More Social Networking and Political Movements
Barnes’ theory, that people didn’t have to know each other personally to influence the way decisions get made in a community, was adopted and expanded by scientists and mathematicians trying to make sense of the connections that bind people in larger populations. Stanley Milgram, a Yale social psychologist, made the theory famous with his “Small World Experiment” in 1967, otherwise known as the idea of, “Six Degrees of Separation” — a term Milgram himself never used.
Milgram conducted an experiment in which he attempted to connect two random people in different geographic areas through a chain of intermediary acquaintances. He did this by sending several letters to random people in Omaha, Neb., Wichita, Kan., and Boston, Mass. He asked each recipient to send the letter on to a target recipient in Boston. If they did not know this person personally, the first recipients were asked to forward the letter to someone they knew who would be more likely to know the target recipient. Of the letters that arrived at their destination, Milgram and his team calculated the average chain of intermediaries was about six people long — hence the idea that everyone in the world is separated from everyone else by just six degrees.
But Milgram’s model only works to connect people who already have some link, however fragile. The Internet breaks down those barriers—it creates networks almost automatically.
Therein lies the political power of online political organizing. Social scientist Charles Tilly writes that groups attempting to change their societies can only succeed if the organizers make alliances outside of their own communities — with such actors as the media, with politicians or with other groups who share similar aims.
Previous generations have accomplished such brokering with letter-writing campaigns, sit-ins or rock concerts. Such demonstrations require a lot of manpower and sometimes wasted energy. The Internet accomplishes the same thing, but diffuses ideas to unpredictable recipients almost as fast as a person can type.
In this way, the Internet allows political organizers to take advantage of what mathematician Mark S. Granovetter called, “The strength of weak ties.” In his seminal 1973 paper of the same name, Granovetter said it is not direct personal links that make a network powerful. Rather, groups that can connect with strangers who have their own networks, their own goals, and their own worldviews, have the most lasting impact on societies.
According to Granovetter’s theory, the online anti-war movement will succeed only if its organizers can connect with people far outside their own circles. Traditional demonstrations — the sit-ins and rock concerts favored by previous generations — still have their place in social movements of the digital generation. But today, the energy propelling them often starts here: on the Internet.
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Continue to a video clip of a New York anti-war protest organized on Facebook
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Posted by Team B 3:03 PM