How Lies Spread Faster Than Truth with Flawed Information Cascade
Link: http://www.carrollcountytimes.com/columnists/opinion/ph-cc-minnich-020417-20170204-column.html
During the current age of social media, reading and spreading lies is much easier than one would believe. The only way one could solve them is through censorship and that within itself causes more problems of false information cascade. This article sites several psychological reasons why one is inclined to believe false news and almost all have to do with the fact that one is likely to buy information comes from someone they know. Now putting what is said in this article into consideration one could propose that flawed information cascade model. Similar to the red-blue marble problem. One could show how easy it is to start a propagation of fake news via Facebook or similar social media website.
I propose an experiment in which two people post fake news and trace the cascade of this by looking at re-posts and interviewing them on the topic on later time. We can range the topics from social issues to historical facts. We can then track the spread of this fake news for two weeks and tracking how many social networks it was able to affect. We can then use that information to draw a generalization of which type of people are likely to believe this and also which means of communication is most effective to spreading this lie. I believe the outcome of this experiment will show that there is significant statistical evidence that people are more likely to believe fake news regardless of what they thought before as long as it comes from someone thy trust/respect. Similar to the false information cascade, I believe that if enough people believe in this fake news, it is highly unlikely that someone can convince them of otherwise. Interestingly enough this can be seen with the resent election and how some people seemed to wholeheartedly buy the fake news that was spread about Hilary and how till this day it’s affecting American citizens opinions. Running this sort model might end up in a situation like the one bellow where red denotes a person who bought the fake news and white denotes people who were not affected by this. Following the cascade down we can see that the popularity of the fake news grows rapidly and at certain point it will gain enough support that this fake news will become an “alternative fact,” as stated in the article.
