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Information Cascades: How Russians Election Meddling Changed A Nation

An information cascade is defined as when there is a rational reason for an someone to copy the decision of another, even though their own information purports that they should make another decision. This happens sequentially, when later people make decisions based on information assumed from earlier peoples’ decisions. A cascade is created when people give up their own information and instead follow the inferences based on earlier people’s decisions.

Fiegerman, in his article titled “Russian meddling on Facebook: learned this week” demonstrates how Russian entities utilized “echo-chambers” to create an information cascade within specific demographics of people. For clarity, an echo-chamber is defined as a closed system of communication where views are reinforced or amplified. Although every person utilizing Facebook has at least some method of connection with every other, there are communities and groups that are more closed off than others. For the purpose of this information cascade example, these communities function as circular sequential decision makers as per the definition of an echo-chamber and information cascade.

During the 2016 election, Russian entities created false posts within these communities pushing far-right beliefs in increasing levels of severity. These posts then accumulated likes by many of the members within the community. The Russian entities would then post again with an even more extreme statement and the process would continue. This functions as an information cascade on two levels. First, users make a “decision” to like the far-right post thus demonstrating the first step of the cascade where they are making a decicsion based off information. Next, other users view the likes (the prior decisions made), and they then make an inference based on those likes. Oftentimes, this influences them subsequently like the same post. Second, users view posts as decisions within themselves. Therefore, if there is a significant number of posts, then people will make inferences based on those posts, creating a cascade. The efficacy of this cascade was demonstrated in how many far-right groups increased in the zealousness during the 2016 campaigning season as well as the overall increase in membership of these groups.

https://money.cnn.com/2017/11/02/technology/business/facebook-russia-meddling/index.html

 

 

 

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