From Facebook’s emotional contagion experiment, this person calls out the influence that technical systems, which we use to communicate, has on our collective knowledge.
This reminded me of a conversation my wife and I were having the other day. She was marvelling at how nice it was to see people from totally different worlds (in terms of our social spheres) discussion a topic of shared interest, which prior to the Internet (and more specifically the social media trends) couldn’t have happened. I agree, while at the same time I’d brought up the point that we don’t really convey a specific interest in anyone through writing anymore, because everyone is always broadcasting themselves through social media.
That is to say, in the past, if I’d sent someone a letter or an e-mail, I’d be signalling a specific care and interest to that person. I’d be asking him or her about themselves. Now however, I usually get or can get that information by reading a feed of things the person has already posted on one or more social networks or Web sites. But in this new case, the person may never even know that I’d taken a specific interest in caring about their lives. Even if I “like” their posts, that’s such a shallow indication of interest that most of us simply pass it aside as a given or automatic reflex (you’re my friend so I “like” what you say).
We communicate more in some ways, but in others, we lose the signalling ability of what that communication means.
So now I’m thinking about this article on emotional contagion. The signal of care that I’d have sent through the former means of communication could have been a sort of contagion. Whoever received my message would have the underlying meaning of care and perhaps that would carry-over into their further communications. How our contagions are changing here is worth some sort of pursuit.