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Rumors and Information Cascades

If you are walking on a street and see someone is standing there and looking up to the sky, you might think that he is trying to let his neck relax for a while and you might pass by him without paying any attention to that stranger. However, if there are five people looking up to the sky at the same time, you might be curious about what has happened in the sky and join them. There are more and more people staring at the sky on that street until the first person looking at the sky explains that he was just trying to stretch himself. This is an example of people choosing to believe others’ choices although it might be an incorrect choice. And this is exactly how rumors start to spread out.

From the lecture, it only needs two people to start an information cascade which means that it only needs two people to lie to start a rumor. It is so easy for people to make up a story and spread it in this information world. We read others’ stories online every day but it’s much more difficult for us to know the truth. It’s just like what we discussed in the lecture: we don’t know what do others see but we are still following their decisions.

So is there any possibility that we can stop the spreading of the rumors? Yes, there is. If one person tries to think about the rumor deeply and decide that he/she doesn’t want to believe it, he/she can be the one that changes the direction of the information cascade. Just like the little girl in the story “The emperor’s new clothes” who said that the emperor was actually wearing nothing, if the person who doesn’t believe in the rumor can shout out his thoughts, he/she might influence more and more people and the cascade will turn to the opposite direction. So, the rumors might be more difficult to spread out if people share the information they see truthfully or talk about their real thoughts.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378720617309059

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