Consequences of Information Cascades in Social Media
This Video Will Make You Angry – YouTube
In this video, the author CPG Grey (Grey) talks about the nature of information spreading and why some forms of information spread more quickly and why. He particularly sites emotional responses as the most affective methods, anger being the most potent. Any person who has a more than moderate social media presence would generally agree, but what I want to focus on is the information cascades that occur on the internet because of the nature of inflammatory information. The most apparent example of this scenario is the spread of misinformation. All it takes is for one outlandish, but not totally unbelievable, remark to catch someone’s eye, who then spreads it reflexively, with or without research and adequate explanation of the original post, hence causing others to see it, who will also abide by the signs given by the previous poster. This behavior explains how ‘distrust in medical professionals given their unethical and criminal practices in the 1950s’, turns into, ‘all vaccines are meant to sterilize the unfit members of American society’ or something to that affect. (I don’t know if that’s a real claim, I just made something random up, please don’t flame me) The smallest tweaks in information over a large cascade of people trusting the preconceived notions they have about someone else’s intentions in sharing information can cause a massive change in the original story. Albeit a slightly different cascade than the one’s we deal with, the fundamental principle still aligns: The people caught in the cascade are making a decision/statement/conclusion based on information that really never existed in the first place.
Another aspect Grey provides is the networks that are formed between groups that represent different sides of a given argument. While you’d think most groups would argue across groups about why they’re right and the other is wrong, most of the time spent is arguing is about the specifics of their sides argument or how awful the opposing side is. In the diagram Grey illustrates, each side of the argument has many directed edges amongst their own group, but only a few have edges connecting the two groups, forming local bridges. This portrays how little the opposing sides of an argument interact compared to how much they talk amongst themselves about how their side is superior for whatever reason. If Grey’s point isn’t compelling based on the information he provides, look into your own life and the world around you for a comparison. Most people who have some political stance choose to watch and research from sources that have similar political biases as they do and who portray the opposing side as either a villain or ethically inferior. Congress is the perfect example: Bipartisan politics is a rare sentiment held in recent years. Since neither side is willing to cooperate with the other, they spend most of their time formulating their own plans regardless of the necessity to cooperate with the other side to get anything done efficiently. The few who try bipartisanship are ostensibly ineffectual as a result, causing them to lose their incumbency advantage during election periods. The networks formed by arguments aren’t only limited to the internet, nor are misinformation cascades, the internet only accelerates the rate of development and proliferation of arguments.