Why and How Misinformation Spreads and Why People Are Reluctant to Speak Out

Timur Kuran and Cass Sunstein 's paper on Availability Cascades, thank you Lori Lawson for the recommendation, is a great read. The paper examines how misinformation spreads and overwhelms well-intentioned public policy actors, leading to unnecessary regulations, misallocation of resources, and unproductive public hysteria. The paper examines three case studies, the Love Canal (origin of Super Fund legislation), Alar (fear of carcinogens), and TWA 800 (fear of terrorism and flying risks). In all cases, the authors argue the availability cascades led to irrational outcomes that overwhelmed the systems's ability to make good decisions.

An availability cascade is a self-reinforcing process of collective belief formation by which an expressed perception triggers a chain reaction that gives the perception increasing plausibility through its rising availability in public discourse.?Sound familiar to today's Americans? We are watching in realtime as politicians use availability bias to shape beliefs.

The driving mechanism involves a combination of informational and reputational motives: Individuals endorse the perception partly by learning from the apparent beliefs of others and partly by distorting their public responses in the interest of maintaining social acceptance. Availability entrepreneurs-activists who manipulate the content of public discourse-strive to trigger availability cascades likely to advance their agendas.

One way to stop the cascade is for people who disagree with the common perception, particularly those with credibility and influence, to express their reticence. The pressure to conform allows the cascade to pick up momentum. Other solutions suggested by the paper include peer review, publicly available datasets, etc.

Cass writes, "to ascribe moral authority to numbers is to instruct individuals that if they are outnumbered they are likely to be wrong and deserving of criticism. It is also to signal to the majority that it has a moral right to intimidate dissenters. As compared with people socialized to believe in the virtues of majority rule, those who understand the mechanics and consequences of availability cascades will be more resistant to their informational and reputational signals."