The Viral Spread of Information

You may already know that suppressed information pertaining to Louise Nicholas rape case has been spreading throughout the country via bulk emailing, you may have even received it. A DominionPost article posted on Stuff claims this is part of a “sophisticated mass e-mail system”. This implies that the chain distribution through people’s social networks is orchestrated by some Internet Mastermind. There is nothing sophisticated about it. A quarter of the NZ population has access to the Internet at home, and then there are all those who use the Internet at work or Internet cafes or a friends place. Most of these people would have an email account.

It takes one of these people possess the information to set up an account on Gmail (creating a “bogus address” as the DominionPost calls it) and then send out to their personal contact list. The controversy and sensationalism of the message takes care of the rest.

The spreading of this email then becomes a simple mathematical equation. One Person sends it to 50. Of those 50, 30 send it on to a new group collectively totalling say 80 people. Of these 80, 50 people send it off to 5 new people. Now 351 people have the message. The 51st person is what Malcolm Gladwell would call a connector. This person has a diverse social network that spans many different professions, industries and communities. This person sends it to 63 people all with separate social connections to the first wave. The message now can spread in multiple new directions all at once. This is viral spread.

I heard on National Radio this morning that of the 30 people they polled in Wellington half had received information about the suppressed information, mostly through email at work.

This is not a sophisticated process. This is the strength (and a potentially weakness depending on how you look at it) of the Internet. The originator of the message obviously knew that this information had currency and would be passed on by most of the people who received it. I believe there are two reasons for this

1. they weren’t supposed to have it which makes it exciting and makes them feel like they are in a selected group of people; and,
2. for some it may be a case of dealing out social justice.

I have not received the email, and if I did I would not pass it on. It is illegal to spread this information and it has serious ethical implications. Right or wrong it’s undermining our legal system which I might have to rely on one day. Because you and I have the ability to choose to pass it on, we hold the “power” and therefore carry responsibilities as to how we participate in the web environment. We make it what it is; think carefully about what kind of place we want to be spending our time in.