The not-so-sharing network

Facebook doesn't guarantee sharing

Power relations in global food supply chains can be compared to the control exerted over virtual networks run by large corporations. Control over food production and supply creates bottlenecks, so that power to make decisions over what we consume is concentrated in the hands of a few (500 companies have control over 7 billion food consumers) (Kuttainen, 2013).

This control over food is mirrored by control exercised over Facebook by its small management team with Mark Zuckerberg at the helm. Buchanan (2002, p 143) compares a food web to a social network in that “species are linked to one another in a tangled pattern that, to the untrained eye, appears completely lacking in any overall organization or plan.” But ‘trained eyes’ know that Facebook interactions are anything other than disorganised and unplanned. Bilton (2013) writes about the further steps Facebook has taken to control the use of its network for promotion by the addition of the ‘pay to promote your post’ function. When paying $7 to promote one of his posts, Bilton (2013) commented that he was surprised to see a “1,000 percent increase in the interaction on a link I posted, which had 130 likes and 30 reshares in just a few hours. It seems as if Facebook is not only promoting my links on news feeds when I pay for them, but also possibly suppressing the ones I do not pay for.”

So if Facebook is suppressing links that are not paid for, it is silencing voices of its users who would have been heard before the ‘pay to promote’ function was created. It appears Facebook isn’t as ‘free’ as they would have us believe and that democratic sharing isn’t the network’s greatest priority. 

Reference List

Bilton, N. (2013, March 3). Disruptions: As user interaction on Facebook drops, sharing comes at a cost. [Web log comment]. Retrieved from http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/disruptions-when-sharing-on-facebook-comes-at-a-cost/?_r=0

Buchananm M. (2002). Tangled Web, in Nexus: Small worlds and the groundbreaking science of networks (pp. 138-155). New York, NY: W.W. Norton

Kuttainen, V. (2013). BA1002: Our Space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, Lecture 7: Food: a case of rum. [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au

Image Credits

The Economic Times. (2013). Being on Facebook alone doesn't guarantee more market share; it could even evict you. Retrieved from http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-07-06/news/29743497_1_facebook-page-administrators-social-media-marketing