Troll Farms and Voter Disinformation
18 Pages Posted: 10 Sep 2021 Last revised: 11 Oct 2021
Date Written: September 3, 2021
Abstract
Political agents often attempt to influence elections through "troll farms" that flood social media platforms with messages from fake accounts that emulate genuine information. We study the ability of troll farms to manipulate elections. We show that such disinformation tactics is more effective when voters are otherwise well-informed. Thus, for example, societies with high-quality media are more vulnerable to electoral manipulation.
Keywords: Fake News, Disinformation, Troll Farms, Elections, Social Media, Information Aggregation, Fact-Checking
JEL Classification: D72, D83, D85, D91
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation