Staying tight in Fraternities/Sororities
The linked article describes serious harassment took place in many Greek life organizations at the Binghamton University. According to the testimonies cited in the article, the new members to the fraternities or sororities have to tolerate several pledging “ceremonies” in order to be regarded as an official part of the group. The degree of pledging varies from running barefoot through a bed of rocks to being force-fed a mixture of foods. The consequences of such night events are putting off all schoolwork and being placed at an emergency for injuries. Then, the question arises, why do the new members keep showing up on these events, instead of giving up on the membership of the group? The main reason that the new members bear all the torturing-equivalent activities is that the members seek for security within the group by forming positive relationship to everyone else in the group. They know that once they fit into the group and make friends with everyone, their position within the group will be secure, and it is the stability of relationship that all the members in the group want. Such desire urges the new members to tolerate the pledging activities.
The figure below illustrates the situation described above. Applying this to a network point of view, all the existing members of the group are represented in the left side of the figure, and the new members are positioned to the right. All existing members have positive relationships to each other, (which is what the new members hope to obtain at last) and all new members have positive relationships to one another. Let’s consider the specific relationships of A, B, and N1. Existing members A and B have positive relationships. N1 is about to form a relationship to both A and B. Three possible scenarios are: (+,+), (+,-), and (-,-). If N1 does everything that A and B command to do, the (+,+) relationship will form. The triangle has all positive edges, and the friendship of A, B, and N1 are stable and balanced. If N1 does some of the activities but does not follow to what B tells him to do, i.e. refusing the force-feeding of a mixture of foods, (+,-) relationship will form. That is, N1 will be liked by some existing members but hated by some other existing members. The relationship is unbalanced because there is an unstable tension between N1 and some existing members. Accordingly N1’s position within the group is not secure. The final case, N1 refuses all the fledging activities for the membership; the triangle relationship is will balanced, but there is no meaning for N1 to stay within the group if everyone hates him. Thus if N1 wishes to remain in the group and obtain a secure position within the group, N1 is most likely to follow all the demands of the existing members, as described in the article, arousing some serious safety and moral issues.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/76485.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443890304578008553707187228.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bianca-bosker/facebook-gilt-groupe-spanx_b_1889993.html?ref=topbar
May 2012 was a big month for Facebook when Mark Zuckerberg decided to make the company public. A huge factor in this choice was how to deal with marketing. Facebook was developed to be a social network sharing real people stories and feelings. Going public gives marketers a stronger presence, something that can be ill perceived by Facebook users, who would rather the stories coming up on their news feeds be that of their friends and acquaintances than that of companies. As Facebook continues to establish itself as a public company with new policies regarding advertizing on Facebook, users’ reception of this major change becomes more prevalent. Now, Facebook is charging a minium of $5 for marketers to post consumer offers. Facebook is littered by posts of ‘who bought what’ from various websites and coupon offers from various businesses.
One could hypothesize the decisions regarding publicizing Facebook and marketing could be simplified by game theory. Player 1 is Facebook. They have the decision to make the company public and allow companies to advertise on Facebook, or to make Facebook a social network only. Player 2 to is the individual users. They have the option to use Facebook or not to use Facebook. The users are a large group with varying degrees of acceptance of having corporations involved in facebook. Many users appreciate this one-stop-social-stop, while others reject the idea of tainting a personal social network. As a result, if a nash equilibrium is possible, it would be a mixed strategy rather than a pure strategy. There are p # of people who would welcome marketers and 1-p # of people who would reject them. Concurrently, Facebook cannot be a public company without some sort of money making strategy.