Information is not a Virus, and Other Consequences of Human Cognitive Limits

TL;DR

This paper explores how human cognitive limits and social media feed positioning influence information spread, explaining why information often fails to propagate widely and why highly connected individuals are less likely to share.

Contribution

It introduces a cognitive-limits-based framework that simplifies understanding information diffusion and accounts for empirical observations in social media dynamics.

Findings

Information spread is constrained by cognitive limits and feed position.

Highly connected individuals are less likely to re-share content.

Cognitive factors differentiate information diffusion from biological contagions.

Abstract

The many decisions people make about what to pay attention to online shape the spread of information in online social networks. Due to the constraints of available time and cognitive resources, the ease of discovery strongly impacts how people allocate their attention to social media content. As a consequence, the position of information in an individual's social feed, as well as explicit social signals about its popularity, determine whether it will be seen, and the likelihood that it will be shared with followers. Accounting for these cognitive limits simplifies mechanics of information diffusion in online social networks and explains puzzling empirical observations: (i) information generally fails to spread in social media and (ii) highly connected people are less likely to re-share information. Studies of information diffusion on different social media platforms reviewed here suggest that the interplay between human cognitive limits and network structure differentiates the spread of information from other social contagions, such as the spread of a virus through a population.