Social Contagion of False Memories
We know fake news makes a significant impact on how we perceive the world, but we often implicitly understand its effect to be short term or a residual artifact of a sensationalized topic of discussion.
This article in conversation with Roddy Roediger, famed psychologist, makes the case of how fake news and consequent information cascades contribute to collective false memories and perceptions of historical events, such as Trump stating that Ted Cruz’s father took part in JFK’s assassination. The article fleshes out the level of susceptibility that people have if the information comes from a reputable source. Even if they themselves were present for the event, if someone they hold to be more knowledgeable than themselves endorses a perception of the event that aligns implicitly with what they agree, even if it is false, the person will adopt that view. An example provided in the article is of someone older hearing a recollection of an event from someone younger. The older person assumes that the younger person has better memory and therefore remembered the event more accurately.
This phenomenon described in the article of directed relationships/hierarchy within networks, and information cascades that once begin are so hard to stop due to the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ intuition is also apt at describing the Mandela effect. Just like the fake news outlined in the article, once something not very well ingrained, or completely unfamiliar to a user, is presented to them with support from other users (say 8k retweets) it often surplants their current existing account or embeds a false idea all together of the event. Such is most likely the perceived collective memory of Nelson Mandela’s supposed death in prison. Many people who were familiar with Mandela, had heard of the injustice being done to him, but not had heard any news otherwise, when presented with the misinformation of his death adopted it into their memories as reality and the information cascade sustained itself to a globally accepted account. However, few, if any people in South America held such beliefs, as they were not on the peripheries of the issue/ social network concerned with him like South Africans were.
In conclusion, information cascades are used in the article to show the dark consequences of mass distributed inaccurate information within networks. And how this information becomes attached to our memories and more vivid with each contact, a phenomenon that the nature of information cascades further solidifies.
Source:
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/3/22/14960792/false-memory-psychology
Mandela Effect:
https://www.quora.com/Is-the-Mandela-effect-real-and-what-is-going-on