Social Networks caused Safdari email controversy

Here's what I post on the other part of the forum:

On Thursday, there was a controversy created by Muhammad Safdari when he sent an email to a few of his friends about "Pulte's Tactics". In the email he lists five illegal things that Pulte and his campaign supposedly did and called for a meeting at 6 pm at PARC. Safdari's email was a direct violation of the ASG rules because he supporting the McGee campaign and he sent out a smear email not based on any evidence. The email spread through the Northwestern community very quickly and forced ASG to post a statement to the election run-off ballot explaining how Safdari's email was in violations of the rules.

Safdari meant (or so he claims) for the email only to be sent to a few of his friends, however, what happened was his friends sent it to their friends via listserves, who then sent it to their friends over listserves and so on, acting like a disease spreading through a network.

I got the email Thursday night and I can tell how it spread through the network by the history attached to it. Safdari sent it at 10:58 AM and I got the email on 9:25 PM after it passed through 4 people before I got it (making the path length 5). The diameter of the whole Northwestern network is probably shorter than that since of all hundreds of listserves out there (however the email probably didn't spread the most efficient way because it spread only by the small percent of people who thought it was worth while forward it further.) Also each person spread the email a different way, some people sent it over listserves and others just sent it to a few of their close friends.

What is interesting is how the social network of email and listserves caused the issue. Had this been 10 or 20 years ago before everyone had email and internet, this controversy would not have happened. Back then Safdari would have told a few of his friends about it and maybe posted a few fliers in his dorm. Instead because social networks have caused us to be so interconnected, one email to a few friends can spread to reach thousands of people in just a few hours and, as a result, cause a big controversy that tarnishes both campaigns and ruins legitimacy of the winner of the ASG presidential elections.

This is a really cool evaluation you just did. While I certainly agree with your assessment of path length, I don't agree that before e-mail this controversy would have never happened. In fact, I believe that while e-mails have become a new, faster, more reliable mode of communication, they have simply replaced, not re-engineered the way we communicate. The social network itself, that is friends connected with edges, most likely would look the same without e-mail. Fraternities existed then, clubs existed then and dorms were all likely just as connected as now. So, although you received his note in the form of an e-mail in 2009, I believe that you would have heard of it via face to face interaction 20 years ago. Moreover, it may have been an even bigger controversy originally because each messenger could have put their own spin on it as it traveled through the network. The moral of the story, in my opinion, is that one can not predict different behavior of networks given technology, unless the technology itself changes how the network was formed in the first place. Here at Northwestern, we are mainly on list serves because we are part of a dorm, group of friends etc. that we would have already been a part of even without e-mail. None the less, I enjoyed your assessment and I can certainly be wrong.

I do think the controversy could of still happened before there was internet, however, I dont think it could have happened in such a short amount of time and with such little effort. I dont think email has re-engineered communication, but it has greatly increased the speed at which it travels and with something like this, the speed is very important. One forward on a list serve would be the equivalent to 100 fliers being printed and spread around campus. That one click to send the email would take 2 seconds while printing and sending all those fliers around would take a few hours. Face-to-face interaction would also take a long to spread a campus (and the person who started it won't be known).

We talk a lot about whether two nodes are connected but we dont talk about the strength of the connection between the two nodes or how fast something could travel along the edges. In this example, the speed at which you can travel along the edges is very fast and that is what caused such a big controversy is such a short time.