One Step Farther Away from Freedom—Networks Theory Facilitating Social Influence
As digitalization seeps more and more thoroughly through our lives, the information that we receive and interact with can be manipulated more easily than ever. That Facebook and Google track our every move online to sell us ads is no doubt a cliché nowadays—so much so that people simply started accepting the fact and trying to learn to embrace the world without privacy. This attitude leaves us with a susceptibility to parties who are interested in manipulating public opinion—political parties, government, cooperations, etc. This article, in particular, despite its presumably good intention, points out several ways in which the dynamics of influence can be utilized to efficiently accomplish tasks for “decision-makers”.
People seem to care a lot about celebrities like Kanye West or Katy Perry, who has some 100 million followers on Twitter. However, they actually have less an influence on our daily decisions, like clothes choices, than our direct social environment does. This, as the author points out, is a common false image of “social influence”: the size of one’s network or the number of time their contents are shared does not actually influence others’ behaviors. So how should we make sense of this idea of “social influence”?
The answer is Networks. The article analyzed three significant positions in a network structure that may influence particular behaviors. Individuals who act as bridges are influential in the context of a conflict or a political election; individuals with highly centralized positions are important when power dynamics are at play; individuals on the periphery are also beneficial, since they more susceptible to influence and open to new ideas; highly connected individuals are more likely to engage in groupthink. Behaviors spread through those individuals with different properties, and with triadic closure, cascade into a large-scale social change.
With the network model and theories incorporated into the mechanism of social influence, the article suggested three strategies for “policy-makers and businesses” to contribute to “the wide good”: facilitate the exposure of people with desired behavior to the public; guide the tone of future discussions with small groups of initial supporters; and use material incentives to exploit the potentials of the massive network.
Indeed, these methods are powerful tools to achieve “political, economic and social agendas”, as argued by the article. They can be used to help people in cases of crisis, or activate people in protest movements—for good causes. But on the other hand, there are ethical issues worth considering when we let people and organizations holding significant power deploy these nearly “social engineering” strategies. The public opinion may indeed be fragile, but we as individuals need to stay aware and try to stay independent in forming opinions and ideas. After all, that is what makes us us.