In my last post, I argued that the effects of social media will not simply empower all consumers, nor reflect common public opinion, but will give disproportionate influence to a narrow group. Because there will always be disparity in levels of skill and participation, understanding these effects requires understanding human social behavior. In this post, I will briefly discuss how we can contextualize these media.
In a January 2008 White Paper (‘Distributed Influence: Quantifying the Impact of Social Media’), Jonny Bentwood of Edelman proposed a formula to analyze the influence of any particular individual online. Namely, he suggested that influence can be computed as: (Volume and Quality of Attention x Time)/Size and Quality of Audience.
That it is possible to create a formula (albeit incomplete) to quantify influence on an individual level says more about the potential of social media than I ever could. While such a formula is useful in certain industries (communications and marketing), I am mentioning Bentwood’s paper to highlight a different aspect: the ‘Forrester Social Technographics Ladder’ on page 12. According to this, more than half of the users on the internet (52%) are not in any involved in social media. Only 13% qualify as actual content creators.
What are we to make of these findings? As already suggested, Bentwood argues that communicators and marketing professionals ought to quantify the influence of particular individuals in order to effectively find the most influential. However, I am not as interested in micro-level communications here. Rather, my focus is on the larger, societal effects of social media. Thus, such calculations are secondary to my approach.
Continue reading ‘Voluntary Response Bias and Social Media Part Two: Learning to Contextualize’
