Politics in Social Networks – Extreme Viewpoints Shine Through
http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21678828-few-social-media-stars-among-europes-politicians-are-centrists-extreme-tweeting
Facebook and Twitter have emerged as popular outlets for people to voice their political opinions, especially now in the months leading up to the election. Facebook and Twitter posts from groups and people affiliated with the far left and populist right are receiving more “likes” and shares of their posts than their mainstream counterparts. Both the politicians seeking election and their constituent supporters are clamoring for attention in an attempt to persuade voters and possibly for the joy of inciting a reaction from the supporters on the other side of the aisle. The article cites a couple reasons for the popularity of these more polar opinions on social networks. One of them is that these opinions are prolific, people and organizations are posting these types of opinions very frequently and often more than their mainstream counterparts. The other reason is that social media tends to reward starkness because populists, for example, are spurred on by a sense “victimhood” and tend to get more fired up than the mainstream.
As we’ve all experienced and also learned in class, social networks are comprised of close friends as well as more distant friends represented by strong and weak ties on a network graph. We learned in problem 6 of the first homework that in a study commissioned by Facebook, posts have a higher probability of being shared by people who are distant friends than people who are closer friends. So given the widespread diffusion of posts of extreme political views, it makes sense that these posts must be shared and spread by distant friends more often than close friends. This phenomenon raises some interesting questions about the motives behind people posting and sharing extremist political opinions on Facebook. Are they trying to convert people with opposing views to switch to their viewpoint? Do they simply want the attention from posting? Possibly they may want to introduce their close friends to an interesting article or post that aligns with their shared political beliefs? Since weak ties are a decent source of information, people have a higher probability of sharing posts from their distant friends and thus proliferating the opinions.
It’s interesting how the more extreme political opinions tend to crowd out the more mainstream ones in social media, and I wonder how much of the recent rise in populist political movements in Europe and the United States can be attributed to the dissemination of these opinions throughout social media.