Cascades Against Sexual Harassment
https://www.ft.com/content/6973e6d6-d047-11e7-9dbb-291a884dd8c6
When the United States elected a misogynist as their President, the general public feared for the worse. Prepared for an era of backwards legislation no one could have predicted the movements to follow. In this article, the author attributes the sudden influx of sexual harassment scandals to the election of Trump and digital information cascades. Although the occurrence of sexual harassment has not changed in any way, with the availability of modern technology and the acceptance of Trump as a representation of the majority of Americans it has suddenly become easy and acceptable for women to speak up. “Once powerless victims have a megaphone” that is the internet to find each other and band together.
In the past when one separate and isolated incident occurs, it can very easily be buried or filtered. However now when someone makes a post on social media, it can almost instantaneously reach millions. This happens through information cascades, which we discussed in class, where one friend shares a post and now suddenly all of their friends can now see something that was not previously available to them. These information cascades not only help share stories, but they also connect victims to help them bring their harassers to justice. By analyzing these cascades and connecting information from them more and more sexual predators are being brought to the light and eventually these cascades can be used as evidence in court.