Skip to content

Game Theory

Game theory is the mathematical study of strategic interaction: how rational agents choose actions when the outcome depends on both their own decisions and the decisions of others. Key concepts include:

  • Strategic form games: agents simultaneously choose actions; payoff depends on the strategy profile (everyone's choice).
  • Nash equilibrium: a strategy profile where no agent can improve their payoff by unilaterally changing their strategy, given others' strategies. A solution concept for predicting outcomes when agents act rationally.
  • Mechanism design: the inverse problem — given desired outcomes, design rules/mechanisms (like voting systems or markets) that incentivize self-interested agents to behave in ways that achieve those outcomes.
  • Information asymmetry: agents may have different information or beliefs; this shapes equilibrium behavior.

In misinformation contexts, game theory provides tools to:

  1. Model strategic behavior — how bad actors (or ordinary users) optimize their actions (what to say, where to say it, when) to achieve personal goals given platform rules and others' responses.
  2. Analyze platform vulnerabilities — characterize when and how manipulators can exploit platform designs to distort consensus or deceive peers.
  3. Design robustness — identify platform rules or mechanisms that make manipulation harder or more costly.

Key papers

  • Strategic Opinion Manipulation in Multiplex Networks — applies game theory to model strategic misreporting on multiplex networks; shows equilibrium consensus is reweighted by "tilted centrality" combining network centrality and manipulability, and characterizes when platform design mitigates or amplifies vulnerability