Talking Without Speaking: Paid Trolls on Social Media and Court Decision

With the massive growth of social media and other informational platforms that businesses and individuals may use to share their opinions, a society’s perspectives of certain contentious issues may be influenced significantly. At the same time, it has been noted that various parties have used paid trolls (i.e., fake comments made by bot accounts) to sway public opinions concerning some hotly debated issues or legal proceedings. This article aims to investigate how public opinions and paid trolls may affect the outcome of legal disputes between opposing parties. Our research indicates that litigating parties involved in lawsuits with social media engagement may purchase paid trolls to influence public opinions, and they do so more significantly when the truth does not match the prior expectation of the public. We also discover that social media users’ investigation may be a pitfall for the involved parties. Additionally, the court may be either constrained or aided to identify the truth by having a tendency to render decisions that align with prevailing public opinions, depending on the stake of the lawsuit. Finally, treating public opinions on social media as additional information that aids court decision may backfire.

History: Anthony Dukes served as the senior editor.

Funding: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 72331011].

Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2024.0679.