Infostorms

Abstract

It has become a truism that we live in so‐called information societies where new information technologies have made information abundant. At the same time, information science has made us aware of many phenomena tied to the way we process information. This article explores a series of socio‐epistemic information phenomena resulting from processes that track truth imperfectly: pluralistic ignorance, informational cascades, and belief polarization. It then couples these phenomena with the hypothesis that modern information technologies may lead to their amplification so as to give rise to what are called “infostorms.” This points to the need for studying further the exact relations between information technologies and such infostorms, as well as the ways we may design technologies to avoid being misled away from what we have good reasons to believe.

Dynamic Epistemic Logics of Diffusion and Prediction in Social Networks

“…Threshold-limited influence relies on an imitation or conformity pressure effect: agents adopt a behavior/product/opinion/fashion whenever a critical fraction of their neighbors in the network have adopted it already. In this sense, diffusion in social networks can be seen as a study of local influence, triggering agents to Special Issue: Logic and the Foundations of Game and Decision Theory Edited by Giacomo Bonanno, Wiebe Van Der Hoek and Andres Perea adopt a similar behavior/opinion/product as their neighbors [19,38]. Socalled threshold models, having gained early, wide-spread attention through [18,33,34], are used precisely to represent the dynamics of diffusion under threshold-limited influence.…”

Wenn Du gehst, geh ich auch! Die Rolle von Informationskaskaden bei der Entstehung von Massenbewegungen

“…Aus Sicht der Akteure ist die Entscheidung ihrer Teilnahme abhängig von der Frage, ob genügend andere Akteure ebenfalls teilnehmen werden und ihr eigener Beitrag sichtbar oder vielleicht sogar entscheidend für die Produktion des Kollektivgutes ist (Opp 2013). Informationszuständen (Blasen) auf der Makroebene führt (Hansen et al 2013). Im Forschungsstand Soziale Bewegungen und Ursachen politischer Proteste werden Phänomene dieser Art bisher allenfalls am Rande thematisiert.…”

Pluralistic ignorance in the bystander effect: informational dynamics of unresponsive witnesses in situations calling for intervention

“…The second step of the dynamics revolve around a belief state often referred to as one of pluralistic ignorance: a situation in which everybody believes that everybody else believes a given proposition/endorses a given norm, while no-one in fact believes it/endorses it. 2 Pluralistic ignorance has been put forth as a decisive factor in a plethora of social situations, including the introduction of various unpopular norms such as college binge drinking (Prentice and Miller, 1993) and violent gang behavior (Bicchieri and Fukui, 1999), the persistence of poor strategies in light of poor firm performance (Westphal and Bednar, 2005) and lack of help seeking in class rooms (Miller and Mc-Farland, 1987); the allowance of ongoing mortgage deed merry-go-rounds in Denmark during the financial 'upswing' of 2007 (Hendricks and Rasmussen, 2012;Hansen et al, 2013).…”