Information Cascades in Online Echo Chambers
As taught in class, an information cascade occurs when a small number of people within a network make the same decisions based off of previous people’s decisions that may or may not be accurate, but that series of same decisions causes the rest of the people to make the decide the same. In regards to the recent election, there has been a lot of discussion around the topic of online echo chambers, especially on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. An echo chamber describes the idea that people’s networks are mostly made up of people who share very similar interests and opinions. As such, these people tend to share the same type of posts on social media that express similar messages.
Many people were shocked by the election results this year, especially those who aligned themselves with the democratic party. However, some speculate that this surprise was due to ignorance and bubbles of information resulting for echo chambers online. This relates heavily to information cascades because once a user sees many of his/her friends saying the same things about a presidential candidate, they are heavily compelled to believe and express the same. As a result, these shared messages and perspectives affect other users within the network just starting to learn about the election, thus affecting which side they choose to support.
There are certainly multiple reasons that led to the election results, but information cascades due to information bubbles or echo chambers can definitely be argued to be a part of the cause. Even Facebook is being attacked for the algorithms they use to determine what shows up on newfeeds. Many people are arguing that they should have put in more effort to remove false information that helped misleadingly sway users one direction or the other. It is all still up to debate but there is certainly appropriate to be speculating future changes in the way social media content is monitored and shared.
Sources:
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/donald-trump-president-social-media-echo-chamber-hypernormalisation-adam-curtis-protests-blame-a7409481.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/how-to-lose-an-election-101-build-yourself-an-echo_us_582354f9e4b0334571e0a44e
http://mashable.com/2016/11/13/mark-zuckerberg-election-fake-news/#F05EqYNBpiqZ