Harnessing My Network For The Common Good
AKA: I Think I Just Found the Key Point of My Final Project.
Lately my posts have been focusing on how I could get people to take what they see online and actually do something in the real world. For some reason, I acted like it was some foreign concept that we have yet to discover and harness to help rid the world of clicktivism. Clearly, I’m delusional because I’ve been going about the problem ALL WRONG! What made me see the light? This book:
In it, authors Christakis and Fowler emphasize how we are all connected and how important those connections are in our lives because they determine what decisions we make and how we are influenced and how others influence us as well. We have obvious connections in our life: family, friends, and coworkers, and all of these connections “offer opportunities to influence and be influenced” (p. 22). However, the authors take it a step further saying that while everyone in the world is connected by six degrees of separation, we also have an influence of three degrees:
Everything we do or say tends to ripple through our network, having an impact on our friends (one degree), our friends’ friends (two degrees), and even our friends’ friends’ friends (three degrees). Our influence gradually dissipates and ceases to have a noticeable effect on people beyond the social frontier that lies at three degrees of separation. Likewise, we are influenced by friends within three degrees but generally not by those beyond (p. 28).
So, if we each have an influence of three degrees, with enough people in our network, we can affect/influence a large amount of people and in turn they can influence more people and so on. In the book, the authors cover both the negative and positive impacts of this influence on the network and individuals. But, they remark that through the network, people tend to be more altruistic because “people very often ignore their selfish tendencies when interacting with people to whom they are connected” (p. 218).
This is the key to combatting clicktivism. We need to consciously decide to act and in turn it will influence others to do so also. And in turn, if enough people in your network are visibly performing acts of service, participating in protests, debating on politics etc., then you would be more likely to do the same thing:
[O]nce networks are established, altruistic acts–from random acts of kindness to cascades of organ donation–can spread through them. Charity is just one example of the goodness that flows through networks… fund-raising efforts often seem designed to capitalize on processes of social influence and notions of community embeddedness…. Indeed, surveys of people who have given money to diverse causes find that roughly 80 percent did so because they were asked to by someone they knew well (p. 296-7).
It is through our social networks that we can spread various acts, causes, awareness, etc. and help make a greater impact on our network and in turn society at large (if we have enough people in our network that have been influenced by our actions). We are most conscious of our connections and the network through the visibleness of it on our various social media outlets. On Facebook we have various friends that we are connected to, and we can see “mutual friends” that we have in common with those we are already connected to when we get a new friend request. On Twitter, we have various followers and can see who our followers are connected to through their retweets and their “Follow Friday” recommendations. The real key, according to Christakis and Fowler, is that to positively affect and change your community, you need to “make good behavior visible… you must be the change you wish to see in your social network” (p. 3 of the “Reading Group Guide” included in a fancy schmancy version of the book).
My Project
This is where my project idea comes into play. I would like to make a change in my community, and even my network, in the hopes that people take what I have done online and be influenced to spread charity through their own networks as well. My idea is to create a place online where people can upload a picture of themselves doing an act of service. It can be as little or as big as they would like, but it has to be some kind of service and they have to take a picture of them doing it. My goal is to get 1000 pictures that I will then create a video of to upload to YouTube (and embed/link it to other sites) in the hopes that the video of others will see it and be influenced to do something similar in their own network.
The place I decided to use is Facebook. Why? Well because it is the most convenient way to reach my network. I currently have 948 friends on Facebook. If each person submits two pictures, I’d have over 1500 pictures. I know not everyone will post two pictures, and some may not post any. But, it is my hope that enough of them will contribute and then pass it on to their friends that I’ll be able to collect the number of pictures I want. And I’m more likely to get many people to submit pictures because as a center of a large social network, “more people are willing to act altruistically toward [me] than those at the margins” (p. 299). Meaning, I’d have more people willing to help a sistah out on this here project. Just have a look*:
My Visual Facebook Network
It almost looks like a little globe huh? If I can make a change that effects my little globe (that of doing service in the real world to combat clicktivism)**, then think of what the little globe could do to effect the world’s globe? I’m so excited for the possibilities, and I think that being connected and using your network to help influence others for good is a key to triumphing over slacktivism. If others are actually standing up and doing things in the real world for a cause, rather than in name only, their network will do the same as well, and in turn making the world a better place.
Now to choose whether to make a Facebook page, group, or event (or all of the above?). Oh the possibilities!
*Note: If you’d like to see a visual representation of your own Facebook network, connect to the Facebook app available at the book’s site (click here).
**Note: I realize there are already clicktivism tendencies inherent in my project and use of Facebook. However, I’m hoping that as the semester and project progresses, I’ll have addressed these problems and found what works (and what doesn’t) and have adapted my project accordingly.
missnesbitpro
