When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, a bizarre conspiracy theory swept through global social media: that the disease was caused by radio-frequency emissions from 5G cell phone towers. The wild theories spread across social media platforms. The belief in this conspiracy was so fervent that the media reported more than 100 incidents of arson and vandalism against 5G (and 4G) infrastructure, as well as numerous instances of abusive or threatening behavior against telecommunications workers.
Why do bizarre events like this happen? In our recent review article, published May 19 in the journal Frontiers in Communication, we showed that conspiracy theories and other widespread incorrect beliefs emerge from complex interactions involving people's cognitive limitations, 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.
Primed for poor thinking and bizarre group behaviors
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. For example, we quickly forget waiting in a fast queue but remember how annoying a slow queue is, and ask, "Why am I always in the slow queue?"
Another symptom of our inability to cope with complexity is the tendency to see malicious intent in complex, unexplained events. This tendency has planted the seeds for much injustice, from witch hunts to conspiracy theories. The reality is that unexpected events and behaviors often emerge through networks of interactions, without any conscious prompting.
When people gather in groups, bizarre behaviors 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 understands. 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.
Related: Why do people believe in conspiracy theories?
A similar problem is groupthink: 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.
Another problem with potentially disastrous consequences is polarization, where a group splits into two camps with mutually opposed, irreconcilable viewpoints that become increasingly separated over time.
Pluralistic ignorance, groupthink and polarization are all known to be "emergent" effects that arise naturally under suitable conditions. This self-organizing behavior of groups is often not understood, and frequently attributed to other causes. It is also why governments, media and public are often caught by surprise when groups suddenly emerge promoting strange agendas.
The above group behaviors emerge spontaneously when individual failures in cognition interact and lead to dysfunctional group behaviours. They are driven by a deep social drive for safety in a group. This fuels errors in the way we think and leads people to take the "safe" route and follow the crowd.
Rapid spread of extremist views
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, neighbors, 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. Bizarre behaviors, like the 5G sabotage mentioned above, can surface, often very quickly.
The truth can't compete with lies
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 polarized media, social media and biased fact-checking. It exploits confirmation bias and motivated cognition. Truthful messages simply cannot compete with customized fakes.
Another well-known cause is the spreading behavior 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 above behavior suggests that authorities might suppress the spread of deceptive messages by treating them like epidemics. These are typically defeated by taking three steps: Suppress the source, limit the spread, and increase the immunity of the exposed population. If the pathogen is digital, this suggests blocking or de-platforming creators and spreaders of malign messages, filtering malign content on media platforms, and educating or training audiences to reject malign content.
This is easier said than done.
No way out
Creators and spreaders will leverage freedom of speech legislation, and/or migrate between platforms and media types. Meanwhile, audiences may persist in believing malign nonsense and are prone over time to forget what they are taught. Unfortunately, there is an immense diversity of ways to spread malicious messages.
The world is now confronted with the prospect of a perpetual "arms race" in tactics and technology between purveyors of propaganda and nonsense, and people trying to tell the truth, with audiences that frequently do not know enough to care about the differences between fiction and fact.
Communities that choose not to play in this "arms race" will be inundated with falsehoods and suffer increasing social discord as consensus on any issue of community concern will be disrupted to the point of paralysis. Communities that choose to confront malign actors will have to invest time and resources to play in the "arms race" and attempt to prevent or manage unwanted damage effects.
There is no simple panacea solution: expecting to find one is wishful thinking.
Opinion on Live Science gives you insight on the most important issues in science that affect you and the world around you today, written by experts and leading scientists in their field.
Fatima Seeme is an academic in the Data Science and AI Department, Faculty of Information Technology, at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. She completed her PhD at Monash University in 2021, specializing in agent-based modeling of social dilemmas. Her doctoral research explored how individuals conform to group norms that differ from their personal beliefs, investigating the emergence and spread of pluralistic ignorance through computational models. Her interdisciplinary work bridges computer science, social psychology, and behavioral modeling.
David Green is Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at Monash University. During a long career, his research has contributed many insights about the nature of complexity, including the role of network phase changes in criticality. He has also applied insights about complex networks to real-world systems, including ecology, proteins, geographic information, computer science, and social networks. His books include: Of Ants and Men, The Serendipity Machine, Dual Phase Evolution, and Complexity in Landscape Ecology.
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