Role of information cascade in social media and politics
An information cascade occurs when people make decisions after watching the actions and decision of earlier ones. This leads people to rely on the possibly misleading information, provided by majority. For example, you tend to listen to the songs in the top list, which most of other people listened to, rather than searching for new songs. Therefore, the more people you see doing something, the more likely you are to do it. This article explains the significant role of information cascade in social media and further politics.
In the early November 2017, there was the Senate Intelligence Hearing on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The executives of three main technological companies – Facebook, Twitter, and Google – had to testify how they filter out fake news while granting the freedom of speech to their users. This article particularly points out the inconsistency of Facebook’s mission statement: “… give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.” Actually, Facebook’s engineers manage people’s newsfeed so that voters tend to see things they like so that they will stay longer. For example, when a voter is likely a Democrat, it will show posts by their friends who are also likely a Democrat and repress those who are not. In sum, this algorithm only shows views that users are likely to agree with and filter out the opposed views and new information. This eventually leads to information cascade because users are likely to only rely on the information on newsfeed, which is similar to theirs. This has inflamed crashes and divisions in politics as people are only willing to support their own views while blocking out the different opinions.
Analysis —Senate Intelligence Hearing On Fake News, Free Speech And Russia