'The Great Hack' Relation to Strength of Weak Ties, Social Network Theory, Tipping Point

Student’s Name
Professor’s Name
Course
Date
The Great Hack
The Great Hack is a documentary released on 24th July 2019 by Netflix. Indeed, it shows a political data scandal involving the 2016 American presidential elections facilitated by Cambridge Analytica (CA) and Facebook. After watching the movie, one was left with numerous unanswered questions about the safety of people’s data on the Internet. David Carroll, the narrator and professor of Parsons and The New School, led the investigation by demanding to know how his personal data was collected, used, who it was shared with, and whether he could opt-out. The paper relates The Great Hack to the strength of weak ties, social network theory, and the tipping point. It shows how social media platforms can be improved to limit the misuse of misleading news feeds or content in political advertising.
Social network theory depicts that social media significantly influences people’s behavioral changes and relationships. In the last twenty years, the percentage of Americans holding conservative or liberal beliefs has increased from 10% to more than 20% (De-Wit et al. 1). The social media platforms, such as Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook, contribute to polarization by amplifying emotional and moral messages, which organize individuals into digital communities founded on tribal conflicts. Deepened political polarization has caused violent protests, scathing attacks on political candidates, and government shutdowns, as shown in The Great Hack.
The Strong Triadic Closure Property portrays the strength of weak ties. A weak tie (W) or a strong tie (S) shows the strength of a relationship (Easley and Kleinberg 52). For example, if a node has strong ties between two people, their friends have weak ties. The Great Hack shows it clearly by showing how CA used surveys on Facebook to get users’ personality traits together with those of their friends unknowingly. The tipping point depicts how a small change can lead to a significant rapid effect in a...