Spread of Disinformation: Information Cascades
Junk news has been an increasingly prevalent strategy in information warfare as information becomes easier and easier to disseminate. Illegitimate news sites or fake social media accounts are used to spread “misinformation, disinformation, and misleading narratives.” For example, recently an article was published on a seemingly legitimate news site about how China has been using artificial intelligence to develop micro-drones concealed as bugs in order to deliver poison to members of congress and the president. While to many, this article clearly seems fake, to others, this fake information is taken as face value and further spread around the internet. Furthermore, some distribution services further propagate the spread of misinformation by offering to disseminate a clients press release news to multiple online resources. For example, after the Chinese AI plot was published on a distributor’s site, the press release appeared on both junk news and legitimate news sites, presented as political news. Some distributors of misinformation even claim to reviews press releases to ensure that they are accurate before publishing, further encouraging readers to believe in the misinformation being spread.
This article relates to the concept of information cascades. The distributor of the Chinese AI plot press release starts the information cascade by making the article pop up on multiple fake and legitimate news sites. After readers see the headline, they may believe in the statements in the article due to the fact that the article is published on “news” sites. As readers see the press release, some of them may share it, further propagating the misinformation and allowing a information cascade to start as more and more people see and believe the lies in the article. Even those who may have not initially believed in the article may start to change their mind as they see more and more people taking the article at face value, further reinforcing the false information cascade.
Killer robo-bees show how the sting of disinformation can spread