Social Media Activism 2.0

From "The Political Blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. Election: 

Divided they blog" by Ladal Adamic and Natalie Glance.  By extension, 

it is an excellent representation of the current understanding of the 

"Echo Chamber" in which people online mainly interact 

with people of similar thoughts and orientations.

Political observers have noted recently that people on social media inhabit an "echo chamber" in which they only talk to themselves. As a result, no matter how much they post, they don't really change people's minds.

Yet, social media is huge in terms of selling stuff and corporations spend a fortune to influence people via social media.

How do we resolve these apparent conflicts into a paradigm for political activism via social media post-2016?

What is social media?

The idea of social networks long predates computers and smartphones.  It is "a social structure made up of people or organizations with one or more specific connection, such as friendship, family, common interests or dislikes, financial exchange, sexual relationships, and relations of belief, knowledge or prestige."

Social media is a technology-mediated social network, i.e. one pursued via electronic communications technology.

The key is that it is a network of relationships, not just information exchange.

What is persuasion?

Persuasion is "communication that is intentionally devised to influence attitudes, beliefs, or actions."  Persuasion, then, is about getting people to behave in ways you desire by appealing to their beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and motivations.

There are MANY ways to persuade (I have taught an entire semester course about persuasion). One of the most powerful, in the context of politics, is appealing to the threat/fear response. This works most effectively when the threat is personal.

How did social media fail in 2016?

To succeed, social media cannot be seen as persuading people directly to do something.  Social media needs to be seen as building relationships that will influence people to engage in a certain behavior.

In practical terms, we need to get people to do something because it is an expectation of the their reference group(s), or to support their group. Therefore, we use social media to forge and strengthen this group identify, and to present actions that align with the group.

when someone already agrees with you, this is not too hard.  When someone disagrees with you, it is much harder, and where you need to draw on psychology and established persuasion techniques.

The decision of which presidential candidate to vote for is a big, high-stakes decision.  Not many people change their minds easily about high-stakes decisions, and people HATE to change their minds, which means admitting that they were wrong.

So, how do we proceed?

We use sequential persuasion, that is, we accomplish our big goal via gaining compliance in a series of smaller persuasive steps.

We start by getting our target audience to agree to a small point that is so easy to accept and so logical that they cannot really object to it. Then we build, getting them to agree to another, and another, and another, each a logical step based on their previous agreement.

Businesses do this all the time in ways that are grounded in consumer psychology. Some typical tactics are:

• Pre-giving – Giving "free" return address labels, meals, etc, to get you in a more receptive frame of mind.
• Foot in the door, or a free consultation.  "We're not here to sell you anything.  We just want to understand your situation more" but in reality we are assembling evidence to use to sell you later.
• "But wait, there’s more” – Adding allegedly free stuff that is really hidden in the price you pay.  You see this in infomercials all the time.
• Lowball – Start with the basic version, but extol the benefits of upgrading.
• Incremental – Provide little bits of additional information at a time.  The dozens of little revelations about governmental surveillance of citizens accomplished this. People accept it now who would not if it all came out at once.

How do we apply this in social media?

We need to apply it top-down. Hundreds of thousands of people trying in uncoordinated ways to gain compliance isn't going to work as well as centralization of the message.  The centralization needs to be based on VERY careful analysis of the mindset and world views of the people who are NOT YET part of the group.

We need to find little points that are relevant to the big issues, and frame them in ways favorable to ourselves, but also that are hard for anybody to disagree with.  Then ask readers who agree to take some easy logical action, like sharing to their friends.

When we can show that it is particularly important based on THEIR frame of reference, we can to ask them to do something bigger, like send an email or make a phone call.

What we are asking may be straightforward and obvious our in-group people, but it may be more challenging for the folks we really want to reach, who are not yet in the group.  This is because they think differently from how we think.

How do I figure out the way the other guys think?

Number one, we listen to them.  Eavesdrop on their own talk and see how they present their logic.

But as I have posted before, there is also research that can help a lot.  It shows:

• Liberals make decisions based on data and analysis.  They are less emotional and more adaptable.  They are more likely to respond to complex information, considering multiple possibilities before making a choice.
• Conservatives make decisions based on fear-driven emotions, emotional attachment to an idea, and group identity.  They want stability, i.e. they resist change. When faced with ambiguity, they have a strong emotional response and are more protective of assets and loved ones.  For them, stability equals predictability, equals more expected outcomes, equals less fear.  They go with the choice that seems least threatening.
• The more conservative you are, the more group loyalty, authority, and purity/sanctity are important to you. The more liberal you are, the more harm/care and fairness are important.

To rally your base, use tactics that appeal to your own way of thinking.  To reach across party lines, you need to employ the kinds of arguments and communication styles that resonate with the other party.  This cross-party thinking can be hard to do, because it is alien to how WE think for ourselves.

If the liberals failed in their use of the "echo chamber" in 2016, it was through NOT framing the issues in ways that would appeal to undecideds (and conservatives) and in NOT employing organized, strategized calls to action.

I haven't seem much post-election change in their strategies, but maybe it is still a work in progress.

Research Milestones

13,000 manuscript reads for my peer-reviewed journal articles and other publications. 2,500 profile views.

A couple of nice milestones this week for my ResearchGate presence.

Indiana Jones and the Deathly Hallows

Indiana Jones and Newt Scamander
(pictures combined under fair use)

How cool would it be if the current Harry Potter universe storyline connecting dark wizards with NAZI Germany could be a crossover with Indiana Jones?

Newt - A typical Hufflepuff

I've seen Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them a couple of times. It was not quite what I expected, but I see exactly what J. K. Rowling was doing with the characters, and I enjoyed it.

Education & Politics

Analysis is going around, concluding that it was education, not income, that predicted who would vote for Trump. This conclusion fits well with research that shows that people become more liberal as their educational level increases.

Why does education make people more liberal?  

In saying this, I am talking about people's foundational beliefs, not simply their political orientation.  But it all fits together.  It is not very common to find a Unitarian Republican.

When a person does not know much about a subject, it is natural to think about it in simple terms.  The more is known about the subject, the more complex and nuanced it appears.  This understanding is domain-specific.  A farmer will have complex understanding of a combine, whereas a concert violinist would likely perceive the combine as a mystery that either works or does not.

But in college, we learn that knowledge is complex and changing, requiring extended work to master.  Someone with less education is likely to see knowledge as simple and fixed, and gained quickly or not at all.

But these are also the deep down world views of liberalism versus conservatism.

The differences are even more pronounced in people with graduate degrees.  When you have to write hundreds of pages and tens of thousands of words on one topic for a doctoral dissertation, there is no way you can understand it in simple, black-and-white terms.

There are many other factors that also affect your liberal versus conservative world view, including your personal experiences and how you were raised.

For the record.....

Around 40% of Americans have a college degree. Another 22% have attended some college but not graduated.  About 12% of Americans have an advanced degree beyond a bachelors.  A little over 3% hold doctorates. In 2016/2017, women are projected to earn 64.2% of associate degrees, 59.9% of bachelor's degrees, 62.9% of master's degrees, and 55.5% of doctorates.

Trump Cups - Bletch

This USA Today story illustrates the self-contradictory campaign of Donald Trump supporters to spend money with Starbucks, but get the baristas to shout the name "Trump" when the order is ready.

In my opinion, fast food restaurants should be shouting out the order number, not somebodies name or food items ordered.

Please, protect the privacy of all of your customers!

The Counter-intuitive Truth: A warmer planet can mean colder weather

We have had our first winter storm where I live in North America.  No doubt it will result in jokes about "we just got three inches of global warming."

But when the Polar Vortex brings colder weather and more snow to northern North America, it really IS the result of a warming planet.  Here's how it works:

Warmer water in the arctic warms the air above it more than in years past.  The North Pole is currently 36 degrees warmer than usual.  The warm air rises, and it is more humid than in years past because of the warmer water.  

When it gets up high, the warmer water moves southward.  As it cools off, and gets even colder than it started because it is up to high.  Being cold, it drops down closer to the planet again, bringing colder air to the surface, where it is pulled back up north to replace the rising air.  This causes cold, humid wind to be felt farther and farther south as warmer and warmer air rises over the North Pole.

But because the planet rotates, the wind doesn't go straight south to north. It rotates around the North Pole, west to east, or counter-clockwise as you look down from above.    

This is exactly what happens with a hurricane, except that it is not at the North Pole.  Warm air rises in the middle (the Eye) and air rushes in from the sides to replace it, rotating around the eye counter-clockwise.  The way the Earth rotates, and the tidal currents, make hurricanes move.  The rotation of the Earth keeps the Polar Vortex in place, centered on the North Pole.

And THAT is how a warming planet can cause colder, snowier winters in parts of North America.  

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Bonus note:  People who really and truly think "it's cold where I am today so the planet can't be warming" are engaging in inductive reasoning, i.e. making broad generalizations based on limited specific observations. This is a logical fallacy.   

Proper deductive reasoning requires a large number of observations (data points) to be merged into a model or framework (theory) that can be used to predict future specific observations within acceptable error.  

How to Talk to the Other Side of the Asile

This Slideshare PPT, from 2015, contains a nice analysis of how Conservatives and Liberals think.

Your brain on politics the cognitive neuroscience of liberals and conservatives

Therefore, it contains ideas to keep in mind when we are communicating with people who think differently than we do.

Distorted News

There has been a lot of talk recently about fake news in social media.  There is some, deliberately intended to deceive, but the much bigger problem is advocacy cloaked as journalism, that distorts the story in order to advocate a particular political or social agenda.

Here are some examples of recent headlines that are probably NOT news:

       It's worse than you think

       The electoral system was rigged — for Donald Trump

       Trump releases seven-point health care reform plan . . . and it's excellent

The secret is understanding whether the source has an editorial bias.  MUCH of what we see coming down our news feeds is actually advocacy for one side or the other.

How do you tell?  It's really not hard.  If the headline or story contains a value judgement or opinion that is NOT attributed to someone, it is advocacy, not journalism (even if it resembles a news story).

The only things that do not need to be attributed in journalistic writing are facts that are "widely known or easily verifiable."  But in promotional writing using journalistic style can stretch this "widely known" criteria to the breaking point, making for the subtle implication that "everybody else knows this but you."

The complicating factor is that you can't just base your evaluation on the publication or website.   Many legitimate news sources also carry editorials, guest columns, and other opinion pieces.

You have to make an article-by-article evaluation!

Super Moon, ya, sure.

Not going out to see the imperceptibly larger than average (7%) so-called "super Moon" tonight?

This is probably my best Moon photo, from a couple of years ago.

Not Very "Super" Moon

Note that the largest the Moon ever appears in the sky is not much bigger than the smallest it ever appears.  The largest is only 14% larger than the smallest.  Average is in the middle.

Hardly anyone would notice a  "Super Moon" if not for social media.

Let's Make People Smart Again.

Image Credit & Copyright: Catalin Paduraru

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap161113.html

Social Media is not about Advocacy

I've seen all kinds of chatter this week, second guessing the presidential election and blaming whoever they can think of for the outcome, including a hefty dose of blaming social media.  But most of this social media blaming is from people who do not understand social media.

Social media is about relationships, not about persuasion.

Social media is about relationships, not about advocacy.

Let me say it again -- social media is about relationships, which is why you are much more likely to see posts that agree with your social, political, and religious orientation.

Not quite seeing the difference?  Let's take a step back.

In the 1990s, visionaries were learning that the Internet was not simply about moving data from place to place.  It was about social relationships. Look at these two Prodigy commercials:  In 1990, it was all about stuff, but by 1995, it was about people.

Facebook and Twitter were created for the express purpose of connecting together people who already knew each other, and people who shared common interests.

When social media evolved to also be about marketing and selling you things, it drew on the fundamental principals of marketing communications, which are giving people information to which they are most likely to be receptive, and minimizing content to which people will react negatively.

This is why the Facebook newsfeed algorithm sends you news about things it believes are your interests.  In politics, this means content (news and advertising) that aligns with your political views.  Note that such advertising usually has a line at the top listing a couple of your friends who also supposedly "like" this content.

See?  Facebook is not only sending you content it thinks you favor, but it is emphasizing your relationships, in effect using your friends to make endorsements.  If you are not sure about a product or service, you are more likely to consider the product or service because people you know appear to like and endorse it.

It is your social relationships that they depend on to persuade you to consider the advertising.

Jack Wagner has pointed out that, because of the way social media works, many people who favored Trump did not really even see the opposition to him.  Many who favored Clinton never saw the opposition to her.

But even more important, they probably saw it, but did not feel any social connection to people espousing it, so discounted it.

Jim Wright observed that neither party is good at reaching out to the other side.

If progressives want to counter all of their feared Trump policy initiatives, they need to find new ways to communicate -- new ways of making contact with people who do not think the way they do, and new ways of explaining their positions in ways people who think differently can relate to.

But the real lesson here is that memes and fake news stories do not persuade people. Peer groups persuade people.  In real life and in social media.

What's next?

I was disappointed by the election results, but I could care less about second-guessing who should have done what differently.

I could care less what MIGHT happen under Trump.  All that speculation is just a distraction.

What I DO care about (as a registered independent) is whether Progressives figure out that the way they have been telling their story hasn't worked.

I DO care about whether Progressives are able to retool their system and tell their story more persuasively to people who do NOT think the way they do.

I DO care about whether Progressives are able to organize in a way they never have before to stymie policy initiatives they don't like.

Business as usual will not cut it.

Technology Assisted Language Learning

One of my scholarly journal articles has just been cited in a paper entitled "Technology Assisted Language Learning is a silver bullet for enhancing Language competence and performance: A Case Study."

The specific citation is:

"Wu, Yen and Marek (2011) explored in their studies the unprecented impact of technology in increasing learners’ motivation for listening to online audio and video resources in order to improve their listening skills. They also found that while listening to online audio and video resources, the ESL learners were found to ward off their hesitation and shyness and try to speak English."

International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature

Jobs & China

China isn't somehow stealing jobs.

The government isn't somehow sending jobs to China.

American business people are deciding that they can make more money to having products made in China and shipped tot he US than making theme here.

The only way to change that formula is to tax or penalize businesses that contract for overseas manufacturing (and call centers).  Make it too expensive for them.

So, bringing all those jobs back to America means reducing the profit margin for American businesses.

How is reduced profits for business a Republican thing to do?

Educational Technology

One of my academic papers was cited in a conference paper from the 2016 International Symposium on Educational Technology, held 19-21 July in Beijing.

Collaborative Online International Learning: A Case Study between USA and Thailand

What's REALLY going on with NoDAPL

Why are state and local government officials in North Dakota freaking out about peaceful protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline?  It's because the protesters are challenging economic development amidst a tanking state economy, plain and simple.

North Dakota “has been the economic envy of every state in America for most of the past decade” according to Bloomberg. North Dakota had the lowest jobless rate, the highest increase in personal income, and the fastest-growing population, added Bloomberg, the result of the fracked tar sands oil boom that made North Dakota second only to Texas in domestic oil production.

But as you would expect from a boom-and-bust product, the market for North Dakota oil has tried up, the state's economy has collapsed, employment has plummeted, and the state has a $1 billion budget deficit.

Finding more markets for North Dakota oil would help reverse this free-fall. That's where the oil pipelines come in. DAPL says it would create 8,000 to 12,000 local jobs across its route during construction, plus lots of on-going local tax revenue.  It is not surprising that North Dakota officials eagerly want this revenue, and officials in all four states like the idea of income that does not result from taxes on voters.

THAT is why the local authorities are so vehemently on the side of the pipeline company.

As I have said before, I believe we need to get off fossil fuels as a primary energy source.  We need to do this because we are running out, because they cause global warming, and because renewable energy is simply a good idea.

Pollution of drinking water and tribal rights are important, but there is considerably more justification to NOT build new fossil fuels infrastructure.