Finance

Business

Political science

Disease

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Corporate governance

Public relations

Social media

Political economy

Misinformation

Psychiatry

Economics

Medicine

Psychological intervention

Infectious disease (medical specialty)

Psychology

Compromise

Pathology

Credibility

Policy Sciences

The COVID-19 crisis has revealed structural failures in governance and coordination on a global scale. With related policy interventions dependent on verifiable evidence, pandemics require governments to not only consider the input of experts but also ensure that science is translated for public understanding. However, misinformation and fake news, including content shared through social media, compromise the efficacy of evidence-based policy interventions and undermine the credibility of scientific expertise with potentially longer-term consequences. We introduce a formal mathematical model to understand factors influencing the behavior of social media users when encountering fake news. The model illustrates that direct efforts by social media platforms and governments, along with informal pressure from social networks, can reduce the likelihood that users who encounter fake news embrace and further circulate it. This study has implications at a practical level for crisis response in politically fractious se...

Fighting fake news in the COVID-19 era: policy insights from an equilibrium model