A Fake Quotation Information Cascade
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/anatomy-of-a-fake-quotation/238257/
A few months ago, a Martin Luther King, Jr. quote made its way onto various blogs, Twitter feeds and Facebook statuses: “ ‘I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.’ – Martin Luther King, Jr.” This quote was posted regarding the death of Osama bin Laden, back in May. The quotation seems appropriate, and truly philanthropic – something one could expect that MLK would have said. The problem is that this is not his quote, nor the quote of any famous figure from history. Jessica Dovey, a Facebook user and English teacher in Japan, attached her statement as a pretext to a real MLK quote, in this manner:
I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” MLK Jr.
Ms. Dovey’s post gained popularity in the short time after news reports of Osama bin Laden’s death. In subsequent reposts of Ms. Dovey’s post, some users had mistakenly included the pretext statement in the MLK quote. Also, because of Twitter’s 140-character post limit, some users chose to use the more pertinent opening of the post, but ignorantly attached Martin Luther King’s name to the quotation. After continued spread through the internet, many blog, Facebook and Twitter users began to see this quote in the misquoted form.
This incident is a perfect example of information cascade leading to a nearly unanimous acceptance of false information. Because of the continuation of a false statement by various people, people who observed their quotations in the misquoted form would override their own private signal (in this case, that would be their previous knowledge of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his quotes). To analyze this idea more thoroughly through the networks approach, each successive person along the sequence of the information cascade should be considered in order.
It is important to note that the information cascade in this situation has a number of differences from the marbles in a jar scenario given in the networks textbook. First, if we consider a person’s internet post equivalent to the marble scenario’s public “decision”, internet users further down the information cascade do not have access to the decisions, or posts, of previous posters not immediately before them in the cascade. In other words, internet users will be able to see the set of user’s posts affecting their own post, but not necessarily the posts of internet users that affected that previous set of user’s posts. Second, the MLK quotation cascade has an multiplicative effect: each successive level of internet users making posts about the quote will increase in number. Third, people along the information cascade can make mistakes, even when they come to a decision on what to post.
The creator of the original blog post, Jessica Dovey, had full knowledge of what was the exact quote by MLK was, and therefore made a correct blog post purely on the information she knew. The next person that read Ms. Dovey’s quote and wanted to re-post it would understand that the quote is based on personal information, and therefore truthful. In addition, that person’s knowledge (personal signal) would either be less than or equal to Ms. Dovey’s signal, because her quote is maximally accurate. If the person agreed with Ms. Dovey’s representation of the quote, then he or she would repost the quote as was posted before. If the person disagreed, then he or she would decide to include Ms. Dovey’s pretext into the MLK quote.
The third internet user would see Ms Dovey and the second poster’s post, and have essentially three independent signals (one her own) at her disposal. If the two posts the third user reads are not matching, then she will post the quote based on her own personal signal. If the second user posted a quote matching Ms. Dovey, then regardless of her own personal signal, she will post a quote matching that of the previous two. If this were the marble scenario, then an information cascade would have started; but this does not apply. Subsequent users would not necessarily have access to all of the previous users’ posts, including the essential original post by Ms. Dovey. Also, because any user along the path of the reposts could make an error by removing the quotation marks or placing them incorrectly, this would affect the decisions, directly or indirectly, of all the users that see his post.
The scenario described would seem to produce a random spread of accurate and inaccurate posts; however through the course of the information cascade, the majority of reposts became inaccurate. What factors then, drive the cascade to inaccuracy? One possibility is that because subsequent internet users do not have access to the whole chain of reposts, the accuracy value of the reposts they do see is much lower. Therefore, users would value their own knowledge much more than the knowledge of previous posters, and choose to alter the post in a more seemingly natural manner, by including Ms. Dovey’s pretext sentence into the MLK quote. Another possibility is that people will choose to repost in a way that is most convenient (shorter, Twitter-sized posts) and most dramatic (attaching MLK’s name inappropriately for added sentimental value), thereby maximizing the social gratification they can receive by posting it. Why post a paragraph-long quote that people may not bother to finish reading, when you can just quote a short, sweet statement that few of your friends will actually recognize?