Unsocial media

Imagine being in a crowded stadium watching a sporting event, really interesting play or religious speaker. Most people will find that they say, do or think in ways that are out of character for them. When people gather in groups, bizarre behaviours often emerge.

Conspiracy theories and other widespread incorrect beliefs emerge from complex interactions involving their thoughts, ideas, biases, general acquired knowledge, social influence in groups, and the global-scale spread of ideas across social networks.

This fatal combination of processes at different scales – individual, group and global – has led to the online problems we are seeing today. Their complexity makes the resulting social trends incredibly difficult to combat. The root cause of poor thinking lies in our evolution. Our ability to cope with complex information is limited, so our brains take shortcuts, such as confirmation bias – the tendency to notice things that match our preexisting beliefs and ignore those that don’t.

When people gather in groups, bizarre behaviours often emerge. Like epidemics, false beliefs can spread from person to person. Were you ever afraid to ask a question in class? You think everyone else understands, and you don’t want to look stupid, but sometimes, no one has understood. Known as pluralistic ignorance, this problem underlies many social problems. For instance, people who are usually helpful often become passive bystanders in the presence of others and fail to help a victim.

Groupthink

A similar problem is groupthink, which may be defined as “a process of flawed decision making that occurs as a result of strong pressures among group members to reach an agreement”. Everyone stops voicing their own opinion because they want to protect the reputation of their group, even if they disagree, and blindly follow the leader.

Groupthink was implicated in many famous calamities, including the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Have you ever felt pressured to do something while you were part of a team or group that led to a flawed decision? In January of 1986, the orbiter Challenger exploded 73 seconds after the launch due to that exact reason.

Decision Makers and top echelons at NASA and Morton Thiokol cared more about satisfying and entertaining its major customer, the American people rather than the safety of the launch and its crew members. America was becoming disinterested in spaceflight and NASA saw the dwindling popularity and excitement in their space shuttle program.

Groupthink theory could help explain how leaders and decision makers played a major part in the disaster that occurred in 1986.

Polarisation

Another problem with potentially disastrous consequences is polarisation, where a group splits into two camps with mutually opposed, irreconcilable viewpoints that become increasingly separated over time.

The problem today is that what in the past would have been the whisper of a few voices now has the potential to ignite widespread mayhem. Imagine living in a traditional village, hundreds of years ago. It’s a small world. Ideas spread by word of mouth from person to person. They move outward very slowly, when visitors move from village to village. Even today, we still inhabit many kinds of “villages” – family, neighbours, colleagues, friends – and ideas spread as we move between groups.

The advent of mass media has given some people a far wider reach than ever before. It has aided propaganda while also amplifying extreme views. On the internet, groups of people are connected, irrespective of geographical distance, so individual views can be reinforced by large supporting groups.

Communities of like-minded people emerge via social media. This includes the rapid spread of extremist views and conspiracy theories. Connecting individuals with extreme views via social media allows very large groups to share malign views.

Why do deceptive messages spread well? They can be designed to seduce audiences by exploiting known cognitive biases. This technique is widely used in politically polarised media, social media and biased fact-checking. It exploits confirmation bias and motivated cognition. Truthful messages simply cannot compete with customised fakes. We all have our biases but with care have learned to compensate for them so that they do not get out of hand.

Another well-known cause is the spreading behaviour of social networks, especially when connected by very fast and pervasive digital networks. Studies have found that deceptive messages usually spread in a manner that resembles the models used by epidemiologists in medicine. Social media “influencers” often become “super-spreaders” of false and misleading content.

The more followers they get the greater the pressure to continue and their arrogance is fully unleashed with the dire social and political consequences which are all to evident today.