Network Diffusion through Social Media Platforms
Throughout this semester, we have learned this general idea that an individual’s choices often depend on the actions and beliefs of other people, giving us ideas like network effects and information cascades. On this topic of how new behaviors, opinions, and technologies spread in a social network where people influence their friends to adopt new ideas or practices, we go into the concept of the diffusion of networks or innovations.
Studies of the diffusion of networks are often linked with informational effects or direct-benefit effects. One way this person to person influence was studied was through informational effects where as a person observed the actions of their network neighbors, they too gain information to try out this innovation as well. Another way this concept on diffusion has been studied was interpreting these interactions through direct-benefits and how the more your network neighbors adopt some behavior or technology, it provides you a greater benefit to adopt it as well. Overall, the main idea of the diffusion of networks is that as people make decisions based on what their network neighbors do, a certain pattern of behavior can spread throughout this network as well.
Applying these concepts into the modern world, we know that technology has drastically changed over recent decades. With easier ways to form social networks especially due to the rising of various social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter that have millions of users, it has become a way for information to travel quickly and be seen by many. In a way, individuals form an intricate network with their followers as they can be influenced by the content of the posts or information that is shared in stories by their friends. Therefore, the forming of social movements and stances on politics or other topics are created and spread rapidly. A strong example of this could be seen by the recent presidential election and as a frequent user of Instagram, I saw my network neighbors or the people I follow post about their support for a certain candidate and as a person who’s never been really part of politics, it influenced me to do the same and adopt the ideas too.
For this blog post, I will be focusing on the recent Black Lives Matter movement and how the diffusion of networks contributed towards the popularity and the support for this movement especially in this past year. The Black Lives Matter movement actually started almost a decade ago in 2013 when the death of Travyon Martin happened and a woman named Alicia Garza started the term “black lives matter” in a Facebook post shortly after. As social media platforms weren’t as big as they were now, although large protests have happened in the past, support for the movement grew exponentially this year after the death of George Floyd especially with the technology we have now. I myself have witnessed it first hand because as I browsed Instagram and Facebook, my network neighbors or my friends started to post on their stories, make Instagram posts, and put out a lot of hashtags. Even within my own friend group, as one of my friends started to show their support for the movement, we all began to post as well and adopt this pattern of behavior. I didn’t realize it then, but after covering the material in this class and reading the textbook, I realized that within my own social network and my neighbors, I was influenced and adopting this movement as well.
Technology and the internet have a strong impact on how people communicate and influence each other. Observing the various movements that have happened in past years, especially the Black Lives Matter movement, and gathering everything I’ve learned this semester about this course, one can understand that the interactions between people can really influence others to adopt a certain pattern of behavior and make it continue to spread as individuals observe the actions of the people around them. A thing to understand is these people to people interactions don’t have to be thought of as a global population, but significant changes can even happen within a local social network in a diffusion of networks.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04017.pdf
https://faculty.washington.edu/kstarbi/BLM-IRA-Camera-Ready.pdf
https://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks-book/networks-book-ch19.pdf
https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a32728194/black-lives-matter-timeline-movement/