hyalineskies

All of us working on the edges of social media, either for the mainstream or for our own vertical markets, are great supporters of the democratic control that these new information infrastructures give users. After all, it is this democratic control that has propelled the blogosphere elite to their positions in the Technorati charts; it is our working individually that moves the greater social media society toward an overall greater good, highlighting the “invisible hand” effect that dominates neoclassical economics. Our own social theories, be them on reputation systems or power-law link distributions, have shaped the very philosophies that we use to develop and progress the social media world around us, leading those in charge (and their followers) into a near-religious fervor for equity-based, democratic control of our information sphere.

While we constantly convince ourselves that social media is more than just a trend, those seeing their traditional information systems threatened are still highly skeptical. Be it the “crowdsourced” Wikipedia or the lack of reputability-by-credentials in the blogosphere, old-schoolers either clinging to traditional media due to neo-Luddism or simply due to their own conclusions of social media as a trend are constantly questioning what social media developers are thinking as they had more power to the people.

I spent some time with a journalism professor last week, arguing the validity of the Technorati reputability model (i.e. more incoming links equates to a greater reputation.)

“It’s preposterous, absolutely preposterous,” he exclaimed as we walked down North University Avenue. “You’re arguing that whatever is the most popular is the most important. Haven’t you ever heard of the ‘tyranny of the majority?’”

“Yeah.” I replied.

“That’s what the system is,” he said. “A tyranny of the majority.”

While those developing such systems this idea is pretty ludicrous, there’s nothing that we currently have floating in the social mainstream to refute the idea that editorial-control-en-masse, on the sites like Digg, is anything other than an ochlocracy — that is, government by mob rule- rather than a freely individual democracy.

Where the mob rules

Interestingly, the ochlocratic model certainly holds weight in the current information landscape. A glance at the latest Technorati data shows popular, common themes in the Internet mainstream, such as gadgetry, fashion, celebrity gossip, and liberal politics, while lesser-known (or lesser cared about issues) are shifted further down the long tail, leaving possibly accurate, reputable information in an area where the noise drowns out its signal. We see the same migration in mainstream media, with the newspapers appealing to soft news gaining circulation and popularity over those with more international, intellectual goals. If the mob wants Mischa Barton, the mob gets Mischa Barton.

It’s in the search system where we see the democratic changes. While older sources required a broadcast-style message, such as radio, TV, or even the venerable newspaper, since the costs of informations retrieval, compilation, and publication were so high. Internet search engines-and, for that matter, the Internet in general — significantly reduced information access costs into irrelevance. New social media systems, such as Digg or very large message boards, have reduced the costs of finding content even further.

Meanwhile, the mob loses sight of greater world issues such as the Darfur genocide, the Oaxaca strikes, or the plight of the corrupt Russian democracy. The more power the mob gets to control their consumption, it seems, the more we see externalities develop in market actions that beg for the supervisory control of an editorial board. At this point, the mob ceases to be democratic at all, as the expanse of noise in the long tail drowns out minority opinions in the sea of teenage Xangas and casual LiveJournal communities.

This harrowing observation, however, is only one half of the reality, and its limitations are, in some part, already peering through the cracks in the above argument. These systems cause an interesting flaw: the majority, which seems to contain a very similar mindset on most topics, is entirely in charge of content prioritisation, and to say that social media gives way to the ochlocracy is certainly false — the ochlocracy only exists due to (and is propagated by) our systems for finding content, not its production or consumption.

The actual democracy

After all, WordPress, YouTube, or whatever else does not restrict user registrations by mob voting; it is entirely democratic. Anyone, regardless of intent or reputation, is free to create a blog or upload media to YouTube. Any voice can create and publish content on an equal system as another; the lowliest WordPress user has more or less the same software that powers the blogs at The New York Times.

Assuming that one has simple, unprioritised access to social content, the consumption of social content is equally democratic. Single users choose whether to read or skip blog content, not an angry mob of people. If we remove all amounts of rank and reputation, content from Jeff Jarvis is no different than content from LiveJournal user jeffrules77, aside from the fact that one, both, or neither of their posts may be of interest to you.

If you remove search and popular controls from any social media system, instead replacing them with random, unbiased selector systems, it’s entirely obvious that no mob rule exists; the core of social media is the democracy which its supporters always proclaim as revolutionary.

As soon as we add in ranking mechanics such as Google’s PageRank or Technorati’s rank-by-incoming-link, we see mob rule quickly form. While the core is democratic, the exposure given to those at the top-and their acquired power- can push any content into the limelight. Democracy was first, but the mobs seemingly choose the next big thing. Or do they?

A transfer of power: representative editorial control

Evidently, if the mob chooses anything and everything in the social media sphere, those that are given some sort of popularity by the mob should not necessarily equate to authority. For example, if everyone loved the content of kottke.org, there’s nothing to say that Jason Kottke actually has any influence in an ochlocracy. However, those with mob popularity actually have considerable influence in shaping the mob: those that are popular can harness mob power for its own causes.

In this case, we’re seeing the individual, acting individually, giving up some power to the author(s) that created the content. The regular readers of the blogger or viewers of vlogs such as Ask a Ninja or lonelygirl15 are giving editorial control to one or few person(s), and it is at this point which we cannot say that the system is entirely democratic; in this case, a loyalty develops between social media author and reader, causing something more representative to form. So, in response to the traditionalists that feel that all hope for editorial control is lost: it certainly isn’t. Users cede power democratically where they feel it is right to do so.

There is plenty of evidence in the social media system to support this model; the Technorati ranking model aside. Weblog networks, such as Weblogs, Inc., Gawker Media, and less-professional ventures such as 9rules and b5media are all examples of editorial control on a macroscale:users/readers find network content reliable, regardless of their point of entry. On the small scale, the blogger-as-editor model above certainly holds true, and is also extrapolated to other social media systems, such as Squidoo’s lenses and YouTube’s producer profiles. As a composite, these editor-filtered systems are far from hurting for traffic.

People also willingly give up on their search for information and shift toward a model of editorial control when finding information independently becomes either too costly or too difficult. For example, people will trust the opinion of a reference librarian when it comes to extracting relevant content out of huge databases or book catalogues; they simply have more expertise. If information is too costly, such as through language barriers, people will trust those who are fluent in the language to provide content (as well as supplemental content) in their own language.

Where’s the problem?

If secession to editorial control is voluntary, and mainstream media will be able to live with their (albeit evolved) traditional editorial model, it seems that there is little inherently ochlocratic in the core of the social media landscape: instead, the issue is in finding the content.

Our systems of reputation-by-popularity have worked well thus far, but it is obvious that common search techniques are holding us back from our true democratic potential. We will need new, more semantic methods of search- especially as social media grows- to maintain democratic fluidity within the social media environment. Unfortunately, the common algorithms that are part of most social media software are still based on traditional e-reputation models. If our search technology doesn’t progress with the same revolutionary leaps and bounds social applications have, the tyranny of the majority will certainly prevail, as great content produced democratically will fade away unnoticed.

There’s little we can do to alter big sites’ search engines (unless we happen to work for them,) so as engineers, designers, theorists, or even social media consumers, the best we can do is build better search systems into our new ventures and recommend more democratic search systems to our favourite content providers. Somehow, though we have to build better search alogrithms, it’s a painful irony that what holds us back is one of the oldest, most-used systems on the Internet-the way with which we find content-is what hinders our progress more than anything.