Strategic Communications and Emerging Media: Social Media, Murmurations and Polarization

MURMURATIONS

This post was inspired, in part, by the following TEDTALK video on the week four reading list for our Strategic Communications Class:

FOUR PRINCIPLES FOR THE OPEN WORLD

By Don Tapscott

http://www.ted.com/talks/don_tapscott_four_principles_for_the_open_world_1?quote=1719#t-955958

Click on and watch the VIDEO BELOW , or part of it before you read my blog:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eakKfY5aHmY

Physicists studying starlings (birds) and schools of fish look at how group behavior "can spontaneously arise from many individuals at once." Communicators studying social media look at similar phenomenon in humans. Viral videos are an example of how huge numbers of people can spontaneously do the same thing - watch and be influenced by the same video. The internet has enabled groups of people to behave in similar fashion as never before. The internet does this by enabling nearly instant communication across space. As recently as this past week we saw seemingly spontaneous airport demonstrations across the

USA

in response to the immigration actions taken by the Trump Administration.

One corollary between the starlings and humans is that the starlings, are "never led by a single individual....the movement of the flock is actually governed collectively by all of the flock members. If this observation holds true in human communication, it means that the decentralization of power and control in communication brought on by the advent of social media is a natural phenomenon, and possibly could have been anticipated. It also means that the spontaneous action of a group of humans mimics the starlings with the observation that the movement or action of the group is "actually governed collectively by all of the...members" of the group. Once platforms emerged that allowed groups of people to communicate with each other without a bottleneck filter acting as a gatekeeper, the natural inclination of people to act as a group found its wings. Once in low level flight, social media took off to higher heights with the advent of mobile social media. As the song says, there truly "Aint No Mountain High Enough" to keep groups from forming and flying across the globe in murmurations of men and women kept in formation by the lift of social media's enabling air.

In a sense this is what the starlings are doing in murmuration. They are all responding to the same message - move quickly because a predator is out to get us. The us-them dichotomy echoes loudly producing the rapid magical movement of murmuration. Birds of a feather, as the saying goes, flock together. Thus, such flocks tend to have an enemy that all of the flock recognizes.

"These aerial spectacles are caused by a falcon near the edge of the flock. It turns out that the beauty of a murmuration’s movements often arises purely out of defense, as the starlings strive to put distance between themselves and the predator."

"So how do these masses of birds move so synchronously, swiftly, and gracefully?

This isn’t an idle question—it has attracted the attention of physicists interested in how group behavior can spontaneously arise from many individuals at once. In 2010, Andrea Cavagna and colleagues at the National Council of Research and the University of Rome used advanced computational modeling and video analysis to study this question. They found that starling flocks model a complex physical phenomenon, seldom observed in physical and biological systems, known as scale-free correlation."

"Surprising as it may be, flocks of birds are never led by a single individual. Even in the case of flocks of geese, which appear to have a leader, the movement of the flock is actually governed collectively by all of the flock members. But the remarkable thing about starling flocks is their fluidity of motion. As the researchers put it, “the group responds as one” and “cannot be divided into independent subparts.”

When one starling changes direction or speed, each of the other birds in the flock responds to the change, and they do so nearly simultaneously regardless of the size of the flock. In essence, information moves across the flock very quickly and with nearly no degradation."

"Last week, a new study on starling flocks appeared in the journal PLOS Computational Biology. The researchers, led by George Young at Princeton, did their own analysis of murmuration images to see how the birds adjust to their flock mates. They determined that starlings in large flocks consistently coordinate their movements with their seven nearest neighbors. They also found that the shape of the flock, rather than the size, has the largest effect on this number; seven seems optimal for the tightly connected flocks that starlings are known for."

Can these findings be extrapolated to the human population? Do humans "coordinate their communication movements with their seven (or some other set number of) nearest neighbors? Might the term "nearest" translate to "closest" implying the human proclivity to communicate deeply with a small group of people? Does the artificial, yet real world of the internet create multitudes of flocks of starling like humans bound by some common denominators, such as beliefs and common enemies? Research would provide scientifically based evidence of such a phenomenon if it in fact exists.

POLITICS AND POLARIZATION

The excessive extreme polarization of American society today may owe much of its reality to the social media reality we are living with today.

Today we see extremism manifest around the world. Could it be that extremism is exacerbated by the polarization of factions in the world today caused by social media’s influence?

Check out the following link to learn more about the influence of social media on politics and polarization

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/21/5-key-takeaways-on-politics-media-and-polarization/

It is like each side is a group of starlings responding to a predator and engaging in the almost hypnotic murmuration movement starlings are known for.

In our readings this week, we encountered the following:

"A longer-term question that arises from this data is what younger Americans’ reliance on social media for news might mean for the political system. "

The research is pointing to a world of social media where "people primarily seek out points of view to which they already subscribe" (Sunstein, 2001). This points to the formation of flocks of common minded individuals, with common enemies.

How did the millennials focus on social media for news affect their engagement with the issues during the recent 2016 presidential election? I personally did not use social media for news, but I am a baby boomer (and proud of it). My choice of news purveyor was the PBS Newshour.. Still, that is a silo of its own. To hear both sides one has to tune in Fox News along with the PBS Newshour. The slant on the news is dramatically different on the two networks.

The issue comes down to group polarization, spoken of at the following link:

http://www.danah.org/papers/2010/BSTS-TwitterPolarization.pdf

In a sense this is what the starlings are doing in murmuration. They are all responding to the same message - move quickly because a predator is out to get us. The us-them dichotomy echoes loudly producing the rapid magical movement of murmuration. So, while murmuration may be useful for starlings, it may be dangerous for humans in some circumstances. Birds of a feather, as the saying goes, flock together. Thus, such flocks tend to have an enemy that all of the flock recognizes. As wise owls (not starlings) we need to proceed carefully. As communicators we have those who influence us and those we ourselves influence. We cannot operate on a "click whirr" cue driven basis (Cialdini 2009), as the starlings seem to do when important issues are at hand.. We must not be driven by easy peripherals but rather by harder to come by central route sound arguments. Polarization is the result of following peripheral routes of persuasion. Such routes rely on cues based on the credibility of the cuer. Herein is the danger of being mislead when groups follow cues from those who deliberately and deceitfully get a message to go viral within an already polarized social media group leading to a "murmuration" that can lead the group in the wrong direction.

WEEK FOUR READINGS FOR OUR CLASS:

Seems stupid until you try it

http://mc7290.bgsu.wikispaces.net/file/view/Arceneaux_Noah.pdf

Changing Deliberative Norms on News Organizations' Facebook Sites

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcc4.12104/pdf

What is your social media strategy?
https://hbr.org/2011/07/whats-your-social-media-strategy

Can social media replace email?http://www.businessinsider.com/can-social-media-replace-email-2013-2

Can social network sites enable political action?

http://www.danah.org/papers/Rebooting_America.pdf

Millennials and Political News - Social Media the Local TV for the Next Generation?
http://www.journalism.org/2015/06/01/millennials-political-news/

Dynamic debates: An analysis of group polarization over time on Twitter

http://www.danah.org/papers/2010/BSTS-TwitterPolarization.pdf