Competitive capture of public opinion

Alonso, Ricardo ORCID: 0000-0001-9559-0864 and Padró i Miquel, Gerard (2025) Competitive capture of public opinion. Econometrica, 93 (4). 1265 - 1297. ISSN 0012-9682

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Abstract

Two opposed interested parties (IPs) compete to influence citizens with heterogeneous priors which receive news items produced by a variety of sources. The IPs fight to capture the coverage conveyed in these items. We characterize the equilibrium level of capture of item as well as the equilibrium level of information transmission. Capture increases the prevalence of the ex ante most informative messages and can explain the empirical distribution of slant at the news‐item level. Opposite capturing efforts do not cancel each other and instead undermine social learning as rational citizens discount informative messages. Citizen skepticism makes efforts to capture the news strategic substitutes. Because of strategic substitution, competition for influence is compatible with horizontal differentiation between successful media. In equilibrium, rational citizens choose to consume messages from aligned sources despite knowledge of the bias in a manner consistent with recent empirical evidence.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2025 The Author(s)
Divisions:	Management
Subjects:	H Social Sciences J Political Science
JEL classification:	D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making > D72 - Economic Models of Political Processes: Rent-Seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
Date Deposited:	01 Apr 2025 14:15
Last Modified:	15 Aug 2025 16:21
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/127777

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