Rainbow photos on Facebook are social research

If you've ever filled out a survey, you may have been surprised to see that some of the questions have only two answer options. It is true that the ability to understand people's behavior can be questioned from questions so simple and not very permeable to nuances, but in a global sense this type of survey has statistical utility.

Although it seems strange, the fact that many people find themselves in the situation of having to choose one or the other answer It helps to establish profiles, study which variables influence this decision and to know in general terms why one or the other is chosen answer.

The rainbow photos on Facebook could be a social investigation

We have recently witnessed another phenomenon that could be interpreted as a type of social research: the option of apply a rainbow filter on the profile photo used on Facebook.

This initiative, which has been related to the judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States in favor of marriage homosexual (by the way, a day before something similar happened in Mexico without so much commotion) has materialized in a option of automatic modification of the profile photo that many of the usual people of the social network have had to accept or reject. Does this situation sound familiar to you? Yes, it is practically the same context in which the questions of an online questionnaire or survey are presented.

Why would Facebook want to study this kind of thing?

Well actually the question should be: Why should I not want to study it? Facebook is an endless source of information for investigations based on data mining, since the social network is made up of by millions of people who, minute by minute, upload texts, photographs and states that are easily analyzed by a system computer scientist. The potential is incredible and practically unattainable.

See, for example, the usefulness that Mark Zuckerberg's invention can have in establishing personality models, as we saw in this article.

However, the ability to colorize the profile picture is of special interest. Using the rainbow will rarely be the result of boredom, lighthearted decisions, or the simple desire to appear open-minded. Even in the 21st century, supporting the equality of all people regardless of their sexual preferences has a bearing revolutionary, almost controversial, and can have adverse effects on the person who decides to make their defense of these visible values.

Arguments, defamatory comments behind the back, family problems... standing up for equality is always free. Therefore, the decision to apply the rainbow filter or not will possibly be approached from a more thorough analysis than the one that leads to placing a ribbon in favor of the victims of terrorism or an avatar related to the type of music one is fond of. Besides, the LGTB flag It is known internationally, so everyone who uses it as a filter will attribute a similar meaning to it. The same will happen with all those who see it.

Possible points of interest

In the end, the data extracted from a simple click to modify the profile photo can be used to, among other things, create statistical models that allow viewing:

• To what extent the people who stand up for gay marriage they do so influenced by the number of Facebook friends who do the same.

• To what extent the fact of having placed the filter affects the appearance of conflicts or the deterioration of ties (indirectly measurable through the number of interactions with others via Facebook and by the frequency with the one that people click on the option "stop being friends" in the weeks after the application of the filter.

• The type of people who put on the filter, the one of those who do not wear it, and study their interactions on Facebook.

• The relationship between all these variables and the political preferences registered in Facebook, the attachment to certain brands, etc.

... and many other possibilities, as many as response and interaction options the social network offers us.

It is not an unreasonable possibility, considering that everything we do is no longer private the moment you enter Facebook and companies are perfectly capable of paying for obtaining all kinds of information and that, furthermore, this also applies to studies in Social psychology and sociology made to order. In fact, there is already a very similar precedent.