dataset has its own flaws, but together they can reveal a more
complete picture of contagion. Describing such approaches, Caroline
Buckee has quoted Virginia Woolf, who once said that ‘truth is only
to be had by laying together many varieties of error.’[25]
As well as improving the methods we use, we should also focus
on the questions that really matter. Take social contagion.
Considering the amount of data now available, our understanding of
how ideas spread is still remarkably limited. One reason is that the
outcomes we care about aren’t necessarily the ones that technology
companies prioritise. Ultimately, they want users to interact with their
products in a way that brings in advertising revenue. This is reflected
in the way we talk about online contagion. We tend to focus on the
metrics designed by social media companies (‘How do I get more
likes? How do I get this post to go viral?’) rather than outcomes that
will actually make us healthier, happier, or more successful.
With modern computational tools, there is potential to get
unprecedented insights into social behaviour, if we target the right
questions. The irony, of course, is that the questions we care about
are also the ones that are likely to lead to controversy. Recall that
study looking at the spread of emotions on Facebook, in which
researchers altered people’s News Feeds to show happier or sadder
posts. Despite criticism of how this research was designed and
carried out, the team was asking an important question: how does
the content we see on social media affect our emotional state?
Emotions and personality are, by their very definition, emotive and
personal topics. In 2013, psychologist Michal Kosinski and his
colleagues published a study suggesting that it was possible to
predict personality traits – such as extroversion and intelligence –
from the Facebook pages that people liked.[26] Cambridge Analytica
would later use a similar idea to profile voters, triggering widespread
criticism.[27] When Kosinski and his team first published their
method, they were aware that it could have uncomfortable
alternative uses. In their original paper, they even anticipated a
possible backlash against technology firms. The researchers
speculated that as people became more aware of what could be