Not a week goes by in Jordan without a rumor or a semi-learned exposition spelling negativity spreading over social media.
The spread of social networks has given platforms to the voiceless, and basically everybody with internet access. It also enables individuals to spread false information, rumors, conspiracy theories, and baseless claims, which thrive in an environment of information uncertainty.
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram enable users to build an e-community that alienates some through filter bubbles (an intellectual isolation that results when a website algorithm selectively guesses what information users would like to see based on information about their location, past click-behavior and search history).
It has been argued in the pertaining literature that uncertainty lowers public expectations and fosters pessimism. Losing optimism and espousing pessimism is not without a price, for these two feelings move supply and demand faster than any other development.
Negative statements and news spread real fast. A recent study of data on Twitter during 2006-2017 showed that 3 million people spread 126,000 rumors, and false news reached more people and diffused faster than truthful ones; the top 1 percent of false news diffused to between 1,000 and 100,000 individual accounts, whereas the truth seldom spread to more than 1,000.
The impact of false news and pessimistic rumors about the social, political, and economic spheres cannot be but negative. It not only sabotages the welfare of the nation, it also derails any attempt at reform as trust between the government and the people erode.
Studies show that negative rumors, coupled with social media, often produce undesirable consequences. For example, in a small town in Mexico, in August 2018, a WhatsApp rumor claiming that child abductors were collecting human organs led to a vigilante mob of more than 100 people burning two men alive.
A growing body of research shows that humans tend to prioritize negative over positive news. According to Stuart Soroka, a UCLA communications professor, humans may neurologically or physiologically be predisposed to focus on negative information because the potential costs of negative information far outweigh the potential benefits of positive information.
This view is also asserted in the field of behavioral economics. There is ample evidence of people’s bias in favor for negative over positive news in Jordan. All one has to do is to release news of doom and almost everyone will start quoting and spreading the falsity.
Rumors and misinformation flourish with the spread of social networks and situations where there are high uncertainties and ambiguities. The economy, with its multitude of issues, and being a highly complex and dynamic system that is constantly and continuously affected by new inputs, is the field most impacted by rumors and misinformation.
The economy and its markets, show more than any other field such incidences of self-fulfilled prophecies. If enough people state that an economy will collapse, it will collapse. Financial markets that are highly speculative can become rife with rumors and misinformation that lead to unfounded assertions and costly decisions.
The same is true for organizations and institutions.
Surprisingly, when someone starts a rumor about the economy, very few in Jordan attempt to counter its claims, and even fewer voices come out from the public sector, which is not surprising. One reason is that decision makers may not be yet aware of the power of social networks; another, less likely, reason is that they do not know how to address the falsities; and a third reason could be pure lack of concern, (this is not my business, let someone deal with it).
No matter what the reason is, this is a new area that requires new thinking and fast action. The sooner the better.
https://www.jordannews.jo/Section-36/Opinion/Rumors-pessimism-lies-and-their-cost-16013
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