Homeophily and Polarization

 

Section One

Homeophily is the tendency humans have to want to be around other humans who have similar interests they do, while polarization is when a social or political group is divided into two opposing sub groups (Guerra, 2013).  There are plenty of ways that we can do that on social media.  One way is that we can search for people who like similar things we do in groups.  Groups are designed to be special places full of people who like the same things, or have the same opinions.  Almost everybody has certain groups they belong to now, it’s become very common place.

Section Two

When algorithms starts to play a factor into what users on social media seen on their feeds problems started to arise.  People stopped seeing the whole truth.  They started only seeing what they wanted to see, things that mirrored their beliefs and the things they liked.  So if a person has beliefs that were a little more extreme then social media just fed their anger and hatred.  It turned them against others that they cared for because they had different beliefs, and because all they seen was what they believed they never thought to research what might be the actual truth.  Even now there are a lot of people who don’t know about the algorithms and believe their opinion is the only right one.  Social media has done the world a great disservice by doing so.  It’s made it hard to debate issues with each other because of extreme anger and close mindedness.  Algorithms have greatly contributed to loneliness and polarization (Guerra, 2013).

Section Three

The only real way to truly combat this problem is for people to be told algorithms firstly, to make sure everybody knows.  Then they need to be taught how to research, since researching things the wrong way can cause the same problem.  If they are looking up a way to back their own beliefs that is exactly what they will find.  Social media has started an undercurrent of hate in the world that we are only now starting to see the price of.  As with any other problem, the first and best place to start is always with educating people about the problem.  People need to come together and demand that this be stopped, or for social media outlets to find a better way to do it.

The world doesn’t need anything else causing more division amongst it’s people.  There ar enough problems without the added anger and division.  We all need to come together as one, that is what is the most important thing is.  We need to learn tolerance, and learn that it is ok to have different opinions.  That is what is the most important thing.

 

References

Guerra, P. H. C., Meira Jr, W., Cardie, C., & Kleinberg, R. (2013, July). A Measure of Polarization on Social Media Networks Based on Community Boundaries. In ICWSM.

Homophily: the cure for loneliness or the creator of more hate?

Social networks are meant to be full of ways to connect with people to feel less alone.  To find people that you haven’t seen in years so you can reminisce about all the old times you had together.  You can also use social media to keep track of the current people in your life.  While there are other ways to do this is real life that would definitely be more fulfilling, social media offers a faster way to connect.  One of the major things that keeps social media so popular is homophily.  Homophily is the tendency humans have to more often seek out and bond with people who have similar interests or are similar to themselves (Aral, 2012).  Our whole lives we have heard the saying, “birds of a feather flock together”, referring to how birds of the same breed stay/fly together, and that humans do the same thing (McPherson, 2001).  Homophily explains why a lot of good and bad things have happened.  Why there are so many different types of clubs just for certain types of people.  And if this is so easy to accomplish in the real world then it is a lot easier online.  Most social media networks have it set up where you can find special groups of people”. 

This can range from everything from movies obsessions, belief systems, and collectibles.  Some groups are even for giving support to other people going through hard times.  The range of these groups are so far and wide that it is impossible to name them all!

Is this always a great thing? No, it isn’t.  Sometimes people have a tendency to feed off each other, so if you get two people who believe in things that are damaging to others then their beliefs and/or actions may start escalating.  But at the same time two people who have beliefs that are good and beneficial for society may be able to encourage each other to carry out some great things also.  So, in the end it really can’t be said that it is bad or good, everything is always going to depend on the person who is wielding it.  Every actions is as different as the person who is carrying out the action, all the rest of society can do is hope for the best.

Crystal Noe

References

McPherson, M., Smith-Lovin, L., & Cook, J. M. (2001). Birds of a feather: Homophily in social networks. Annual review of sociology, 27(1), 415-444.

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Standing Out Amongst The Masses

With the way things are today it’s extremely hard to stand out.  Not only in real life, but also in ones internet life.  Not only do you need to have an interesting topic but you also need to go through a lot of trouble to be able to catch of people.  In the corner and sides of every page is flashing ads for other websites and numerous other types of things.  Businesses also have to try even harder than before to stick out, if they can’t lower extra low prices they have to be able to have some other sort of gimmick that will make them appear as if they are interesting enough to deserve attention. 

Once you have captured their attention how do you keep it.  Well, if you have done your job and put in the work then it you have not only made your blog flashy but interesting.  You have filled out a blog that is full of information and witty insight.

After having caught and kept the attention of a few readers there are more steps you can take to bring more readers in.  One of the most important ways of getting more people to read your blog, and by far one of the most tried and true methods, is word of mouth (WOM).  But what has become even more important is electronic word of mouth (eWOM), the rate at which word of mouth travels through electronics has far surpassed WOM (Daugherty, 2014).  This means that one of the most important ways to really get attention is to simply ask the more dedicated of their readers to pass on word about their blog. 

Blogging has become important to a lot of people.  It has become a new form of a diary for most people.  It is an extremely important part of having a business whether big or small, it’s been proven that businesses that don’t have a blog don’t do as business as those that do (Unknown, 2015).  So even if your new blogging it should definitely be something you should give a try.  Just make sure you find a gimmick that is going to pull people in and that you also put in the work to make an interesting and insightful post.

Crystal Noe

References

The 60 second marketer: How to write a blog post that generates leads for your business (2015). . Chatham: Newstex.

Daugherty, T., & Hoffman, E. (2014). eWOM and the importance of capturing consumer attention within social media. Journal of Marketing Communications, 20(1-2), 82-102.