Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Since the early work of Downs, the demand for political information has presented a problem to rational choice theorists. In terms of news coverage, market pressures should lead to see the same coverage by different media outlets. But then why do we see so many claims to the contrary? Contemporary work in the psychology of decision making suggests that people suffer from a confirmation bias. This bias can be thought of as a tendency to seek out, or prefer, information that confirms one’s prior belief. In this
paper we propose a formal model of the market for political news, and show that when the audience has this bias it may be profitable for firms to differentiate their coverage or evaluations.