Information Cascade

I believe the best way to describe an information cascade is the followers and trends we see in today's society. People go on TV and look at the clothes people are wearing, and the music people listen to. When it is repeated, and drilled into people's minds everyday, you see people exactly replicate these actions without even thinking twice about it. Your own instincts become the majority's instincts, and this is where we see a loss of identity when everyone is following each other, rather than follow their self. It almost seems logical for the insecure. You have nothing to worry about if you wear and listen to the same music everyone else is. I browsed over some other reactions to this blog post. I saw someone mention the JMU riot. Now, we have been doing this event for years on end. We look at the paper and you have 12 convicted felons that were non-JMU students, and maybe one from JMU. For some reason, one person decided it would be a good idea to throw a beer can at an officer. It seemed like people's instincts were following the majority, and loss all clear sense of thought. Within minutes there were thousands of beer cans being thrown into the air. Now, I am not saying JMU students did not participate in the riot because they definitely did. However, I believe they got caught in an information cascade that was brought from the outside where they thought these type of actions were okay. Without an outside influence, I believe there would be no problems today.