Sabarwal Op Ed Outlines Threats and Implications of Social Media Misinformation
With Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter highlighting the ever-accelerating controversies about the use and misuse of social media platforms, KU’s own Dr. Tarun Sabawal published an important op ed in the Kansas City Star in mid-November (“The Speed of Social Media Made the Jan. 6 attack Possible. Another One is Surely Coming”) regarding the ongoing threats in the digital age.
An acknowledged international authority on game theory, some of Dr. Sabarwal’s research (with John Higgins) on how quickly false information can be spread through networks also gives him a powerful voice to address the societal consequences of continuing with the social media status quo.
In the article, he explained how an attack on election integrity promoted by a small group of people spread quickly to their connections on social media. With social networks’ seeking to increase engagement with instant and ubiquitous interaction – with automated algorithms amplifying the narrative – more people believed the false narrative as the global effects were strengthened. These people subsequently affected their friends, setting off more chain reactions.
He further suggested in an interview with KU News that another January 6-type event could be inevitable absent the ability to combat problems being caused by the speed and scale at which misinformation and disinformation are being spread, noting that some combination of mandatory fact-checking alongside legal consequences for disseminating misinformation (as well as stopping the proliferation of trolls and fake accounts) will likely all have to be part of the solution.
The Capitol insurrection may not have been an isolated event, according to Dr. Sabarwal, who concluded the Kansas City Star piece by observing how recent attacks on political leaders based on conspiracy theories amplified online were particularly worrisome.
“A common thread is that underlying structures in social media communication provide channels facilitating such events. People who understand this process are going to use it again. The incentives are in place and the logic is inescapable,” he warned.
Dr. Sabarwal, who serves as Director of the Center for Analytical Research in Economics as well as professor of economics, is Associate Editor for the prestigious International Journal of Economic Theory and serves on KU’s Public Scholars Group, an inter-disciplinary group of faculty focused on making the relevance of their scholarly research visible beyond academia. In 2021, he published a groundbreaking book (Monotone Games: A Unified Approach to Games with Strategic Complements and Substitutes, Palgrave Macmillan (Springer), 2021), which represents a significant contribution to game theory literature. The work provides a fascinating examination of monotone games and studies incentives and outcomes when there are multiple players - and how the decision of each player affects the well-being of others in particular ways.
