Fake News: The role of information cascades in the latest American Election
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/16/google-ban-foreign-governments-posting-online-election-adverts/
If anyone is familiar with the controversy that surrounded and continues to associate itself with results the latest American presidential election, they are sure to also be familiar with the phenomena of Fake News. Over the course of the presidential race, a wide range of media outlets were filled with articles and doctored images intended to misinform the American public so as to bear influence on the eventual outcome of the election. The article of discussion, found on the website of the British news publication, The Telegraph,” discusses the reaction of the Google organization to Russia’s apparent role in disseminating pieces of such “Fake News” by running advertisements created with the objective of manipulating the information that American voters would use to decide which candidate they would vote for so as to sway the outcome of the Election according to the preference of the Eastern nation. The article explains that Google has appealed to the American lawmakers to ban foreign governments from making use of advertisements relating to American elections.
The article essentially describes a manner by which Google would hope to combat the effect of information cascades that disperse false information to the American public. The concept of an information cascade, as discussed in the Networks course material, is that although an item of information or data may not initially bear great influence on decisions made by a larger group of individuals, as members of the larger group begin to make decisions in some sequence, each person may be influenced by the decisions made by the preceding constituents of the group. As more and more individuals begin to be influenced by the decisions of those before them, such may act to encourage these discussion makers to mimic the decisions of their predecessors in the sequence. These individuals would make their decisions not only based on information that they themselves know, but also based upon the decisions of the earlier individuals in the sequence, even though they would be unaware of the information that these earlier individuals themselves had. Such a process can lead to individuals making irrational decisions, regardless of the information that they themselves have personally. The “fake news” that, as the article describes, Google and Facebook had accredited to Russia, would have affected the election by swaying a group of individuals to act according to the false information, and thus, as in an information cascade, cause individuals after them to follow suit and make decisions based off of those who were initially influenced. Especially when considering the larger-than-ever role of media outlets and services in informing the public, given the great importance internet and modern technology in today’s world, it is understandable how this “Fake News” could bear such an effect on the American political landscape.
Google’s proposition, as explained in the article, is to prevent information cascades based on false information from occurring by eliminating the ability of Foreign nations from ever disseminating this “Fake News” in the first place. In evaluation of a solution to the problem such, one can infer that such a strategy would be effective given it eliminates the agent that would cause any individual to decide who to vote for based on misinformation. Hence, one can claim that Google’s proposed strategy would be effective if implemented correctly; the difficulty lies in actually preventing these foreign parties from exposing Americans to such “Fake News”.