Amplification through social media

a. Amplification through organic promotion and virality

Social media is a great channel to instantly share valuable information, oppose disinformation and to implement positive narratives that go beyond the reactive approaches to achieve our desired impact. The mechanics of social media and the ultimate goal in amplification is reach. Reach is the number of people who are exposed to information.

Social media uses algorithms to prioritise content. Algorithms control the ordering and presentation of posts, so users see what is most relevant to them.  This relevance is usually based on friends, family and acquaintances. In section 7.1 we discussed the importance of understanding audiences and specifically the credible sources of our audience. This is because social media platforms use the same logic in serving content to their users. Friends, peers, family are regarded more credible to the audience and therefore platforms will prioritise content from these sources. In 2018, Facebook changed its algorithm to prioritise friends, families and the groups that users joined as more relevant and therefore more visible in users’ timelines.

Social media is designed in a way to keep our dopamine levels high. This works in the same way drugs work on the brain. A user posts something, they then get validation which hikes up their dopamine levels. They then continue to return to their posts to check on additional comments and validation. This cycle of dopamine release becomes addictive to users.  This ensures that behavior is reinforced and ensures habit formation. Users are presented with more notifications than before, because it was observed that receiving notifications drives users to return more frequently. More relevant content also ensures more usage time. This too happens when users comment, they want others to respond or their comment to be validated in some way.

Content is said to have “virality” if organically a post is shared, liked and commented on in a short period after posting (usually within 60 minutes). Virality is the tendency of an image, video, or piece of information to be circulated rapidly and widely from one Internet user to another. There is no guarantee on virality however there are ways to improve the virality of content:

• Get loyal fans/ subscribers to like and comment immediately
• Ask friends, family and network of users, colleagues to like, comment and share
• Interact with all likes, comments and shares, within the first hour
• Comment and join the conversation
• Ask questions within the comments sections to stimulate discussion
• If there are comments that stimulate a lot of discussion, interact on these comments also.

b.  Amplification through paid promotion

As identified in the organic promotion section above, algorithms have a tendency to prioritise the family, friends and groups of the user. This makes starting new conversations, exposing new ideas and challenging existing narratives of some user segments, difficult.

Filter bubbles, echo chambers and bias are important considerations in the amplification of ideas. Bias is a tendency to prefer one person or thing to another, and to favour that person or thing. An echo chamber is a situation where certain ideas, beliefs or data points are reinforced through repetition of a closed system that does not allow for the free movement of alternative or competing ideas or concepts.   A filter bubble is the intellectual isolation that can occur when websites make use of algorithms to selectively assume the information a user would want to see, and then give information to the user according to this assumption. Websites make these assumptions based on the information related to the user, such as former click behavior, browsing history, search history and location. For that reason, the websites are more likely to present only information that will abide by the user’s past activity. A filter bubble, therefore, can cause users to get significantly less contact with contradicting viewpoints, causing the user to become intellectually isolated. 

In order to break through echo chambers and filter bubbles that are naturally caused by social media and websites its necessary to use paid advertising in order to reach audiences. In section 7.2 SEO and SEM are discussed at length. These will help in establishing how to setup paid campaigns to target specific audiences.

Paid content can do 3 things that organic content cannot. They can be worthwhile considering if:

1. Your aim to is to reach a specific vulnerable group that will be affected without the information.
2. Reaching the public to raise awareness. Specially to educate an indifferent population or one in which media bias exists.
3. Spreading an alternate narrative or discourse to break through an echo chamber.

c. Amplification through the promoting of ideas within broader online channels

Amplification through special interest groups online takes the form of more targeted campaigns. These can be to target a specific online group and influence their behaviour for instance, targeting political parties to surface youth issues ahead of an election through online campaigns, charters, petitions and cyber-storms (emails, messages, comments across their social and online media).

Amplification online connects different communities, or different channels and includes them in the information dissemination. Amplification online could take the form of:

• Cross channel promotion and content sharing, for example from Facebook to WhatsApp, Instagram and Twitter. These are usually linked through hashtags or other trackable identifiers.
• Repackaging or re-purposing content/ insights online into blog posts or other content, this could take the form of posters, graphics, infographics, video, animations or creating listicles or interactives.
• Hashtag sharing, where hashtags are popularized and used consistently.
• Swarming: through which communities work together to comment, promote, cross promote or popularize content. Swarming may also be done by mass emailing targeted individuals (lawmakers and politicians) to express concern or dissatisfaction. In many countries if more than a certain threshold of people express dissatisfaction for a law or policy then it needs to go to discussion.
• Influencer marketing: whereby online personalities with large communities of followers share information or promote hashtags/ information. 
• Search Engine Marketing: Amplification of ideas can also be done through promoting posts for more reach and visibility.
• Additional examples could be: develop a charter, facilitate an Online petition, data gathering / data visualisation hackathons,  developing and distributing surveys, distributing electronic action alerts (SMS/WhatsApp), facilitating challenges (like ALS Ice bucket challenge and TikTok challenges), online crowdsourcing expertise, hosting live online interviews, discussion groups and open forums on research or findings , hosting virtual talks; Webinars and workshops, facilitating Online protests, Banner Changes and email campaigns.