Media and Information Cascades
Article: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology-disrupted-the-truth
Information, with the aid of modern technology, spreads fast. An author of an article entitled “How technology disrupted the truth”, argues that ‘fact’ has become more of a subjective term in recent years. She starts off by giving the example of ‘piggate’, a minor scandal in the UK that alleged that former prime minister David Cameron had engaged in inappropriate behavior with the head of a dead pig. She notes that only after a day of spreading online, the coauthor of the biography admitted that she had no proof for her scandalous claim, adding “We don’t say whether we believe it to be true” and “It is up to other people to decide whether they give it any credibility or not”. The author of this article continues by bringing up how Brexit was caused in part by propaganda that was clearly peddling false stories that only after they had been heavily circulated were quietly corrected. She concludes by saying that rumors such as these sometimes spread “out of panic, sometimes out of malice… whatever the motive, falsehoods and facts now spread the same way, through an information cascade”. People will forward what others forward to them, even if it isn’t entirely true, because new information is generally believed. Over time, this cycle leads to a cascade.
This is a perfect example of how a cascade can play a negative role in information distribution. In class, it was discussed how a belief with a few initial adopters can lead to a large portion of a population adopting the belief as well. This is exactly what the article, especially because of loosening journalistic standards, where fact is presented on equal footing with rumor. Considering the current election as an example, with Facebook in particular, fake news had a large role. Seeing as how fake news has even less fact checking before it is distributed thoroughly as compared to the article’s examples, some claims could be spread widely throughout certain sectors of the population before being proven wrong. This process is based off the cascade, where people have weak signals about a belief to begin with, and an already strong belief that the ‘mainstream media’ was lying, adoption can occur very quickly.