Name
Cameron Martel, "Political Motives Help Rather Than Hinder Crowdsourced Fact-checking"
Date & Time
Thursday, October 16, 2025, 2:50 PM - 3:15 PM
Speakers
Cameron Martel, Johns Hopkins Carey Business School "Political Motives Help Rather Than Hinder Crowdsourced Fact-checking" Social media platforms are adopting crowd-based strategies for identifying false or misleading content. However, existing theories suggest laypeople can be politically biased, and these political motives undermine accuracy. Alternatively, we propose that political and accuracy motives operate separately, and show theoretically that this implies that more politically motivated individuals may often be more accurate. We empirically assess this proposal using a survey study and field data from X’s Community Notes. As predicted, politically discordant false posts are flagged most often, and more politically motivated users flag more posts while exhibiting equal or higher flagging discernment (along with more political bias). Politically motivated individuals are integral to provisioning a high quantity and quality of crowdsourced fact-checks. Cameron Martel is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. His research investigates why people believe and share misinformation, what forces shape the online social networks through which misleading content may spread, and which content moderation interventions are effective for improving information quality and consumer trust and safety online. He uses a variety of methods including online survey experiments, social media field experiments, behavioral economic games, and computational social science analytics. Dr. Martel received a PhD in Management Science (Marketing Track) from MIT Sloan School of Management and a BS in Cognitive Science from Yale University.
Location Name
Kline Tower 14th Floor
Full Address
Kline Tower
219 Prospect St, 14th Floor
New Haven, CT 06511
United States
Session Type
Lecture
