It has been about 10 days since the election day(Biden vs Trump) started, but only after several days were the results announced. The specific events that caused the latency of the results being published are rather political and not the focus of this blog post. I, however, wanted to focus on the actions that the news networks could take to report the events of the presidential election. According to game theory, we will reference the actions that these news networks could take as strategies. To elaborate more, the news networks always want to be able to report the most up to date news that is valid and true. Therefore, the ultimate dilemma for news networks is to wait and be delayed to announce the sure victor or immediately announce the victor with a chance that they will be wrong, resulting in hurting the news network’s reputation.
Let’s consider an example, Fox News and ABC news. The possible strategies can be stated as follows:
- Fox News and ABC news delay reporting the sure victor
- Fox News delay reporting the sure victor, but ABC news immediately report the false victor
- Fox News immediately report the false victor, but ABC news delay reporting the sure victor
- Fox News and ABC news immediately report the false victor
There are obviously more variations of the strategies, but this is a simple example that will give us a sufficient analysis of what the news networks did. With these strategies, let us consider the results of each one. (Number references to the strategy number above)
- Readers read the article about delaying the report, they may be furious but what they read is true and readers still believe the news networks.
- Readers read abc news and find out they reported fake news, readers will lose trust in abc news. Additionally, since fox news is reporting differently, readers that have read the news from abc news may doubt the truth about what fox news is reporting.
- Readers read fox news and find out they reported fake news, readers will lose trust in fox news. Additionally, since ABC news is reporting differently, readers that have read the news from fox news may doubt the truth about what fox news is reporting.
- Readers read the article and find out both news networks reported fake news, readers lose trust in both news networks.
With this analysis, we can assign values to Nash Equilibrium. An example is as such:
Even though figure 1 is a rough diagram, the values assigned are a reflection of the analysis above. With a decent knowledge of game theory, we can understand that the strategy that both news network delayed reporting is the pure strategy. In other words, that strategy is the best strategy such that both news networks have no incentive to change their strategy. This is the reason as to why there was a delay in news network reporting the victor as such information is crucial and can impact the trust of readers in the news networks.
Hopefully, this insight has given somewhat interesting insights into how game theory can be used to evaluate real-life strategies.
Sources:
Farrell, H. (2020, November 07). Want to know why the networks finally called it for Biden? Here’s the likely reason. Retrieved November 13, 2020, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/11/07/want-know-why-networks-finally-called-it-biden-heres-likely-reason/
Predicting an election’s aftermath with game theory: DW: 13.10.2020. (n.d.). Retrieved November 13, 2020, from https://www.dw.com/en/predicting-an-elections-aftermath-with-game-theory/av-55257954