Studying Web Content Credibility by Social Simulation

The Internet has become an important source of information that significantly affects social, economical and political life. The content available in the Web is the basis for the operation of the digital economy. Moreover, Web content has become essential for many Web users that have to make decisions. Meanwhile, more and more often we encounter Web content of low credibility due to incorrect opinions, lack of knowledge, and, even worse, manipulation attempts for the benefit of the authors or content providers. While mechanisms for the support of credibility evaluation in practice have been proposed, little is known about their effectiveness, and about their influence on the global picture of Web content production and consumption. We use a game-theoretic model to analyze the impact of reputation on the evaluation of content credibility by consumers with varying expertise, in the presence of producers who have incentives to manipulate information.