Rumors Rumors are no Fun, Unless You Share with Everyone
No matter how much we say we hate rumors and gossip, come on, guys — most of us honestly can’t help but get even a little intrigued when we hear some juicy gossip from a friend, read a shocking headline on the news, or get a Twitter update that our favorite celebrity has supposedly been involved in some scandalous affairs.
Let’s talk rumors and reminisce a little about our beloved high school years. Remember those days seeing the exact same faces every day as you walked down the same hallway of lockers on your way to the same class that you went to every single day? High school life was a routine: get up, go to school for 6 hours, do some extracurriculars, do homework, go to bed. You could say life could have gotten pretty mundane, don’t you think? Well, not when that one rumor started to spread around the school, and I’m sure that even now you can think of that one specific rumor that spread like wildfire throughout your school. When we hear rumors like this, we often simply accept this news as fact, especially if we do not have direct connections with the person who stands as the subject of the rumor. This event is not to say that we are all gullible, but rather can be explained by the concept of information cascades and network connections.
The dissemination of information can travel through various phones of communication: email, phone, social media, by mouth, the Internet, etc. This dissemination is like a seemingly endless game of telephone, and when the information continues to propagate, an information cascade (a cascade of information) is born, where the four basic ingredients of an information-based imitation, as discussed in class, are satisfied:
- There is some decision to be made –> Do we accept (believe) this rumor/piece of information, or do we reject (not believe) it?
- People make the decision sequentially over time –> As more and more people hear the rumor, more and more people subsequently make the decision to either accept or reject the rumor.
- Each person has some private information –> Each person “knows” the rumor, as well as any other insider information that may either corroborate or dispute the rumor.
- You can see what others did but not what they know –> You see people choosing to spread the rumor, thereby perhaps indicating that the information is potentially true (until proven false).
Now the question is: How much “genuine” information is reflected in the crowd’s behavior vs. how much copying?
Let’s use Kylie Jenner, American television and social media personality, entrepreneur, and model, as an example. Rumors lately have been circulating throughout social media in an attempt to confirm whether or not twenty-year-old Kylie Jenner is now pregnant with rapper Travis Scott. As of now, nothing has been confirmed yet, but hints and rumors have been consistently retweeted, posted, and written about. As far as we admiring-from-a-distance fans are concerned, we only know as much as we see on the Internet. We can only read so many tweets and so many articles on Snapchat, but we won’t know if she’s really pregnant until we finally hear the words from her own mouth. The strong potential for receiving wrong information is indicative of the fragility of information cascades in that we base our strong beliefs that she is pregnant on the combination of all the social media rumors and our lack of private information. Our lack of private information as a result of our being extremely weakly connected to Kylie will allow us to believe anything because we have no other information to contradict the received information. Recently, however, it has been noted that Kim Kardashian, sister of Kylie Jenner, has accidentally spilled some potential information to the media indicating that she feels very disapproving of Kylie’s pregnancy. Does this mean she is pregnant?? Because of Kim’s strong familial connection with Kylie, our belief that Kylie is pregnant can be further substantiated. If we were to receive any contradictory information, though, then our initial belief that she is pregnant may falter a little. And again, because of the lack of confirmation from Kylie, our cascade of information can be easily overturned by the infusion of new information from her.
Social ties, along with other factors, play a large role in the dissemination of information, as well as its acceptance or rejection. Because of these factors, information cascades, which form networks or structures where you can copy the decisions of others, can easily occur, as well as unfortunately lead to wrong outcomes. Therefore, while rumors rumors are no fun unless you tell everyone, sometimes it’s best not to believe everything you hear. Nobody likes a big mouth!
https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM14/paper/viewFile/8122/8110
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/052715/guide-understanding-information-cascades.asp