[1]- Robert M. Bond, Christopher J. Fariss, Jason J. Jones, Adam D. I. Kramer, Cameron Marlow, Jaime E. Settle and James H. Fowler, “A 61-million-person experiment in social influence and political mobilization”
[2]- Adam D. I. Kramer, Jamie E. Guillory, and Jeffrey T. Hancock, “Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks”
SUMMARY:
Both these papers talk about influence of social networks on individual’s decision making. The first one talks about ‘desirability’ during the US election: I Voted Button whereas a page that gave users information regarding the election (polling booths location,etc) to check user engagement. It was no surprise that they found the I Voted Button more prominent. The second paper manipulates (in a controlled environment) the number of user posts in sad and happy moods and then studies the kind of post a user, under this influence posts. They found that the users who had been exposed to positive posts tended to put in positive posts themselves.
REFLECTIONS:
Mob mentality has been a problem since the time of Caesar and the power to influence and sway it comes with much responsibility. The first question that one would ask is if the second study ([2]), while within the User Terms and Agreement on Facebook, an ethical one? Should it be ok to toy with users’ emotions in the name of science? In our everyday lives, we may be led to read various kinds of posts that may influence to behave one way or the other, and while this is again a huge bone of contention, should we allow social media giants to control what comes on our feed to give us a largely positive experience? Also, in their experiments, the authors don’t seem to consider how positive or negative a post is. An intense positive post can often drain out a lot of negative emotion. This can also be harnessed to useful ends by charities and other NGOs that aim at helping people. Many sad stories followed up by a positive one (caused by users online) can influence other people to help and also ‘restore faith in humanity’.
The first study([1]) on the other hand has probably given rise to a lot of positive movements on Facebook. When people see their friends donating and supporting causes and movements, they feel the need to do it themselves as well, whatever the motivation may be.
