The theory
The first thing to understand is, information often doesn't spread. This is, in part, because not all links are equally strong. We tell lots of details of our lives to our closest family and friends, but we don't speak a lot with acquaintances. Information spreads much more certainly, and with more detail, to the closest people. The message will spread through weaker links only when it's important enough or interesting enough, and there aren't any barriers to telling (for example, if it's in your self-interest to keep it secret).
Even if somebody does the job of telling, it doesn't always mean that the other side will do the job of listening. Again, we pay closest attention to things that the closest people to us tell us, to things that are important to us, and things that are interesting to us. And even when something hits all the right buttons, there are all sorts of reasons we may be distracted with something else and not listen.
It's a well-observed fact that bad news tends to spread faster and wider than good news. There are several reasons for this. Bad news is often more useful to more people than good news. Bad news for others are often a warning that allow you to prepare so the same thing doesn't happen to yourself. Also, spreading bad news about somebody you don't like is a way you can have your revenge on them without any consequences to yourself. It also has the nice side effect that it can make you look good in comparison.
When you think about it, it isn't surprising that most news in the media are bad - they are what customers want to hear! Every time that a media outlet tries the "positive news" angle, readers or viewers start yawning.
When information does spread, it still degrades. The more hops the message had to do before it reached you, the more degraded it will be. There are three ways that a story will degrade:
- Flattening: When people re-tell a story, they eliminate all the details from it that they think are less relevant to the story, or that may contradict the main story they want to tell.
- Sharpening: People add details or elaborate on parts of the to the story (sometimes with a liberal use of imagination) to make sure that the point reaches all the way home.
- Assimilation: People will make the story fit within their existing mental framework and pre-conceptions.
Put this together with the lightning-fast spread of bad news, and you can get a deadly cocktail, of a horrible rumour getting completely out of hand and becoming worse and worse with every re-telling. That's why it's important that communication channels in an organization are as direct, open and transparent as possible.
The practice
Experiment 1
Play a game of "Chinese whispers" with five or six people. When you compare the original story with the last one, remember that this is what happens all the time in real life!
Experiment 2
Make a diagram representing all the communication channels of an organization you are part of. If there is any kind of information that takes three or more hops to reach destination, there are high risks that the information is too degraded when it arrives. Can you find any cases when information takes three or more hops? Can you find ways of reducing the number of hops, or preserving the information as intact as possible?
This is an important topic. Information in the age of the internet has changed society greatly. Newspapers, word of mouth, and television are one thing, but the internet has really taken spin, propaganda, memes, and urban myths to the next level.
ReplyDeleteThe Shirley Sherrod witch-hunt is a good case in point.
You also have the various Chicken Little memes like Matt Simmons' analysis of the gulf, which is still being embraced by a minority of doomers (like Ruppert).
One thing that has really changed the way news is absorbed is the fact that just about every mainstream news outlet online has a raging comments section at the bottom. So the idea of expert journalism is devalued when, on the same page, you have an endless stream of comments that attempt to either bobble-head or reject the information. You see this every single time anything energy or environmentally-related is in the news. Nothing but endless invectives towards the "libs", cries of conspiracy, etc...
Letters to the editor used to keep all this stuff in a dedicated section so you had time to make up your own mind about an article. By placing the comments in direct proximity to the article, your mind is likely to raise up the credibility of anonymous commenters to that of the author of the article himself. That may be good if the author is Michael Lynch, but too often, like I said, it's BAU-ists trying to crucify the bearer of bad news.
Anyway, too much criticial information is in people's heads via hearsay. Last weekend I was talking to my uncle about oil and he said "a friend" or maybe it was "a friend of a friend" told him that the oil companies are licking their chops to drill under the arctic ice once it melts. The implication is that arctic oil will push away any fears of peak oil doom.
People just are terrible at exercising due dilligence with their information.