How fake news can turn against its spreader
For information consumers and policymakers, this provides a theoretical condition under which disinformation can be counteracted without active intervention.
The paper shows that when a genuine information source has high signal-to-noise ratio and its noise is positively correlated with that of a disinformation source, the disinformation backfires, causing the receiver to interpret it opposite to its intent.
When different information sources on a given topic are combined, they interact in a nontrivial manner for a rational receiver of these information sources. Suppose that there are two information sources, one is genuine and the other contains disinformation. It is shown that under the conditions that the signal-to-noise ratio of the genuine information source is sufficiently large, and that the noise terms in the two information sources are positively correlated, the effect of disinformation is reversed from its original intent. That is, the effect of disinformation on a receiver of both information sources, who is unaware of the existence of disinformation, is to generate an opposite interpretation. While the condition in which this phenomenon occurs cannot always be ensured, when it is satisfied, the effect provides an effective way of countering the impacts of disinformation.