How Facebook and Twitter affects Political Participation with respect to Strong and Weak ties
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10584609.2017.1334726
This paper discusses how the choice of social media platforms (Facebook and Twitter) affects political participation in protests with respect to strong-tie and weak-tie networks. More specifically, the paper tests two hypotheses using data collected on protests in Chile. The paper proposes that Facebook is best suited for strong-tie networks while Twitter is more efficient for weak-tie networks.
Social media has become a popular medium for facilitating protest movements in recent times. In general, social networks allow for the quick spread of information as well as being able to reach a large audience within a very short timeframe. Such qualities of social media have no doubt allowed for popular movements to gain momentum. However, the way in which each particular social media platform influences its users to participate in political events is very different. The paper explains how strong-tie networks (networks in which connected people are more intimately related) can cause social pressure to be more politically proactive. In other words, one is more likely to participate politically if one’s close friends and family members are involved in such activities – one’s emotional connection with these people greatly influences how one behaves. On the other hand, the paper also explains how weak-tie networks (networks in which connected people are just acquaintances) also cause for members of the network to participate politically. The paper argues that weak-tie networks allow for a larger and more diverse range of people to be linked together. As a result, information is able to spread to a larger audience as well as causing information to spread to those who were not previously aware of particular events. The paper concludes that in Facebook, strong-tie networks cause for more members to engage in political activity while in Twitter, weak-tie networks were more effective in accomplishing the same. The paper argues that Facebook’s format allows for people to have more strong-ties, since users need to friend each other back and that users typically only connect with those who are either friends or family members. On the other hand, Twitter’s format allows for weak-tie networks to be more prominent, since users typically write only short messages that are easier to transmit throughout a network. Furthermore, Twitter’s followee/follower format means that those who have many followers (many weak-ties) are able to spread information to a large audience, without requiring the user to become a follower of the followees (which would be more representative of Facebook with its more intimate two-way connections).
This article is very relevant to the class discussion on ego networks, strong, and weak ties. In particular, for one’s ego network on Facebook, one would expect many strong ties as we would have a cluster of nodes in which all the nodes would have strong connections with each other (corresponding to close friends). At the same time, for one’s ego network on Twitter, one would expect many weak-ties as we would expect nodes that consist of just acquaintances. Furthermore, we can see how the Strong Triadic Closure property might come into play. For ego networks on Facebook, if one has strong ties between two friends, then if the ego network satisfies the STC property, those two friends would also have a strong tie. This makes sense as on Facebook, one’s network typically consists of groups of friends. At the same time, if an ego network on Twitter satisfies STC property and some node has at least two strong ties, then we know that any local bridge must be a weak tie. This makes sense as in Twitter, users are connected in a less intimate but more spread out network, with many users serving as “bridges” to other distinct parts of the network. Such users may not necessarily be close friends but ultimately help connect other users to areas they may not have previously been exposed to.