Fake News
Let us first start with the definition of an information cascade: An Information cascade is a situation where each person makes a decision/choice based on the observations or choices of others while ignoring his own personal information. Essentially, it results in ignoring the result you received or belief you have (it may be different, or it may be the same) and going along with the observations and choices of other people if there seems to be a consensus. An information generally starts when 2 people in the beginning of the cascade have the same belief or receive the same result and the third person (even if his/her result is different) goes along with it because the first two people must be right…and then so on with the third, fourth, and fifth people who follow.
This article discusses how misinformation spreads on the internet and social media, specifically talking about the social media platform WeChat. WeChat is a Chinese social media application made more specifically for Chinese immigrants in the United States. Its user base nearly triples Snapchat and has nearly half that of Facebook (just to give an idea of how large this application is for those who have not heard of it before). The article dives immediately in to the 2016 election and the use of the application for first generation Chinese pro-Trump supporters. The issue is that fake news is quickly spread around through the application via friends and acquaintances; if the fake news is removed, then it is essentially a form of censorship…it cannot be done. Because these are first generation Chinese immigrants who may not know better, the fake news spreads swiftly due to the information cascade model: one friend shares the post, and then all of his followers see the post and continue to share. This relates to our class discussion about the information cascade model in which the first two people may receive the wrong information and not know any better than to share the data. The third person who sees the wrong information may believe otherwise, however the fact that two people prior to him already shared the information will entice him to do the same and so on. This is the issue with misinformation: it can quickly spread and stopping it can be seen as a form of censorship. This begs the question, what can we do to stop the information cascade of “fake news”?
https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/wechat-misinformation-china.php