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Does more friends on Facebook mean greater social influence?

Does having more friends on Facebook mean you have more “social influence”? Not necessarily. Vyacheslav Polonski, a network scientist at the Oxford Internet Institute, wrote about the implications of the way our network is structured on social influence. His research revolves around the idea that the people with the most influence may not be individuals on Time’s “100 Most Influential People” list — he digs deeper to find out who actually influences what we do on a daily basis. For instance, he mentions that Kanye West may be a highly influential person, but are individuals actually going to change their behaviors because of what he says? Polonski doesn’t think so. He suggests, instead, that we as individuals are generally influenced to change our behaviors by people in our local, smaller network — in particular, we are more influenced by our local network in regards to our daily decisions. He also mentions that Facebook for instance is identifying local influencers in social networks, in the hopes of finding an “army of ordinary people who exert a degree of influence over their peers”. This definitely implies that marketers should start speaking with these “local influencers”, rather than those with a huge following. Polonski mentions that while those with a large network may reach more people, the amount of actual influence, that is the ability to change another individual’s actions, is much more limited compared to the degree that individuals in one’s local network possesses.

An example used to illustrate Polonski’s points for instance is thinking about the likelihood that someone will share a post that you post. Individuals within your local and immediate network will be more likely to share your post than those that you are only weakly acquainted with. However, as the theory of triadic closure states, it is certainly possible for mutual friends in your network to also be influenced by your actions. Therefore, through triadic closure, it is definitely a possibility to reach individuals beyond your own immediate network, however, influence does have to start within the smaller network in order to be powerful. Ultimately, those strong ties will enable you to reach a larger network. As Polonski states, “new behaviors can spread from person to person and evolve into a cascade, resulting in large-scale social change”.

Article Referenced:

Hacking the system of social influence: How can we use the mechanics of influence to drive behaviour for public good?

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