Abstract
We develop a novel notion of political partisanship based on identity preservation. Partisans wish to convince themselves that their party is the better choice. They select information sources from a broad array of media outlets with different biases in order to achieve that goal, but they may not always succeed due to their rationality which acts as a constraint. Thus, citizens of opposing political camps tend to consume different media diets and hold divergent beliefs, as in the U.S. We explore how asymmetries between the two political sides skew electoral outcomes and generate information aggregation failures despite rationality. Here we consider salient examples such as asymmetric exposure or asymmetric trust in media, as well as propaganda, but this notion of partisanship is applicable to a wider variety of contexts.
Invited by: Tommaso Sonno
Local Organizer: Niko Jaakkola