While a name may indicate a person's individualistic inheritance, it fails to disclose everything people want to know about each other. In the case of political candidates, voters want to know that the politicians they elect will correct the problems that matter most to them.
In his new book, How Behavior Spreads: The Science of Complex Contagions, Damon Centola, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, explains how changing complex behavior, such as changing a medical system or reducing the effects of climate change, requires multiple contacts reinforcing the same message over and over.
Individual social media comments on Facebook, for example, can spread a bit of information, such as a job opening, easily and quickly. But it takes more than a march or rally to facilitate complex changes. It takes supporting messages, how-to instructions, and, maybe, competitive motivation from trusted friends, commentators, organizations, and symbols, like a donkey or elephant. Complex changes require effort; they involve physical risk, social ridicule, prayer, an investment of time and money.
Believing social media has the power to make complex changes is a mistake. Convincing and mobilizing a multitude to take the actions needed to overcome inertia takes hard work. The American Revolution, forming labor unions, cleaning up the Great Lakes, and discovering and distributing a polio cure took more than a one-off Tweet.
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