Information Cascades in the Itaewon Halloween Disaster
This Saturday, a Halloween celebration in Korea turned into a tragic disaster with at least 150 people losing their lives. It occurred in one of the most trendy neighborhoods, Itaewon, and it was the first Halloween celebration in Seoul since the start of the pandemic. However, as massive crowds of people began to fill into a narrow alleyway, 154 people were killed in a crowd crush and 149 more were injured. This is the most tragic event since the Sewol ferry incident in 2014, when 304 passengers died in an accident. Despite only having occurred two days ago, there is already lots of misinformation being spread through social media and news outlets, largely due to information cascades.
Information cascades are when decisions are made sequentially, with people watching the actions of earlier people, then inferring something about what they know. As more and more people continue to post and repost tweets and tiktoks with misinformation regarding the Itaewon tragedy, incorrect statistics and reasoning becomes more common. The reliance of so many people on social media as their only source of news has contributed to the absurd amount of misinformation in our society today. Specifically, I have seen many tweets be retweeted that said the reasoning for the crowd crush was an armed gunman that incited panic, in addition to people claiming that everybody was hyped on drugs and that was the only reason for the tragedy. Rather than searching for information themselves, people continue to simply spread whatever information they find first and whatever might fit the narrative that they are searching for.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/29/where-how-seoul-itaewon-stampede/