Organizing Information Provision in Decentralized Groups

As groups grow in size, they face new inefficiencies that affect their capacity to handle information. Groups often cope by adopting hierarchy institutions that help organize information from the top down, but individual actors may also try to correct inefficient flow of information from the bottom up. Why do people make these contributions when the costs of group-level information efficiency are concentrated while its benefits are diffused? Can they actually change how attention is allocated at the group level? We answer these questions using data from Hong Kong’s Anti-extradition Protest of 2019. Our analysis reveals that people step up when the efficiency of information provision is under threat, and that bottom-up actions are significantly more effective than top-down actions in shaping collective attention allocation.