Debunking Misinformation Using a Game Theoretic Approach.

The growth in social media communication has witnessed an increase in misinformation. The harmful effects of misinformation range from defamation of reputation to loss of life. Information Systems research has a long history of studying the antecedents of misinformation and how to find out when it occurs. However, there is limited research on how to deal with the harm caused by misinformation. The governing bodies responsible for handling misinformation need to be strategic in addressing ever-increasing misinformation and prioritizing the type of misinformation. In this study, we propose an evolutionary theoretic-based game model to establish equilibrium to optimize the efforts needed by the governing bodies to debunk the misinformation. We propose to empirically validate our model using COVID-19-related social media tweets using experiments. In doing so, we contribute to a growing body of literature on misinformation harm and evolutionary game theory, while offering practical solutions to address an important societal problem. © AMCIS 2021.