中，候选人争夺选民有限的注意力，战略性地选择竞选信息和广播时间分配。注意力不集中会让选民接受谎言，因为事实核查信息可能会被挤掉。我打算进行实证和规范分析，研究选民关注的预期总福利成本。政治经济学文献最近开始通过将行为洞察力纳入选民对候选人的看法来扩展规范的选举竞争模型。我的模型在两个主要方面有别于这项工作。首先，选民以最佳方式分配注意力的理性疏忽模式无法解释为什么候选人有时会在选民兴趣不大的话题上投入大量的播出时间。因此，基于显著刺激在吸引注意力方面的作用的经验证据，我假设选民更有可能记住更突出的信息--按照表面价值记住记住的信息，并利用之前的信息来填补缺失的信息。其次，这些模型把重点放在政策选择上，假设候选人承诺竞选纲领，因此不会为竞选谎言留下任何空间。我假设候选人会执行他们喜欢的竞选纲领，但可以自由选择误导性的竞选信息。虽然一个大谎可能会大幅增加候选人的得票率，但这也是有风险的，因为大谎会引发突出的事实核查信息。因此，候选人有策略地选择竞选信息和相应的广播时间分配，试图排挤不太有利的信息。因此，播出时间和谎言可能都是战略上的补充，因为大量的播出时间可能会排挤事实核查，从而使大型谎言的风险较小，或者说是战略替代，因为播出时间较少的候选人可能会使用极端的谎言作为最后的求助策略，以触发事实核查，分散选民对对手重要言论的注意力。在均衡中，争夺选民注意力的竞争导致了候选人之间撒谎的可能性，因为广播时间的压力降低了事实核查信息被记住的风险。为了更好地理解候选人选择强调某些话题的驱动因素以及由此导致的选民信息损失，我打算将我的模型扩展到多话题设置。作为第二个项目，我打算实证调查是什么让某些受众特别接受某些政治叙事。经济模型最近开始在各种环境中包括叙事，一种有效的叙事被理解为改变接受者的信念或对自己目标的感觉的东西。然而，是什么让叙事变得有效，这个问题在很大程度上仍然悬而未决。然而，在政治微目标和社交媒体的时代，理解是什么让一些接受者特别接受和愿意分享某些叙事似乎是理解政治叙事传播的关键。由于“叙事”是多方面的，其有效性的可能来源从身份自我暗示的动机到对悬念的偏好，我打算对相互矛盾的假设进行实证研究，可能会使用社交媒体数据。

I intend to combine applied theory and empirics to contribute to a better understanding of the prevalence and popularity of different political discourses. In particular, I am interested in the phenomenon of post-truth politics and political polarization.I am currently working on a model of electoral competition with inattention and third-party fact-checking. In my model, candidates compete for voters' limited attention, strategically choosing campaign messages and airtime allocation. Inattention makes voters receptive to lies as fact-checking messages may be crowded out. I intend to carry out both a positive and normative analysis, studying the expected aggregate welfare cost of voter inattention.The political economy literature has recently started expanding upon canonical electoral competition models by incorporating behavioural insights to voters' perception of candidates. My model distinguishes itself from this work in two main aspects. First, rational inattention models in which voters optimally allocate their attention cannot explain why candidates sometimes dedicate a large airtime to topics of limited interest to voters. Building on empirical evidence on the role of salient stimuli in capturing attention, I thus assume that voters are more likely to remember more prominent messages - taking the remembered messages at face value and using their prior to complete missing information. Second, those models have focused on policy choice, assuming that candidates commit to platforms, and therefore not leaving any space for campaign lies. I assume that candidates will implement their preferred platform but are free to choose misleading campaign messages. While a large lie may, conditional on being believed, substantially increase a candidate's vote share, it is also risky as large lies trigger prominent fact-checking messages. Candidates thus strategically choose campaign messages and a corresponding airtime allocation to try to crowd out less favourable messages. Airtime and lies may thus act both as strategic complements, since a large airtime is likely to crowd-out fact-checking and therefore makes large lies less risky, or strategic substitutes, as a candidate with a small airtime may use extreme lies as last recourse strategy to trigger fact-checking and distract voters from his opponent's prominent discourse. In equilibrium, competition for voters' attention gives rise to license to lie dynamics between the candidates, as the airtime pressure reduces the risk of fact-checking messages being remembered. To better understand the drivers of candidates' choice to emphasize certain topics and the resulting information loss for voters, I intend to extend my model to a multi-topic setting.As a second project, I intend to empirically investigate what makes certain audiences particularly receptive to certain political narratives. Economic models have recently started including narratives in a variety of settings, an efficient narrative being understood as something shifting a receiver's beliefs or sense of his own objective. The question of what makes narratives efficient has nonetheless remained largely open. In the age of political micro-targeting and social media, understanding what makes some receivers particularly receptive to and willing to share certain narratives however appears key to understand the spread of political narratives. As "narratives" are multi-faceted and the possible sources of their effectiveness range from identity self-signalling motives to a taste for suspense, I intend to empirically investigate competing hypotheses, possibly using social media data.