Information Cascades and the Spreading of Misinformation
Perhaps one of the most applicable course topics is that of information cascades. It is a phenomenon that is easily visible in everyday life and has very big implications. Albeit a somewhat silly example, the attached article is a good example of what happens when information cascades propagate incorrect information. In short, the article discusses how a group of friends and a Justin Bieber look-alike staged a photo of the look-alike eating a burrito from the side. This photo was then published under the pretense of it being an actual photo of Justin Bieber eating a burrito “incorrectly”. Most interestingly, the video embedded in the article documents how the photo propagated around various news sites and eventually became featured in some of the most popular and well respected news sites in the US. The cascade shows an interesting development where the adoption of the story first depended on how many other sources adopted it, but then changed to depend on the prominence of those sources that adopted it. In other words, we saw that a site would first adopt a story if sufficient “neighboring” sites (where neighboring just refers to sites that this site is aware of) adopted it. Towards the latter half of the story’s propagation, it seemed that nearly all relevant sites would adopt the story after seeing that certain respected sites had also adopted it.
Again, despite the silliness of the example, it is useful in the sense that it illustrates how misinformation can just as easily spread in an information cascade. While, in the burrito story, there were some sites/people arguing against the validity of the photo, the vast majority of news providers and consumers believed the story and ran with it. Given how easily this joke story spread, one may wonder if more important information can spread just as easily. For instance, suppose that a story about North Korea planning a nuclear strike against the US spread all the way up to the highest levels of government. This could easily cause a war between the two countries. Although one would expect that such a story would be much more rigorously checked and verified, the ease with which the burrito story propagated does make one question how easily a story with greater magnitude could be propagated.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/29/18037402/justin-bieber-burrito-yes-theory-prank-youtube