How Information Cascades Influenced the 2016 Presidential Election.
Analysis – Senate Intelligence Hearing on Fake News, Free Speech And Russia
This article examines the algorithms behind social networks that may influence politics, particularly the 2016 presidential election. The author, Antone Christianson-Galina, analyzes statements made by Facebook, Twitter, and Google during a Senate Intelligence Hearing which discussed Russia’s involvement in skewing the results of the 2016 presidential election.
Throughout the hearing, democratic and republican senators expressed their dissatisfaction with the way the three tech companies have been handling political news. Democratic senators are unhappy because companies like Facebook enabled Russia to buy ads to interfere with the campaign. In order to combat this problem, Democratic senators built the “Honest Ads Act”, which requires social platforms to not only retain copies of all political ads for public view, but also to inform users of the advertisements’ intended targets as well as rates charged for the ad slots. This is an example of how sharing information can break the information cascade. In class, we learned that if the first signal for a product is high, even though the product is in reality bad, a misleading information cascade may begin. This is the result of later people basing their decision on previous decisions. Exposure to new information, in this context, can help users of social platforms realize that the political news they are receiving is potentially skewed since the ad slots are being purchased by foreign countries such as Russia. Republican senators, on the other hand, are enraged for a different reason. They believe that social media platforms are suppressing posts in support of right-wing views. Senator Cruz cited an example in which Twitter banned a campaign video by Marsha Blackburn because her statement on Planned Parenthood was too inflammatory. This once again relates back to the concept of how a lack of information may lead to information cascades. In this case, Republican senators are worried since repression of right-wing views can have the potential to skew users who are being exposed to more democratic support by other users online.
As demonstrated in this article, information cascades and the way news is presented online can have a powerful impact on political movements. Therefore, to prevent faulty information cascades, it is important to expose oneself to as much information as possible.
https://thepavlovictoday.com/afterimage-review/analysis-senate-intelligence-hearing-on-fake-news-free-speech-and-russia/
https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/19/16502946/facebook-twitter-russia-honest-ads-act