exposures needed for an idea to catch on. However, such ideas may
then struggle to break out and spread more widely.[70] According to
Damon Centola, the structure of online networks can therefore act as
a barrier to complex contagion.[71] Many of our contacts online will
be acquaintances rather than part of a closely linked friendship group.
Whereas we might adopt a political stance if lots of our friends do,
we’re less likely to pick it up from a single source.
This means that complex contagion – such as nuanced political
views – can have a major disadvantage on the internet. Rather than
encouraging users to develop challenging, socially complex ideas,
the structure of online social interactions instead favours simple,
easy-to-digest content. So perhaps it’s not surprising that this is what
people are choosing to produce.
W of data in the early twenty-first century,
some suggested that researchers would no longer need to pursue
explanations for human behaviour. One of them was Chris Anderson,
then Wired editor, who in 2008 famously penned an article
proclaiming the ‘end of theory’. ‘Who knows why people do what they
do?’ he wrote. ‘The point is they do it, and we can track and measure
it with unprecedented fidelity.’[72]
We now have vast quantities of data on human activity; it’s been
estimated that the amount of digital information in the world is
doubling every couple of years, with much of it generated online.[73]
Even so, there are a lot of things we still struggle to measure. Take
those studies of obesity or smoking contagion, which show just how
difficult it can be to pick apart transmission processes. Our inability to
measure behaviour isn’t the only problem. In a world of clicks and
shares, it turns out we’re not always measuring what we think we’re
measuring.
At first glance, clicks seem like a reasonable way to quantify
interest in a story. More clicks mean more people are opening the
article and potentially reading it. Surely writers who get more clicks
should therefore be rewarded accordingly? Not necessarily. ‘When a
measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure’ as
economist Charles Goodhart reportedly once said.[74] Rewarding