What is more powerful: more followers or following?
In chapter 12, “The goal is to understand power not just as a property of agents in economic settings, or in legal or political settings, but in social interaction more generally — in the roles people play in groups of friends, in communities, or in organizations. A particular focus is on the way in which power is manifested between pairs of people linked by edges in a larger social network.” When applying this to social media metrics, ones number of following determines the level of popularity and (arguably) influence/power they have within their community. If we look at social media, such as Instagram, as a network, the node refers to a profile page and the links refer to the group of followers (in-links) and following (out-links). Nodes or profile pages are able to communicate and interact with each other through links across networks. For example, my group of followers all have in-links towards my page, forming my own cluster. However, some of my followers follow other profile pages that I am not following, and therefore they have out-links to different clusters. Overall, social media is a conglomerate of clusters.
An overarching question is how power varies depending on the types of links within a node’s network. In the social media context, the amount of power I have to influence my cluster/community depends on the strength of my in/out links and the number of in/out links. In the social media context, a weak link refers to one where I follow them (or they follow me) because of a mutual and nothing else. I don’t truly know them and will most likely never actually form a meaningful relationship in real life with them. On the other hand, a strong link refers to someone I follow (or they follow me) because we have a real relationship in real life. However, when we return to the topic of power, the strength of links (weak or strong) does not really matter when it comes to spreading messages because social media is a platform that distributes information systematically: to your following network (and outside if your account is public). It barely factors in the strengths (at least not supported with the current technology). Therefore, the power of a node’s ability to spread information rests in the number of out vs in links present in ones network. More specifically, in-links are followers who will receive the information that is announced from the node. Therefore, having a higher number of in-links is fundamentally more powerful for a node within a social media network context.