Twitter and Information Cascade
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/business/media/how-fake-news-spreads.html
Information cascade exist when people are making decisions based on other people’s decision, which they think is right, instead of using the information that they have. Theoretically, when the threshold for Information Cascade is reached, the other players, later on, would follow the trend no matter what information themselves get.
In the case of Twitter, people’s view on an issue can change depending on their friends’ reaction. They might not believe in the news in the first place, but after they see their friends’ post with that tag or related to that issue, people are more likely to believe in the news. What’s more, when reading the twitters, people have an underlying assumption that—this news is true. Although the verification is as easy as a phone call, the majority of the people would not do it. This is especially true when they see the news is posted by reputable sources. While they are forwarding the news to rest of their network, the effectiveness expended. The speed of expanding would increase when the time goes on as more people are able to get access to the information.
For the example, one Twitter user posted a picture of a group of buses he saw near his home mentioning that they were carrying anti-trump protesters. He did not see the protester came out of the bus. All he knew is through is research, there was no large conference nearby and he read some news about local protesters. So he assumed this is the true case. For the people forwarding his message, although they all they see are several photos and they did not have other extra information, they assume this is right. This scenario was even worse when several large websites posted on this.
It is great that we are now at digital age and can get access to more information. But when we see news online, we should double check on the source of the information and think logically to ensure that we do not fall into an information cascade.