Cascading Behavior in Today’s Network
Facebook. Twitter. Instagram. Snapchat. In today’s continuously changing and developing society, there are hundreds of ways to interact with others whether they are Cornell students or friends from other countries. Among the many social networking services, I am going to talk about Facebook in regard to a recent tragic event and how cascading behavior has occurred in the network that we dwell in.
My sincere pray goes to people in Paris and to people of whom they suffer from tragic events. Recently, just as 9/11 shocked every people in the world, so too IS’s cruel act surprised everyone across the globe and dominantly took the first pages of the social media. On last Friday, November 13th, Islamic State (IS) violently attacked Paris and brutally killed an innumerable number of citizens of France; terror attacks in six different locations in Paris killed more than a hundred people in the city. The attackers involved in the shooting and bombings were the ISIS terrorists who are believed to move into Europe as refugees from Syria. After the incident, European governments and the governments in many other countries have strived to ensure tight security forces and to strengthen monitoring of foreigners against further terror attacks. According to ISIS, the next target is the United States. The next target can be done by a person who lives next to you. All countries are staying on their toes, making sure any suspicious movements are not neglected.
Less than about two hours after the attack in Paris, Facebook launched a short campaign to change your profile pictures with colors of France, demonstrating a sincere condolences to who were damaged and unfortunately passed away. It seemed to have a debate first, whether “marketing” Facebook through such tragic event is appropriate. Despite Facebook’s honesty and wish to send condolences through its website in which billions of users in today’s society use, the campaign received a number of criticism from many. However, people were able to observe a process of cascade of changing profile pictures from the original to the colored. After a day of tragic event, more than several profile pictures were colored in red, white, and blue. After a cue from several people who decided to support Facebook’s intent to show its sympathy toward the people, many have followed a “crowd” altering their profile pictures.
Although the cascade was not completed, it was very interesting to observe how a process of cascade carries out. It seems that it will be challenging to experience a perfectly completed cascade in such an enormous size of social networking service because some may not be familiar with what has happened (a lack of information) and some may not agree with what Facebook wants to do even though they may observe what others are doing (personal preferences).