Deceptive Entrepreneurship in Digital Spaces
Published: 20 January 2026
This project investigates how entrepreneurs use digital platforms to construct deceptive narratives, uncovering the tactics they deploy and how audiences respond. The research aims to shape policy, protect consumers, and foster more transparent digital entrepreneurship.
Understanding the Dark Side of Digital Entrepreneurship
From slick Instagram reels to flashy LinkedIn posts, digital platforms offer fertile ground for entrepreneurs to build compelling stories around their ventures. But behind the curated posts and entrepreneurial gloss, a growing concern has emerged: how can we distinguish genuine innovation from carefully crafted deception?
A new interdisciplinary research project, led by Dr Felix Honecker and Professor Dominic Chalmers at the Adam Smith Business School, explores precisely this question. The team, including Professor Matthias Waldkirch and PhD researcher Tim Risse, is investigating how deception unfolds in online entrepreneurial activity and how audiences engage with it.
Mapping Deception Across Digital Platforms
Supported by funding from the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the project takes a deep dive into the visual and textual content shared by entrepreneurs across platforms like Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and personal websites. These digital spaces enable entrepreneurs to build legitimacy and social proof, but they also allow misleading claims to flourish unchecked.
The team is collecting and analysing a wide range of multimedia content to identify recurring patterns in how deceptive narratives are constructed and shared. Using advanced machine learning techniques, they are examining both the content itself and the ways in which digital audiences respond, whether through endorsement, scepticism, or outright rejection.
Towards a Safer, More Transparent Digital Economy
The research aims not only to advance academic understanding of digital deception but also to inform consumer protection and policy. By shedding light on when and why people fall for, or resist, misleading narratives, the project will support the development of regulatory frameworks to better safeguard online audiences.
The findings will be disseminated through academic publications and international conferences, with the first output being a special issue Call for Papers in the Journal of Management Studies.
For further information, please contact business-school-research@glasgow.ac.uk
First published: 20 January 2026