The Influence of Information Cascades on Media
The article Editorial decisions and audience feedback in crime reporting: What happens when migrants commit crimes? by Benjamin Landis and William Allen, explores how information cascades can drive the decisions of news broadcasting companies. In the article, the authors analyzed the situation of the “Maria L.” case. In October 2016, a student named Maria Landeburger was raped and murdered on her way back from a medical party. A few months later, on December 3rd, the police announced that they had arrested a refugee who had a connection with the case. After this announcement, Tagesschau, Germany’s largest and most trusted public broadcaster, had still not reported on this incident.
An initially small group of people on Facebook felt the “Maria L. case” was a political crime since it involved a person from the group of 1 million refugees admitted by chancellor Angela Merkel. As a result, they expected Tagesschau, a political media outlet, to cover it. The group of outraged individuals commented on Tagesschau’s Facebook page, accusing them of concealing refugee crimes. Tagesschau responded to a few of these comments explaining that since the crime was region-specific they decided not to cover it on a national broadcast. However, after Tagesschau responded to this initial criticism from a few individuals, it drew more attention toward the issue. More users began to question Tagesschau’s decision of non-coverage, and on the next day, December 4th, Stern magazine covered the issue, stating that Tagesschau’s decision would lead to public cynicism in traditional media. The even escalated to the point where, the editor-in-chief of Tagesschau had to hold a Q&A session, explaining their decision to not report the “Maria L. case,” and in the end on December 5th Tagesschau finally did end up covering it.
The escalation of the incident with Tagesschau and the “Maria L. case” can be explained in part by the concept of information cascades, which we learned in class. What started as a few people criticizing Tagesschau blew up, when the company itself drew attention to the comments. When more people read the comments that accused Tagesschau of covering up refugee crimes, this public information may have “swamped” their private opinion of the incident. Even if the most people personally felt it was acceptable for Tagesschau to not have covered the crime, after seeing more public comments disagree with their “private signal,” they may have ended up following the cascade. As mentioned in class, the more people involved, more likely a cascade becomes. This is clearly seen in Tagesschau’s case, since before the company replied to the critical comments, most posts surrounding the “Maria L.” case expressed sympathy toward the family. Overall, this incident and the lessons from class, show that information cascades hold great influence, and with enough people involved, they can be difficult to stop.