Information Cascades: The Spread of Fake News
The recent concept of fake news has a peculiar cause, especially on social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. It has only become more of an issue and topic for discussion on how to address fake news, but what are some of the reasons that it occurs in the first place? The answer seems to be addressed in an article from WTKR.
It is mentioned that, on Twitter, a high number of retweets is what causes stronger message believability and intention to share. In essence, there seems to be a strong correlation between a large number of retweets and how believable Twitter users are to believe it. This is understandable given the information learned in class about information cascades. Information cascades posit that individuals’ decision making is not solely based on their own information, but with the information that came before them as well. Socially, it makes a lot of sense to tag along with the group bandwagon so as not to be left behind. However, this raises a big issue when it comes to fake news.
The fake news information cascade starts when users are simply misinformed or are attempting to push a certain agenda. From there is when trouble begins, and as retweets amass, the information cascade surges. As more and more people share and retweet, the more a specific post will garner attention and be seen as credible and believable. After all, why would so many people be interacting with a post– especially a news post– if it was not truthful? Surely if so many people shared and retweeted then it must be a good post right? Information cascades do not always follow the correct path; take for example the marble bag problem posed in class. If the first two people end up picking blue marbles, of course they would believe the marble bag is majority blue. However, the bag may end up being majority red, and all the people following the first two would never come to see it because the information cascade had already started.
What can be learned from this article with respect to information cascades? While the topic of information cascades covered in class is certainly compelling, the one thing that differentiates it from this WTKR article is that information can be shared at all times. Twitter users can discuss as they share or even see discussion under the post itself, so the concept of concealed information present in standard information cascades is not as applicable. However, despite the fact that users’ information is relatively open, the knowledge of information cascades is helpful in understanding why fake news is perpetuated. This like-mindedness is generally useful, but can have dangerous consequences– like the spread of fake news.