How is the power of minorities managed in social networks?

And he asked him: What is your name?

And he said: My name is Legion, because there are many of us.

—Mark 5: 9

In society there have always been different ways of understanding the world, despite the fact that the choice of the majority imposes the social norm of the moment. However, there have been historical contexts in which these small movements have managed to influence and change course, such as the feminist revolution wave sexual. It is the process of minority influence.

However, currently minorities have a new factor: they do not have time-space limits. Previously, minorities suffered from visibility limits; without internet it was strange to see people with different values ​​and even less, that they come together forming a solid group. But today, the high connectivity in which we live allows us to contemplate different valuation models. Thus, animalist, environmental and independence movements are inexhaustible voices on social networks.

But How are these minority groups formed? One day you raise your voice and form a minority? And how does a minority impose itself on the regime of the majority? These issues have been the focus of attention in the

Group Psychology for decades, but now a new one is added: how do you manage a minority on social networks?

How are minorities formed?

We will begin by answering the first of the questions: how are they formed. To start the influence process, every minority group must start from a base structure with specific characteristics, which we will summarize as (Doms and Moscovici, 1984; Levine and Russo, 1987):

• Consistency. One of the most relevant features is how the group presents itself in society. Due to the low number of members that define it, a minority group must maintain the unity and coherence of the acts of its members. Likewise, persistence is also necessary in their actions, in their manifestation to society. It could be summarized as "go all to one", maintaining two key consistencies:
  • Diachronic consistency: between members.
  • Synchronous consistency: in the time.

• Heterogeneity. This factor is often not respected, but it is key to being accepted and validated by the majority. The fact of constituting itself as a group that includes people with very different traits sends a clear message to society: “we are not motivated by the interest of a few”. It is crucial to show this message to avoid the disqualification of the majority who, out of inertia, insist on maintaining their position. Referring to 15M movement, many of the arguments against it focused on transmitting that it was a particular movement of a sector of society.

• Distinctiveness and suitability to the context. These two variables mark a tension due to the duality they present. On the one hand, the minority group must represent an alternative to the model proposed by the majority, and on the other hand it must be a proposal that is coherent and appropriate to the conditions of the moment. Not getting lost between both extremes is delicate, but necessary to present the proposal as innovative but achievable, without posing utopian impossible.

• Group pressure resistance. Being a minority implies a deviation from the social norm. Like any element that goes outside the established borders, it will suffer from forces that try to return to the normativity of the moment as a movement of homeostasis, back to the initial equilibrium. Therefore, if the objective is to initiate a process of influence, the group must prepare for external group pressure.

How does the minority influence?

To understand how the minority influences, it is necessary to understand that their functioning is different from that of the majority, developing different processes of influence (Moscovici and Personnaz, 1980). These different forms of management are the ones that initiate a process of influence by conversion (Pérez, 1994).

• Majority: normative influence. The advantage of the majority is part of its own disadvantage: having a large number of members makes unanimity of the group difficult, since it does not rain to everyone's liking. Therefore, the functioning of the majority focuses on interpersonal treatment. Initiates processes of social comparison, observing what each of its members values ​​positively to promote proposals with which they all feel identified. They try to avoid losing members in this way, maintaining a positive public image, so they need to attend to what their members consider “positive”.

• Minority: informational influence. By the very fact of being a minority, there is not the support of many people who back the proposal. Therefore, the process of influence cannot be focused on interpersonal treatment, since if we go by numbers, the minority would lose out. In this case, the important thing is the treatment of the information. The majority has to control what each of its members values ​​positively, so what would happen if the minority alternative begins to be considered positive? This is the nucleus, managing the proposal so that it is truthful and possible; Make it obvious to people without posing the impossible.

• Conversion process. It is characterized by causing indirect and latent changes. But at street level, conversion manifests itself in gaining support, gaining members who accept the proposal. The first consequence is derived from this, a breakdown of the unanimity of the majority. This fact develops in the form of a snowball effect, gradually increasing since the loss of members of the majority shows deficits in their internal consistency. That is, as the minority receives more support, it is revealed that the majority is not as consistent, and that part of it accepts and supports the alternative. Members begin to question more and more the veracity of the proposal, because "those who think like me begin to accept it."

In this way, the minority gradually opts to become a necessity in society. As movements such as animal rights or environmentalism are associated with positive traits, people tend to develop a need to include them in our daily lives. If concern for animals or the ecosystem is well seen in society, each person wants to see themselves accepted by society, so including those values ​​is adaptive and provokes a feeling of consonance and wellness.

How is this influence managed on social media?

So far, we can understand how they work, but in the cyber age, we constantly observe different minorities. However, very few of the readers have been live in Tordesillas, or are inhabitants of Catalonia, to learn about the anti-bullfighting or independence movement in first person. However, they have not created barriers for minorities to try to exert their influence; why?

• Social stratification. In social networks, messages are distinguished by sources that vary in degree of formality and legitimacy, with “majority” and minority ”corresponding to different social strata. The message published by a neighbor is not received in the same way as that of the president of the government. This is due to the fact that majorities, being the origin of the social norm, are translated into legislation and laws; the voice of the majority is normalized and legitimized. This fact leaves minorities as the voice of ordinary people as a counterpart. Therefore, representing oneself as a minority implies presenting oneself as the voice of the people, I understand your proposal as a need that the current policy -majority- does not satisfy. It is appropriate to take into account both the level of content and the form of the messages: mediate between formality / informality since depending on what Initiatives should be promoted by people with different technical / professional level, depending on whether it is in pursuit of supporting objectivity or promote empathy. In this sense, the minority has objectives corresponding to the “voice of the people” and expresses itself in the “language of the people”. It must be taken into account that the thinking of the minority is “we are not them, but we want to reach them”.

• Objectivity. The previous premise conflicts with the informational treatment of minorities. Let us bear in mind that in social networks there is no space-time context, that is, messages can be issued / received regardless of geography and time. Therefore, attention should be paid to the fact that a reality can be made known to people who do not live it in their skin, and what is more, the objective is to make them participants of that reality. Due to this, presenting oneself as “the voice of the people” can be the source of one's own disqualification, since it can be very subjective. In other words, if it is implied that the proposal is given by the neighbor, we all know that the neighbor can be wrong and that this is his opinion, one of many. This is how it is necessary to give objective evidence, to show that what the minority believes is not a fact that is being invented, but that their opinion has truthful bases. Establish that the proposal is not an opinion, but its background reality.

• Management as Mass Media. Let's not forget that social networks are a means of communication. For this reason, it is relevant to influence how to manage information, how to broadcast ideals. Regarding temporality, the publication of several messages in a short period of time causes an effect of noise and overload: information overlaps one on top of another and collapses people, like a murmur from which it is not drawn Not clear. The same happens with the quantity, an excess can serve to highlight specific premises, but it can also lead to the impression of not contributing anything new and being repetitive. Concise information, clear premises, objective data and messages focused on objectives, being constant and consistent with the alternative ideals of the minority.

Some conclusions

With the previous description of the process, we can understand how, little by little, minorities strive to win social legitimacy, make the majority see the need to include them in their discourse and thus open avenues of negotiation. It is then when it will be necessary to modulate the forces and pressures of both sides, to reach a common agreement that tunes both extremes.

However, networks mark a new framework in which these influence processes must adapt. Not only to achieve their own goals, but to promote communicative health on the internet and not promote it as a means of communication. The debate on the correct management in the networks is open; Is Catalan independence a movement of the people or does it translate into a political proposal? Where are the reins of independence, in the citizens or in politicians? In Tordesillas, who were attacked, spearmen or animalists? Was the thematic center the aggression to the animal or to its defenders? Does becoming an attribute of social tribes favor the goals of environmentalism and vegetarianism? Is the vegetable plate photographed by followers or by contribution to the ecosystem?

Bibliographic references:

• Doms, M. and Moscovici, S. (1984). Innovation and influence of minorities, in S. Moscovici (ed.): Social Psychology I: Influence and change of attitudes. Individuals and groups. Barcelona: Paidós, 1985.
• Levine, J. M. and Russo, E. M. (1987). Majority and minority influence, in C. Hendrick (ed.): Review of Personality and Social Psychology: Group Processes, Vol. 8, Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
• Mosovici, S. and Personnaz, B. (1980). Studies in social influence V: Minority influence and conversion behavior in a perceptual task, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 16, 270-282.
• Pérez, J. TO. (1994). The social influence, in J. F. Morales (coord.): Social Psychology. Madrid: McGraw-Hill.