Information Cascades Following the Mueller Report
Sources:
Copy of the report: https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf
On April 18, 2019, a redacted version of the entire Mueller Report was released. This report details the findings and conclusions drawn by special counsel Robert Mueller following his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Despite being an important and influential report in regards to the legality of President Donald Trump’s actions while holding the highest office in the United States government, the over 400-page document may not be the most accessible to the average American for reasons of length and political/legal jargon. Furthermore, the redactions scattered throughout the publicly available version affects the meaning and coherence of various sentences. These barriers dissuade many people within the general populace from reading the report for themselves and forming their own nuanced opinions; instead, many people have based their own opinions on Mueller’s findings after reading or hearing an interpretation of the document from an outside source, whether it be from news outlets, politicians, or social media.
Days before the Mueller Report was disseminated, Attorney General William Barr held a news conference and released a four-page summary regarding the special counsel’s investigations, stating that there was “no collusion” between any American and the Russian government to sway the election in Trump’s favor. However, many democratic politicians voiced concern over Barr’s statements, claiming that he was attempting to influence public perceptions of Mueller’s report before anything was officially released. Congress then received a less-redacted version of the report, and many politicians spoke with media outlets or took to social media to either denounce the president’s obstruction of justice offenses as outlined in the report, or to celebrate the “exoneration” that the report concluded.
The timeline of and comments regarding the Mueller Report are very similar to that of information cascades. Since many people have not read the investigation’s findings for themselves, they rely on other people’s signals to make a guess about what the report actually contains. This situation is certainly not ideal, as the signals that people see from others who have read the report vary widely depending on which media outlets they consume and which networks they are engulfed in. Americans tend to consume media that aligns with their own beliefs, and so are only likely to see good or bad signals—good signals from Republicans who believe that the report clears Trump from any accusations of collusion, and bad signals from Democrats who believe that the crimes outlined in the report are impeachable offenses that the president must be held accountable for. If people get their political information from others who share their political beliefs, then they are most likely to fall into the cascade that their group chooses, regardless of what opinions they would actually form had they read the document for themselves.