James Fowler, UC San Diego professor and author of Connected: The Surprising Power of Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, had a formative experience learning how social networks work when he went to Ecuador for the Peace Corps and helped a small town build a water system. He became frustrated after he was unable to duplicate those efforts in 29 other villages but he realized over his two years of living there that building infrastructure was not the most valuable aspect of his stint. “The real value of the Peace Corps is the connections I made with the people while I was there.”

Fowler, who spoke at iDiplomacy Monday, describes the traditionally conceived portrayal of social networks as the “Robinson Crusoe” model of people living alone, as islands and without much effect on others. It was a shampoo commercial from the 1970s that led to his epiphany of how social networks should be considered. That particular commercial demonstrated how the popularity of a shampoo could spread because one woman told two friends, who each told two friends, and so on and so forth. 

Many things – including obesity, emotions and the decision to vote – are contagious, but the way they spread can differ. For example, Fowler and his Connected co-author, Nicholas A. Christakis, studied the popularity of movies among a group of interconnected college students on Facebook. They found that the movies Love Actually and Pulp Fiction – both among top 10 favorites – were “spreaders,” with their popularity showing evidence of person-to-person spread among “picture friends” (defined as those who tagged each other in pictures). Love Actually – a romantic comedy set in modern day England with Hugh Grant as prime minister – spread along the periphery (so a smart campaign would target “wallflowers” without as many social connections). Pulp Fiction, an edgy Quentin Tarantino film, meanwhile, spread center-out (so a smart campaign would have targeted people in the center of the network with many connections). 

While technology can help you maintain friendships with people living hundreds of miles away, Fowler ultimately emphasized the necessity of building upon real-world social networks. Having an enormous online network can allow you to spread information and coordinate actions, but to influence people you need to rely on a previously existing deep social bond.