The Diffusion of Social Movements and Economic Decisions
The concept of diffusion can explain the behavior of networks in response to many new ideas ranging from social trends, such as trying the new dance on Tik-Tok, and economic trends in purchasing new products, to political decisions like voting. In light of this unprecedented year filled with the nationwide BLM movement, a monumental bull market, an aggressive political election, and a fast-spreading virus, I thought it would be interesting to try to understand one of these trends through the lens of diffusion. More specifically, in this analysis I will study the concepts of diffusion and the threshold model through the BLM movement on social media.
Diffusion operates via the threshold model to describe the necessary conditions to creating a cascade. According to this threshold theorem, people within a social network require a certain number, or a threshold, of their friends to exhibit a behavior before they are willing to do so as well. On social media, behaviors like following a certain celebrity or participating in a viral hashtag depend largely on the activities of our friends. Social media sites such as Instagram actually capitalize on this threshold model by displaying the number of likes next to a photograph and the number of followers to a username.
One critical component of this model of diffusion is that adoption of new behavior depends entirely on the structure of the network. Large clusters filled with embedded ties will likely not become influenced by outside behavior, unless one of their internal members decides to try the new trend. This density can explain the coexistence of multiple similar products, as dense clusters will continue to use the product that is favored within their immediate friend group.
In the context of social dilemmas, Granovetter utilizes the concept of pluralistic ignorance to describe the diffusion of network protests. Pluralistic ignorance is the concept by which people think that everyone in their network believes something that they in reality do not. This lack of understanding of the beliefs of our peers explains the need for a threshold. Without foresight into whether their thoughts will receive support, people often conceal their sensitive and polarizing beliefs. However, once people saw a threshold of their friends, the initial adopters, expressing disgust towards the treatment of the African American community, more began speaking up about the unnecessary police brutality. Before long, this movement passed its tipping point, creating a nationwide fight against the systemic racism within the US.
BBC explains that the use of social media helped this movement gain the support it needed to spread around the nation. The phrase “Black Lives Matter” was actually coined in 2013, but the networked publics spheres of social media allowed for this counter-public to better voice their opinion. An analysis of the BLM movement shows that the previously deemed slacktivism of hashtags has actually improved the resource mobilization and resonant frames that were necessary to bring this movement to the front pages of mass media in the form of peaceful protests and political forums. The utilization of social media created the platform for a social movement admits a worldwide pandemic, evidently transforming the diffusion of social movements.
This one example of diffusion within the sphere of social movements brings to light the key components of network density and thresholds while also exemplifying the very nature of humanity to create networks. As a social species, membership in networks is an essential human need, and this membership holds certain benefits and risks. For example, having a large social network filled with weak and strong ties provides us with a dynamic set of information. However, networks can also lead us to making decisions based solely on the actions of others. As we have studied in information sharing, a cascade of hundreds of people can form based on observing the poor decisions of only two initial buyers. This diffusion of product purchasing is actually studied by Fortune 500 corporations. In fact, companies spend billions of dollars to gain insight into the wants of their customers as well as their position within their social network. Through this phenomenon called viral marketing, corporations attempt to satisfy their target customers’ latest needs to create a viral spread of their products, ensuring their place past the tipping point that separates successful companies from outdated businesses.
Throughout this course, networks and their diffusion of information have been utilized to explain human behavior. I hope to take the information that I have learned about the influencers of my own decision making to more closely scrutinize the behavior of my clusters, more strategically participate in markets, and to challenge my limited perspective by utilizing the variety of social groups that exist among my weak ties.
Sources:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53273381
https://sociology.stanford.edu/publications/threshold-models-collective-behavior
Margolin, D. and Matias, N. (2020). [PowerPoint slides]. Presented in COMM 2450: Communication and Technology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
Great article, thank you for sharing, let me learn a lot