Applying Information Cascades to Revolutions and Rioting
The article “Riots, revolutions, democratisation, and information cascades” by Chris Ellis and John Fender (http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/7156) explores the idea that modern technology can be used as the driving force for revolutions, rioting, and other modern movements due to the increased transmission of information enabled by the technology; this increased spread of information causes an information cascade, allowing modern demonstrations to grow incredibly fast.
Some social media sites, such as Twitter, are ideally designed to create information cascades through “trending topics”. As defined by the site itself, trending topics are: “… topics that are immediately popular, rather than topics that have been popular for a while or on a daily basis, to help people discover the “most breaking” news stories from across the world.” By creating a multitude of messages on twitter that increased the popularity and relevance of their movement, revolutionists in the Middle East and rioters in London were both able to use social media sites and messaging to create an information cascade that was able to spread to beyond just their immediate social circle.
By applying the idea of equilibrium to acts of rioting, the paper claims that people balance the benefits from rioting versus the possible punishment that could result from their actions if they were caught. The more people that riot, the less likely one person will receive an inordinate amount of punishment for the act. Therefore, the use of social media to cause an information cascade is important because the social media enables the organizers of the movements to spread their messages to many people at once. Furthermore, the use of social media sites allows others not associated with the movement to learn the popular choice of people outside of their immediate circle of friends, with respect to the movement. By “following the herd” of an even larger group of people than just their friends, people are able to optimize their equilibrium choices; they can chose to riot or not riot based on what is the expected payout from their behavior. This ability to choose the optimal solution based on information spread by others enables people to choose their behavior based on what they determine is the optimal solution. By combining the ability to create information cascades, social media sites creates network-wide effects which can change the equilibrium choices of people by enabling them to determine what others are doing, allowing all parties involved to pick the dominant equilibrium choice.