Information Cascades– happen when people post or otherwise voice their opinions in a sequence. If the first expression of opinion forms a pattern, then it can alter following people’s opinions (Page 32 Lynch)
In other words… “Following the Crowd”
Information Cascades occur when a person makes a decision or choice based on the observations of others while ignoring their own personal information and understandings. In our digital society, posting or voicing our opinions allows people to influence others without directly speaking to someone. Particularly in the digital age, it is likely that when something major trends or a controversial event happens people will share their opinions in the form of a post to their “followers” or to anybody with access to their posts if it is public. This tends to happen on Twitter when individuals are able to “hashtag” and link trending topics to their “Tweets.” This expression of opinion is not solicited by followers but rather given independently. However, it still has the ability to affect a person reading’s opinion about the topic despite how they may feel personally. We call this Internet Cascades. Internet cascades happen when people tend to follow the crowd rather than following their own opinions and understanding of information.
Twitter in particular experiences numerous Internet Cascades and allows for individuals to view the opinions of others with ease often creating a trending reaction. Information Cascade has the potential of people to make decisions due to other people only by their observable actions, not the objective facts.
Examples:
One example in particular of a movement on Twitter and other social media accounts that spread quickly was the controversial posts that caused other people to then post and react to the opinions of those they were “following” or “friends” with on social media was the debate over the Black and Blue or Gold and White Dress. Twitter in particular exploded as a result and quickly it appeared that the more people commented on their opinions of the dress the more people felt that they too needed to share their opinion of the color of the dress. Regardless of whether they may have cared if it were an isolated event, people saw Twitter exploding with opinions that then influenced their opinion and need to share it with the world. Celebrities, politicians, and even mainstream media erupted over the dress. People questioned themselves if they should post the dress on their social media to express their opinions or whether to agree or disagree with the people about the dress. People were questioning the color of the dress and chose to comment by sharing their opinion. This controversy went viral while people on the internet questioned the true color of the dress. This internet controversy is only one of the many information cascades that have occurred.
It appears that more and more with the use of social media topics begin to trend and movements begin to grow as a result of our reading another individuals post. Information cascades happen everywhere and with the easy access to people’s opinions thanks to social media forums such as Twitter, we may be more exposed to them than we know.