TITLE:
Manipulating Persuasion in Debates: Fact Checking’s Usefulness
AUTHORS:
Nazaria Solferino, Serena Fiona Taurino, Maria Elisabetta Tessitore
KEYWORDS:
Persuasion, Logical Connectives, Political Debates
JOURNAL NAME:
Theoretical Economics Letters,
Vol.5 No.4,
July
20,
2015
ABSTRACT: Persuasion can be considered as a situation where subjects having an
opinion or an argument are willing to change it in favor of others’ proposal
only if the new message has personal relevance and significant consequences on
their lives. In this paper, we argue that improvements in the information set
and the knowledge of the fundamental rules of a “well-formed formula” are necessary
to minimize errors when people make their choices. Arguments can be manipulated
either in terms of the truth of premises or in terms of the logical connectives
among propositions. The emerging mechanism of the so-called fact-checking, used
to verify candidates’ statements during the electoral campaign, may be a very
useful instrument to realize these improvements in political debates.