Information Cascade Caused by Social Media: Good or Bad?
As quick, trendy, and eye-catching media outlets such as Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook are now the norm among millennials, these platforms are starting to shift how people gather, view, and rely on information. This entails a dramatic change in advertising, terror response, and many more. Through how branded contents are produced and how social media affected the aftermath of terrorism attacks, we can see the positives and negatives of information cascade caused by new social media platforms.
Information Cascade means that when a person, usually connected by networks of crowds, sees decisions or actions made by another group, he or she is likely to follow the decisions or actions of what he observes. Notice that we are dealing with people, not institutions, companies or governments. The current social media are connected with real individuals with character. Therefore, what relatable people share on these popular platforms are likely to cause an impact that is large enough to start information cascades. According to an article by Tom Bannister, amateurs film creators such as YouTube stars or even just regular people without professional experiences may be better to sway crowds for companies rather than the traditional method using professional advertisers or advertising firms to promote a company’s product. These trends can be exemplified by GoPro’s massive and rapid success. Since GoPro enables virtually anyone to create stunning videos, it has been a product that many vernacular people use to go viral on YouTube or Facebook. This in turn makes them successful stars along with GoPro’s growth as a company. It relied on information cascade by the people. In addition, the Ice Bucket Challenge was able to succeed because the viral campaign was created by people and friends, not some health organization. People speak better to people.
However, because of tremendous power that information cascade has, it has caused dangerous confusion in times of serious disasters like the Paris Terror Attack last year. A photoshoped image of a man holding a bomb vest and the Quran when it was actually an iPad posted on social media went viral and the man was wrongfully accused. Rumors of Uber charging surge prices during the Paris attack when they did not tainted their reputation and affected transportation decisions. Although #paryforparis was a huge inspiration shared by millions of users due to information cascade, these problems could have been detrimental in handling the situation.
https://www.engadget.com/2015/11/19/paris-and-the-trail-of-social-media-misinformation/
https://thevideoink.com/is-branded-content-best-produced-by-amateurs-827b6ce752f3#.2wk9vpjcy