'When people gather in groups, strange behavior often emerges': How the rise of social media has led to the emergence of dysfunctional thinking

During the COVID-19 pandemic, people began to criticize 4G and 5G due to the false belief that radiofrequency radiation is the cause of the disease. (Image credit: Busà Photography/Getty Images)

When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, a bizarre conspiracy theory spread across social media around the world: the disease was caused by radiofrequency radiation from 5G cell towers. These wild theories spread across social media. Belief in this conspiracy was so strong that media outlets reported more than 100 cases of arson and vandalism of 5G (and 4G) infrastructure, as well as numerous cases of abusive or threatening behavior toward telecom workers.

Why do such strange events happen? In our recent review article, published May 19 in the journal Frontiers in Communication, we showed that conspiracy theories and other common false beliefs arise from complex interactions involving people’s cognitive limitations, social influence in groups, and the global spread of ideas on social networks.

This fatal combination of processes at different scales – individual, group and global – has led to the emergence of the online problems we see today. Their complexity makes combating the resulting social trends incredibly difficult.

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Preparedness for poor thinking and strange behavior in a group

The root of our thinking problem is our evolution. Our ability to handle complex information is limited, so our brains take shortcuts, such as confirmation bias — the tendency to notice things that fit our pre-existing beliefs and ignore things that don’t. For example, we quickly forget that we’re in a fast line, but we remember how annoying a slow line is, and we ask ourselves, “Why am I always in a slow line?”

Another sign of our inability to cope with complexity is the tendency to see malice in complex, inexplicable events. This tendency has sown the seeds of many injustices, from witch hunts to conspiracy theories. The reality is that unexpected events and behavior often emerge from interactions without any conscious intentions.

When people gather in groups, strange behavior often occurs. False beliefs, like epidemics, can spread from person to person. Have you ever been afraid to ask a question in class? You think everyone else understands you and you don’t want to look stupid, but sometimes no one understands you. This problem, known as pluralistic ignorance, is at the root of many social problems. For example, people who are usually helpful often become passive observers in the presence of others, unable to help someone who is hurt.

A similar problem is groupthink: everyone stops speaking up to protect their group's reputation, even if they disagree, and blindly follows the leader. Groupthink has been the cause of many famous disasters, including the Challenger space shuttle crash.

Another problem with potentially catastrophic consequences is polarization, where a group becomes divided into two camps with opposing, irreconcilable viewpoints that become increasingly divided over time.

It is well known that pluralistic ignorance, groupthink and polarization are “emergent” phenomena that arise naturally when conditions are right. This self-organizing behavior of groups is often not recognized and is often attributed to other causes. This is why governments, the media and the public are often taken by surprise when groups suddenly appear promoting strange agendas.

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Another well-known cause is the spread of information through social media, especially when connected to very fast and ubiquitous digital networks. Research has shown that false messages tend to spread in patterns similar to those used by epidemiologists in medicine. “Influencers” on social media often become “super-spreaders” of false and misleading content.

The above behavior suggests that authorities can suppress the spread of false messages by treating them as epidemics. These are typically addressed through three steps: suppressing the source, limiting the spread, and increasing immunity in the exposed population. If the pathogen is digital, this means blocking or deplatforming the creators and distributors of malicious messages, filtering malicious content on media platforms, and training audiences to be resilient to malicious content.

This is easier said than done.

There is no way out

Creators and distributors will use free speech laws and/or switch platforms and media types. Meanwhile, audiences may continue to believe malicious nonsense and are prone to forget what they were taught over time. Unfortunately, there are a huge variety of ways to spread malicious messages.

Today the world faces the prospect of a constant “arms race” in tactics and technology between those who peddle propaganda and nonsense and those who try to tell the truth, with audiences often not sufficiently informed to distinguish between fiction and fact.

Communities that choose not to participate in this “arms race” will be inundated with lies and will suffer from growing social discord as consensus on any issue that concerns the community is disrupted to the point of paralysis. Communities that choose to resist the attackers will have to spend time and resources participating in the “arms race” and trying to prevent or control undesirable consequences.

There is no simple panacea: hoping to find one is wishful thinking.

“Opinion on Living Science” gives you insight into the most important science issues affecting you and the world around you today, written by experts and leading scientists in their fields.

Carlo Kopp

Carlo Kopp is a Research Associate in the Cyber Security Group in the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He holds a PhD and MSc in Computer Science from Monash University. His previous experience includes positions in the computer industry as a hardware and software code developer, positions at think tanks in defense analysis and strategic studies, and academic research in a variety of fields, including over 500 publications. He is best known as an early researcher in information warfare, for his work on infrastructure vulnerability to electromagnetic threats and his involvement in the development of the Borden-Kopp information-theoretic deception model.

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