For a new social behaviour to get established in a group - say of 100 people, only 20 to 25 in the group need to consistently exhibit that behaviour - that’s the ‘critical mass’ at which the remaining 75-80% populace starts feeling that ‘everyone’ is already exhibiting that behaviour and so they soon start doing the same. Using a social media platform like Twitter, is one such behaviour.
The changed behaviour then ‘snowballs’. When this transformed group interacts with another (yet to be transformed) group, in a way that the interaction is through multiple people (than just few), then the new group gets transformed too. This is called a fish-net spread of behaviour.
That’s how Twitter’s adoption snowballed (not because few influencers tried to spread its usage in a star-network; in fact celebrities came onboard ‘after’ the snowball affect already took place).
That’s also how China’s
50 Cent Party (equivalent of Right Wing paid trolls sponsored by BJP in India) regularly hijacks social media discussions in China and kills narratives where the Chinese Communist Party is questioned / criticised. They make use of the 20-25% critical mass concept to make random topics feel important and the genuinely important discussions in turn, end up dying.
//Learnt from the book Change by Damon Centola
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So yes, these were the five new things that I learnt in the past few weeks, that I felt were worth sharing here. Which nugget of knowledge do you think was the best?
Also, any insight that you learnt recently that you’d like to share with me?
I would love to hear from you (your replies will reach me via email, but you can use Twitter or insta too - @amritvatsa). See you soon - may be when I have five more learnings to share! Take care and do well! Book recommendations are always welcome.