Information consistent with listeners’ expectations spreads while discrepant facts get suppressed

Evidence

Other related research has shown that group members often tailor their communications to suit what they think or believe the targets of their communication efforts want to hear, need to hear, or can readily comprehend (Manis, Cornell, & Moore, 1974). Higgins (1999) characterizes this general process as “audience tuning.” Because of audience tuning, information tends to be only selectively presented. Along related lines, Burt and Knez (1995) demonstrated that information tends to diffuse within networks so that information consistent with what communicators think their targets want to hear gets amplified, whereas expectation-inconsistent or discrepant information tends to be dampened or dropped. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1983

Categorization

• XREF: A mechanism-level precursor to stereotype-consistent information flow: expectation-consistent info propagates, discrepant drops, mirroring confirmation-bias dynamics in the Allport thread. — connects to: Information and broadcast amplification neutralize the very events they extend. — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 293; An echo chamber requires both homophily and biased information diffusion — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 442
• SEED: Angle: ‘audience tuning’ as the pre-9/11 structural mechanism — how motive alone (shared desire to prevent attacks) failed because networks preferentially propagated only expected information.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1983