I like the story about the 'God particle', so cool! It's very comfortable to read the whole post and I learned a lot!
I'm curious about the methodology evolution behind these works. Before the 'God particle' story, as you said, researchers usually gather data back in time and then analyze the data, In your 'God Particle' story, you can gather some real-time data and analysis. And in the following 4 papers, we see researchers were even doing more like 'dividing people into two groups and showing them different information'. WOW, how did the do that? Are the researchers collaborating with Facebook and they changed the recommendation algorithm for Facebook to manipulate what people see? or do They use some bot to show information to people?
Overall it seems that we can not only gather data and analyze data, but now we are able to conduct more experiments by perturbing social media. I'm very curious about How and to what extent can we perturb and what is the limitation of perturbation?
They worked directly with Meta to perturb Facebook and Instagram, and measure the system response. Without a direct collaboration with the company, it is impossible to act on a network in that way
Well, it is also "still poorly understood" whether it is meaningful to think of online social networks as "interconnected and complex socio-technical systems where emergent collective dynamics intertwine with individual behaviors." If anything, these findings seems to suggest online collective dynamics don't matter.
My point is that we don't even know if there are any emergent phenomena worth considering here. That should be the first thing to test, rather than (as you suggest) their effects.
Ok got your point, thanks for expanding. I don't know if that's true, and a clear example is infodemic. It is possible only when you have a medium allowing for information to spread quickly, not giving time to build "immunity". This phenomenon could just non be emerging through standard media, since the permeability of the media are different. I also think that it's not only a matter of emergent phenomena : we should make experiments to verify if exposure to information in online social networks amplifies or speed up the same effect we could see through standard media. About this, there is literature, but the context is also limited.
I agree we need such experiments! Even if the statistics of the Facebook data is impressive, it doesn't matter when the foundations are shaky. That situation is similar for traditional social network theory https://petterhol.me/2022/10/27/the-absolutely-most-fundamental/
I read your post, and I fully agree that some assumptions of the structure paradigm (like about centrality and modularity) need further investigation. If it helps, I see myself as one of those guys thinking beyond structure, since what is also neglected is the impact of dynamics on functional roles of nodes and groups
I like the story about the 'God particle', so cool! It's very comfortable to read the whole post and I learned a lot!
I'm curious about the methodology evolution behind these works. Before the 'God particle' story, as you said, researchers usually gather data back in time and then analyze the data, In your 'God Particle' story, you can gather some real-time data and analysis. And in the following 4 papers, we see researchers were even doing more like 'dividing people into two groups and showing them different information'. WOW, how did the do that? Are the researchers collaborating with Facebook and they changed the recommendation algorithm for Facebook to manipulate what people see? or do They use some bot to show information to people?
Overall it seems that we can not only gather data and analyze data, but now we are able to conduct more experiments by perturbing social media. I'm very curious about How and to what extent can we perturb and what is the limitation of perturbation?
Thanks again, it's a very informative post!
They worked directly with Meta to perturb Facebook and Instagram, and measure the system response. Without a direct collaboration with the company, it is impossible to act on a network in that way
Aha, that make sense. Thanks!
Well, it is also "still poorly understood" whether it is meaningful to think of online social networks as "interconnected and complex socio-technical systems where emergent collective dynamics intertwine with individual behaviors." If anything, these findings seems to suggest online collective dynamics don't matter.
Strongly disagree, they focus only on the impact of algorithmic interventions. Nothing can be said about causality in terms of collective forces.
My point is that we don't even know if there are any emergent phenomena worth considering here. That should be the first thing to test, rather than (as you suggest) their effects.
Ok got your point, thanks for expanding. I don't know if that's true, and a clear example is infodemic. It is possible only when you have a medium allowing for information to spread quickly, not giving time to build "immunity". This phenomenon could just non be emerging through standard media, since the permeability of the media are different. I also think that it's not only a matter of emergent phenomena : we should make experiments to verify if exposure to information in online social networks amplifies or speed up the same effect we could see through standard media. About this, there is literature, but the context is also limited.
I should also thank you for a nice post.
I agree we need such experiments! Even if the statistics of the Facebook data is impressive, it doesn't matter when the foundations are shaky. That situation is similar for traditional social network theory https://petterhol.me/2022/10/27/the-absolutely-most-fundamental/
I read your post, and I fully agree that some assumptions of the structure paradigm (like about centrality and modularity) need further investigation. If it helps, I see myself as one of those guys thinking beyond structure, since what is also neglected is the impact of dynamics on functional roles of nodes and groups