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The Bandwagon Effect in Social Media

The Bandwagon Effect in Social Media

Thought Paper #1

June 11, 2022

Tasneem Irhouma

ETEC 512 66A

Dr. Halimat Alabi

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The Bandwagon Effect in Social Media

You are mindlessly scrolling through Tiktoks on your curated For You Page. Or

maybe, you’re doing the same through your Reddit feed or Instagram Explore Page. You

stumble across a video of an altercation between two people, an older woman and a

younger man, recorded at a grocery store. The man and woman are both yelling at each

other and the video offers no context as to what instigated this argument. Maybe she

reminds you of your mom or your lovely next-door neighbor, but either way, you can’t

help but feel bad for the woman and take her side. You then open up the comments and

find them sorted chronologically by how many likes the comment got, with the most

highly liked comments calling the woman a “Karen”, laughing at her haircut, and feeling

bad for the man. As you continue to read through the comments, with the very little

comments defending the woman getting very little likes if any at all, you find that you no

longer feel bad for the woman, and maybe she really deserved to get yelled at, and maybe

she is indeed a “Karen”. Why is it that the opinions of some strangers were enough to

shift your whole perspective on the no-context video?

The bandwagon effect is a cognitive bias that causes people to think or behave in

certain ways simply because others are thinking or behaving in that particular way. While

not a new phenomenon, being connected to others through the internet results in the

ability to easily be a part of limitless social circles, subcultures, and niches, and it is no

longer necessary to meet with people face-to-face in order to become part of the social

group. Humans have the innate desire to fit into the social groups they are presented,

referred to as normative social influence (Burger, 2001); the powerful influence of

groupthink is able to change the perception of someone to reflect the general view of the

group. One such measure that people look for to determine the outlook of the group is
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The Bandwagon Effect in Social Media

through likes, upvotes, comments that social media provides; they are not merely just

numbers, but rather a type of digital validation that has the power to influence and give

credibility, despite what the content is One study found that when people see a comment

on social media that has a lot of likes and upvotes, they become more likely to upvote the

comment themselves (Muchnik et al, 2013).

One explanation as to why bandwagoning has such a powerful influence on a

person is Social Cognitive Theory (SCT). SCT, developed by Albert Bandura, describes

“the influence of individual experiences, the actions of others, and environmental factors

on individual health behaviors” (Rural Health Information Hub, n.d.); in an online

setting, people are able to observe what is an acceptable opinion to hold through the

positive reinforce of positive comments, shares, upvotes, and likes, and are able to

determine what is less acceptable through the rather common onslaught of negative

comments and downvotes. This is further supported by informational social influence

(Stagnor, 2022); when we see these comments with thousands of likes, many

automatically conform because they assume that the commenter understands the situation

better than you simply because they hold the credibility that the likes gave them. If their

comment in supporting by a large group of people, how could they possibly be wrong?

Being influenced by observing how others react to different content on social

media and adjusting perceptions accordingly in order to successfully conform is

something that I find myself doing often. One particular incident of this, though fairly

insignificant, happened recently when I was on Tiktok. One particular Tiktok creator

came up frequently for me, who was famous on Tiktok for creating content about her

adorable twin toddlers. I was not a fan by any means, but I enjoyed her occasionally
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The Bandwagon Effect in Social Media

coming up on my For You Page; she seemed nice enough and focused much of the

content around her daughter. The comments were always extremely positive and she

seemed like a very loved creator. I was on Reddit, when a suggestion for the Tiktok

creator’s Subreddit came up, and I decided to click on it. What I found certainly shocked

me; this creator, who seemed so loved on Tiktok, was absolutely hated on Reddit. There

were accusations of neglect and child exploitation, rabid fans who were enabled by the

creator, and lots of snarky comments about nearly everything the creator did. The more I

read, the more I felt a disdain growing for the creator. Was that a result of me having new

information about the problematic behaviours of the creator, or was that a result of the

bandwagon effect? More than likely a mix of both, but either way, due to the

overwhelming negative perception of that creator, I no longer watch her content.

All in all, knowledge acquisition and information are frequently learned through

social observation, and the bandwagon effect is usually a huge influence on how these

social observations are perceived. Social media has made is all the easier to socialize and

interact with huge groups of people at once, which makes someone even more susceptible

to giving into herd mentality and groupthink. While not necessarily a bad thing to adopt

behaviours and thoughts that large groups hold, one must be aware of why they’ve

adopted it, and whether it truly has any merit outside of a large number of likes.
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The Bandwagon Effect in Social Media

References

Burger, J. M. (2001). Normative Influence. ScienceDirect. Retrieved June 11, 2022, from

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/normative-influence

Muchnik, L., Aral, S., & Taylor, S. J. (2013). Social Influence Bias: A Randomized

Experiment. Science, 341(6146), 647-651. 10.1126/science.1240466

Rural Health Information Hub. (n.d.). Social Cognitive Theory. Retrieved June 11, 2022,

from https://www.ruralhealthinfo.org/toolkits/health-promotion/2/theories-and-

models/social-cognitive

Stangor, C. (2022). Principles of Social Psychology (1st International H5P ed.).

FlatWorld.