Start Date

10-12-2017 12:00 AM

Description

Not surprisingly, lying behavior has been a long-standing practice in the media industry to attract viewers' attention. Although prior literature provides the rich understanding of causes and results of individual lying choices, the effects of lying on intended business outcomes have not been examined theoretically and empirically. Therefore, it is still in question whether lies contribute to positive economic gains in business, and if so, what an underlying mechanism works for them. In this paper, we propose an econometric model to examine the effects of lying on TV ratings in cable TV shows. We use lying scores of a fact-checking website and further develop a deceptive text analyzer. Then, we analyze linguistic data, 52-week transcripts of eight news and commentary shows of three major cable networks. Our research contributes to theory and practitioners by first providing theoretical ground to explain the phenomenon with empirical evidence.

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Dec 10th, 12:00 AM

Does Lying Lead to More Viewers? The Effects of Lying on TV Ratings

Not surprisingly, lying behavior has been a long-standing practice in the media industry to attract viewers' attention. Although prior literature provides the rich understanding of causes and results of individual lying choices, the effects of lying on intended business outcomes have not been examined theoretically and empirically. Therefore, it is still in question whether lies contribute to positive economic gains in business, and if so, what an underlying mechanism works for them. In this paper, we propose an econometric model to examine the effects of lying on TV ratings in cable TV shows. We use lying scores of a fact-checking website and further develop a deceptive text analyzer. Then, we analyze linguistic data, 52-week transcripts of eight news and commentary shows of three major cable networks. Our research contributes to theory and practitioners by first providing theoretical ground to explain the phenomenon with empirical evidence.