This article focuses on principles of information aggregation in the presence of false, public reports (fake news). The analysis explores news has been having a public goods feature characterized by models of information and economic efficiency. The analysis is not tied to any particular theory about how or why unreliable news emerges. The reports could be purposeful deception, intentions to mislead or profit motivated responses to decision biases of readers. A well-known and widely studied “cascade” experiment is used to illustrate principles that provide links to standard economic models. News is modeled as an aggregation of a simple, fixed chain of decentralized observations and reports about an underlying, unknown state of nature. The personal value of an individual’s decision depends on both the decision and the underlying state of nature. The information about the state used in the decision can reflect private observations or the “news” about the decisions of others. The experiments demonstrate that aggregated information is dependent on accumulated trust in news sources and has value as a special form of public goods.

中文翻译：

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假新闻、信息群、级联和经济知识

本文重点介绍存在虚假公开报道（假新闻）时的信息聚合原则。该分析探讨了新闻具有以信息和经济效率模型为特征的公共产品特征。该分析与关于不可靠新闻如何或为何出现的任何特定理论无关。这些报告可能是有目的的欺骗、误导的意图或对读者决策偏见的获利动机回应。一个众所周知且被广泛研究的“级联”实验被用来说明提供与标准经济模型联系的原则。新闻被建模为关于潜在的、未知的自然状态的分散观察和报告的简单、固定链的聚合。个人决定的个人价值取决于决定和潜在的自然状态。决策中使用的有关状态的信息可以反映私人观察或有关他人决策的“新闻”。实验表明，聚合信息依赖于对新闻来源的累积信任，并且作为一种特殊形式的公共物品具有价值。