THE TECHNO TIMES
Technology bites – bit/bit
Were All Those Rainbow Profile Photos Another Facebook
Experiment?
Facebook, you may have noticed, turned into a
rainbow-drenched spectacle following the Supreme Court’s decision Friday that
same-sex marriage is a Constitutional right.
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| FB users turned rainbow to support the SC Verdict |
By overlaying their profile photos with a rainbow filter,
Facebook users began celebrating in a way we haven't seen since March 2013,
when 3 million people changed their profile images to a red equals sign—the
logo of the Human Rights Campaign—as a way to support marriage equality. This
time, Facebook provided a simple way to turn profile photos rainbow-colored.
More than one million people changed their profile in the first few hours,
according to the Facebook spokesperson William Nevius, and the number continues
to grow.
In March, the company published a paper that got little
outside attention at the time, they looked at what factors contributed to a
person changing his or her profile photo to the red equals sign,research that
reveals some of the questions Facebook might be asking now. But the implication
of their research is much larger: At stake is our understanding of whether
groups of citizens can organize online—and how that collective activity affects
larger social movements.
What leads people to participate in costly, risky social
change, anyway? And might people be more likely to get involved if their
friends also participate?
In their study, State and Adamic asked the question: how
many times do you need to see a friend change their profile picture before
deciding to change your own? They set up two competing hypotheses. The first
possibility was that profile changes spread like funny pictures and other
online memes, falling off in influence as more people share them. The second
possibility they considered was that people need to see others make the change
before they follow suit, that “multiple exposures are most effective in
determining the adoption of... [costly] behaviors.”
To test these competing hypotheses and develop a new model
for how solidarity spreads from person to person, Facebook’s researchers classified
profile images from over 3 million users in March 2013, along with 106 million
users who were exposed to those changed profiles. Next, they predicted the
The finding raises a question: Did Facebook users actually
influence their friends, or had they selected friends who already shared their
views?
Friday’s Supreme Court decision to uphold marriage equality
is another extraordinary event, another opportunity to understand how
solidarity spreads in networks. On social media this weekend, many people
celebrated the decision. Others spoke against it, or kept silent rather than
risk conflict with friends and family. It’s possible that another effect may
come into play: a spiral of silence where people who now imagine themselves in
the minority keep more quiet about their political views.
