Hub/Authority Scores, Information Cascades, and Trump’s claims of fake ballots
Fox News Meets Trump’s Fraud Claims With Skepticism
This article from The New York Times discusses Trump’s recent claims of a fraudulent election, how Fox News has reacted, and the response from many Trump supporters regarding fake ballots and an unjust election. As the article points out, Trump and Fox, specifically “Fox & Friends” have had a standing relationship for many years where they speak highly of each other and refer to each other whenever possible. Furthermore, this article reports how one Trump supporter and former attorney general, Pam Bondi, mentioned “fake ballots” while on Fox & Friends recently. Similar comments have been made by Trump himself, his supporters in the public eye, and everyday people who voted for him. According to this article, the interviewer goes on to ask Ms. Bondi how she knew about these fake ballots, and she responds that she just knew they exist. Another noteworthy point from this article is when Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity break from their normal routine of “endorsing” Trump and instead refrained from reinforcing Trump’s claims of a fraudulent election.
The content of this article first relates to our in-class discussion of hub and authority scores as well as page rank. Authority scores are based on the level of that webpage’s endorsement by other pages. Hub scores are determined based on the quality of web pages that this webpage endorses. These scores tell a webpage-user the quality of the webpage. Page rank then uses these scores to determine which web pages to show to users first and how all the webpages should be displayed on a search results page. When looking at page rank scores, one can determine which web pages or sources are valid and valuable for others, and which are not.
These concepts (authority scores, hub scores, and page rank) relate to the aforementioned article regarding Trump’s relationship with Fox and Friends in the past compared to their current relationship during his claims of election fraud. Prior to the events outlined in this article, Trump and Fox increased each other’s hub and authority scores by endorsing one another. Also, anytime another news source endorsed Trump or Fox News, the other’s score increased as well. As hub and authority scores grow to show the quality of a source, a source’s page rank is increased. Thus when Fox and Trump endorse each other and raise each others’ scores, they are growing their page ranks as well and making themselves more prominent in search results and reputability. Now that Fox has stopped endorsing Trump during his fake ballot claims, Trump’s score and page rank is going down because a reputable source is no longer endorsing him. This further connects to the topic of fake news: if a source has no other sources pointing to it or endorsing it, it is likely fake news. This is the case for Trump now because he doesn’t have reputable sources pointing to him, so his relevance and reputability in search results (and in general) has decreased.
Furthermore, the content in this article can also be connected to information cascades in relation to how fake news spreads and why people believe fake information to be true. As we have discussed in class, information cascades rely on the conditions that we make decisions sequentially, that everyone has private information, and that people observe what others do rather than what they know. These information cascaded occur when people are unsure about a decision so they use what other people do in order to make their decision. That is, they will follow what others do and observe others’ decisions rather than following their own signals and rational reasoning. The benefits of information cascades are copying others who have more information than you do and learning from others. The primary issues with an information cascade is we can easily get stuck in a bad cascade. In this way, an information cascade is not wise (as in the wisdom of the crowd) because people do not make decisions independently and merely follow what others have done.
The concept of information cascades also relates to the themes of this article. When Ms. Bondi mentions that she just knew that fake ballots existed because of word of mouth and what other Trump supporters were saying, she was part of an information cascade. Rather than use her own signal (which may or may not have been that fake ballots existed), she was just following what others were saying (that fake ballots existed) and ignoring her own reasoning. This is an issue because many people watch Fox and will join the information cascade along with Ms. Bondi. Especially if they have heard that fake ballots exist multiple times from many people (such that the apparent presence of fake ballots is greater than the absence of fake ballots), they will follow what others are thinking, join the information cascade, and make their decisions based off of others’ decisions. Thus the danger of information cascades are demonstrated in this article because people are making decisions off of what other people say. If we haven’t heard anything about the election and then the first two people we hear speaking about it mention that there are fake ballots at play, we are unlikely to go against the grain and use our own reasoning to decide if fake ballots exist or not; we will join the information cascade and follow what everyone else is saying.