Movie Reviews and Cascading Behavior

http://expertvoices.nsdl.org/cornell-info204/2008/04/29/cascading-behavior-from-the-world-of-movie-reviews/

This article talks about the effect of movie reviews on social decisions. People who follow or read the reviews will traditionally follow the advice of the reviewers. Whether or not you heard a move was good or bad from a friend, you may be influenced by the critique written on rotten tomatoes more. The effect of reviewers on getting people to see the movie then has people talk about the movie and MORE people see it. This effect is a good example of social behaviors that result from cascades.

The article makes a good point proving that movie reviews are indeed a great example of cascading behavior, but any kind of review typically is--especially when the reviewer can reach a lot of people with his/her influence.

A great example of this is with books and Oprah Winfrey. Whenever Oprah reads a book she claims she "loves," she has her book club highlight the book and essentially convinces millions of women to go out and buy the book and read along and discuss with the show's other followers the main topics of the book. A great example of this was with Steinbeck's East of Eden. Before Oprah, East of Eden to many was unheard of or definitely not a book worth reading. However, when Oprah decided to use it for her book club, millions of copies flew off the shelves, and it was praised as an amazing novel. So, it is clear that cascading behavior with reviews is apparent regardless of what is getting reviewed. We will, after all, go out and buy almost anything if enough people tell us it was good/useful...even things we might not all need.

I think both are good examples of information cascade. I know I always use rotten tomatoes before I see a movie and knowing that a movie has a good review will probably make me like it more. But what I also think is interesting is the difference between the short run and the long run. Let say either rotten tomatoes or Oprah give a good review of something and it is in fact is really bad. Though in this case it will cause an information cascade, it will actually decrease the trust in rotten tomatoe's or Oprah's judgment and thus decrease the chance they will be listened to in the future and decrease the chance of a future information cascade. Therefore, though a bad source might cause an information cascade at the beginning, it will stop pretty quickly causing information cascades because people will learn they are bad source of information. Sites and people like rotten tomatoes and Oprah are still around and are so popular because they continue to provide good information about a product that people agree with (thought somethings they do mess up and cause information cascades).

This could be modeled by a rich-get-richer model. If a lot of reviewers like a movie, another reviewer may be more likely to give a positive review to that movie ("linking" to it). Of all the movies that come out in a given period of time, a few may happen to randomly become more popular cause the first few reviewers to see them all happen to like them. This may lead subsequent reviewers to be more likely to not only bother to review the movie, but also to give it positive reviews.

This blog post exemplifies a pressing issue that studio producers either love or hate. With movie reviews, people can start an information cascade and influence the decisions of a lot of people based on their opinion. For instance, when I saw the Wolverine trailer months ago I remember saying to myself, "Wow that looks awesome. I can't wait to see it." It has been out in theaters for a couple weeks now and I have yet to see it. Why? Information Cascade.

Websites like www.rottentomatoes.com are at the forefront of information cascades. By reviewing the movie before the general public, critics can completely influence how many people go and see the movie. It only takes a couple critics to label a bad movie before the cascade occurs. Eventually the opinions of a few critics trickle down to the masses and soon everyone starts to think the exact same thing as the critics, without even seeing the movie! How often have you heard, "I don't really want to see it anymore, I heard it got bad reviews." All the time people discount the potential of a movie because a couple people didn't like it. If enough people tell you that a particular movie is bad, then why would you see it?

Actually, as I was checking rottentomatoes in case any movies coming out this weekend got good reviews, it was immediately apparent that "Rich Get Richer" Phenomenon was actually influencing the ratings on the site. A few weeks ago, I looked at Star Trek's rating and remember it being 92%, but when I checked yesterday, it was at 96%. Also, Angels and Demons was around 43%, but it's now at just 38%. Previously, I had never thought that the tomatometer changed, but I clicked on "how does the tomatometer work?" to see how it was calculated. Apparently, it is the percentage of approval ratings from Rotten Tomatoes-certified critics. What was interesting though, how apparently, movies that get good reviews get better ratings over time while those with bad reviews get worse ratings over time. You'd think that critics would review movies without bias if they could, and that would cause the ratings to remain constant or near-constant over time, but this is definitely not the case. I'm sure a critic reviewing the movie after his colleagues have approved of it will be more inclined to rate it positively even though that is not the best case scenario for moviegoers looking for an unbiased review from a bonafide critic.