The Bill Cosby Trial and Information Cascades
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/bill-cosby-trial-complete-timeline-happened-2004/story?id=47799458
This article gives a detailed outline of the major events throughout the Bill Cosby trial starting from 2004 to 2017. During this time several serious developments arose, but the ones that really caught my eye were the cases of women who revealed the most intimate parts of their lives. Many women who came forward had stated that seeing other women come forward had given them the courage to speak up about their own experiences. Since the first claim in 2005, more than 50 women have accused Bill Cosby of sexual misconduct.
This goes hand in hand with what we learned about information cascades. We can look at all the women who accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault as a well connected network. In this network each person has the choice between two behaviors, behavior A which is to come forward, or behavior B which is to not come forward. After the first person changed their behavior from B to A in 2005, this led to a very public criminal investigation which then prompted another woman, Tamara Green, to come forward. After this, about 13 more women came forward and gave statements to support the case.
We may view the first 15 women as a strong cluster within this network and the remaining women as another cluster whose density was greater than 1-q. This is because the other set of women did not come forward until 8 years after the initial cascade. In fact, a joke made by comedian Hannibal Buress who, in essence, lowered the threshold for the remaining women in the network. After his joke went viral, fresh accusations were prompted which led to another information cascade.