Information Cascades and their Effect on Covid-19 Misinformation
An information cascade results from the strong influence of people upon each other. Although some have helpful, private information, there is an extent that is reached at which this information will be disregarded in order to “follow the crowd.” This standard holds true on social media, a recent example being the spread of misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic. According to Covid or not Covid? Topic Shift in Information Cascades on Twitter, social medias “power to shape public opinion can provoke serious societal issues such as misinformation,” and “words or actions by a public figure generate 69% of misinformation in discussions with ordinary users.” During the pandemic and presidency of Donald Trump, this became extremely evident, as the president’s fanatic use of Twitter in order to post fallacies about the pandemic “led to the mutability of information” due to the “repetitions of rumors about conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Like our description of an information cascade in class, the extremely strong influence of the president on others combined with the already strong influence of non-political figures upon each other led to the disregarding of private, more truthful information in regards to the pandemic. Despite CDC resources and research, Donald Trump’s word led to an outpour of misinformation within society; this misinformation had, and still has, a deadly impact, as many are still choosing not to get the vaccine due to misinformation and are dying of Covid-19 as a result. Ultimately, “to reveal crucial issues about Covid-19 that are of importance for lay people we need to understand topic shifts occurring within information cascades about the pandemic.”
https://aclanthology.org/2020.rdsm-1.3.pdf