Social Media, Cancel Culture, and Information Cascades
In recent years, the rise of social media platforms such as Twitter and TikTok have allowed for information to be shared online at record speeds amongst friends and strangers alike. Though these platforms are generally intended to be used for sharing content with people we know in real life, most platforms are now redesigning their algorithms to increasingly prioritize showing users content from strangers. From TikTok’s “For You Page,” to Instagram and Facebook’s “Reels” sections, users are being pushed more and more content from influencers and other unfamiliar users that they would not usually be in communication with. Though this has the potential advantage of giving users the chance to experience spontaneous discovery of new content they might enjoy, it also presents an equal risk of their content being pushed to other strangers too.
A consequence of the shift to adopting algorithms that spread our content beyond our normal social circles is that sometimes, unintended audiences may view and respond to (what was supposed to be) personal content or information that we posted with friends or family in mind. In Jennings’s Vox article (linked below), this exact situation has occurred a countless amount of times recently on TikTok due to the platform’s complicated algorithm. Users whose videos go viral often don’t even intend to have their videos shared with thousands or even millions of other users. As one might expect, this can be shocking when it does happen, as users may be unprepared to face the consequences of having their content viewed and critiqued by so many others they do not know personally.
This is why, as Jennings highlights, the “cancel culture” phenomenon that has been coined in recent years is often unpleasant and undeserved for many who experience it. Being “canceled” on a social media platform refers to when a user is called out en masse by thousands of other users and publicly shamed online. Oftentimes, reasons for such shaming can be trivial, and the result of a user’s content going viral when they did not intend for it to. In the article, Jennings mentions an example where a man was relentlessly harassed on TikTok for not being an ideal date/partner. Though he may not have had ill manners towards his dates, the “canceling” he experienced online was undeserved, and ended up impacting him in real life as people started showing up to his workplace to harass him.
Instances such as this demonstrate the power of information cascades on social media. An information cascade refers to how people make decisions based on what they observe others are doing, rather than emphasizing their own personal knowledge of the situation when deciding. In the case of a person being “canceled” online, what typically occurs is that a user sees everyone else publicly shaming that individual for their mistake, and feels compelled to also join the bandwagon of criticizing that person. Typically, it takes very little information for a user to decide that they also are against the person in question (who they do not know personally). This phenomenon begs the question: with its increasing prevalence online, does cancel culture provide any benefit to society? Jennings argues that in the case of normal people whose content unintentionally goes viral, it does not. However, perhaps a case could be made for cancel culture when it comes to holding authority figures and other public-eye individuals accountable. Such individuals are responsible for making decisions that impact many others, so maybe facilitating the internet’s show of mass disapproval (via information cascades) could provide a benefit to society when leaders are acting unethically.
Source: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22716772/west-elm-caleb-couch-guy-tiktok-cancel