Urban legends; a testament to cascades
We have all heard them–we have all told them–but do we base our renditions of “tall tales” in actual science? In 2014, scientists Marco Guerini and Carlo Strapparava published a research paper titled “Credible or Incredible? Dissecting Urban Legends,” which investigates the commonalities between tales in 0rder to answer why some become immensely popular, and others […]
Information Cascades in Wikipedia Editor Discussions
Source: http://nitens.org/docs/qteso10.pdf This article looks into the dynamics of Wikipedia editor discussions: it investigates “Article for Deletion” (AfD) discussions where editors discuss and vote on what to do with an article suggested for deletion (each editor can vote to Keep, Delete, Redirect or Merge the article.) From each AfD, we thus have access to a sequential list of editors’ […]
Facebook and Fake News
Articles referenced: http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/17/495827410/from-hate-speech-to-fake-news-the-content-crisis-facing-mark-zuckerberg (general discussion) http://www.journalism.org/2016/05/26/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-2016/ (44% world population statistic) Following the 2016 Presidential Election, there has been much debate and media scrutiny over the inaccuracy of news and popularity of fake news websites. Facebook in particular has taken a lot of flak for the low quality of the articles shared on its various news […]
Pokémon Go- Spread and Decline of a Viral Phenomenon
This summer a mobile augmented reality (AR) game called Pokémon Go exploded into popularity in early July. With almost no advertising done by the companies that made the game, the game became the most downloaded mobile app ever in its first few days. According to SurveyMonkey Intelligence, the game peaked at around 40 million weekly […]
Evolution of the Prisoner’s Dilemma
Source: https://news.upenn.edu/news/penn-team-s-game-theory-analysis-shows-how-evolution-favors-cooperation-s-collapse This article discusses what happens to a populations choices to the Prisoner’s Dilemma over the course of many repeated runs. To recap, if both cooperate, they both receive a payoff, if one defects, the receive all the payoff, and if both defect, the get a payoff lower than if they had cooperated. In this […]
Fake News on Facebook and The Power of FiB
Recently there has been talk from Facebook’s millions of users about fake news circulating on its newsfeed. Stories revolving around the deaths of famous celebrities such as Clint Eastwood or Jaden Smith as well as the typical Matt Damon Explains Why He’s Moving to Ithaca, New York are not just outrageous but can be downright annoying for […]
Social Networks Monopoly
Source Article: http://www.barrons.com/articles/rich-get-richer-as-google-and-facebook-dominate-web-ads-1443851396 This article discusses the continued dominance of two major social networks– Google and Facebook as they are the perfect exhibition of the “Rich gets richer” rule and the cascading behavior in networks. It claims that Google and Facebook will continue to lead this internet competition and it has become a golden age for […]
Information and Darknet Blackmarkets
The darknet describes a part of the internet that can only be accessed with specific software. Typically, this software is Tor, a tool most notable for making tracing network traffic and identifying users in the darknet extremely difficult. Thus Tor has found great success in those who seek higher levels of privacy and anonymity, among […]
WeChat: Dominant in China, but Not Abroad
A few months ago, The Economist published an article titled WeChat’s world: China’s WeChat shows the way to social media’s future. WeChat is a messaging app that is extremely popular in China but not other parts of the world; in this article, the author argued that it represents the future of social media in that […]
Information Cascade in the Wake of a Tragedy
In the wake of a tragedy, everyone scrambles to learn more about what happened. The story is new, and exciting, and people feel more comfortable when they know more. This happens on any scale, from people crowding around a fight in high school to a tsunami that affects many different countries. Media rushes to get […]
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