From Engadget
Paris and the trail of social media misinformation
By Nicole Lee
In the wake of the multi-pronged terror attacks on Paris last Friday, social media was awash with emotion; from concern and outrage to offers of support to those in need. Unfortunately, social media was also the site of a litany of misinformation. A Sikh man was Photoshopped wearing a suicide bomb vest and holding up the Quran when he was really just holding an iPad. Rumors spread that the Eiffel Tower had gone dark in memory of the victims, when it really just goes dark every night at 1 am. Uber was accused of charging surge prices in Paris when it didn't. A Donald Trump tweet from January about the Charlie Hebdo attacks was retweeted and spread around as if it was new....
But what exactly causes this?...
"This phenomenon can result from an 'information cascade,'" explained Coye Cheshire. Cheshire is a social psychologist who's also an associate professor for the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. "[It's when] an observer sees something and does the exact same thing despite one's own beliefs or other private information to the contrary."
"If you have ever been shopping at the store and cannot choose between two equivalent brands of soup, you may be more likely to choose the one that only has a few cans left instead of the one that is fully stocked -- because there must be a reason everyone is buying one brand and not the other, right?" said Cheshire. The spread of information on social media operates in very much the same way -- if a story or tweet gets a lot of likes or shares, it must be true. Right? Humans tend to make these cognitive shortcuts, said Cheshire, because it's easier than endlessly researching every piece of information we come across....