Viral Behaviour of Social Networks II
This c-book unit is a redesign by Greek CoI team. The original was designed by the Spanish CoI (www.mc2-project.eu/index.php/list-of-c-book-units/101-viral-behaviour-of-social-networks).
The theme of this c-book is a theory developed about “friendship” and “distance” between two persons, which is measured in terms of a chain of friends. For example, a friend of second degree is “a friend of my friend”, and a friend of third degree is “a friend of a friend of my friend”. Based on this model the theory claims that every person in this world can be connected to any person in any place by a six-degree friendship. This theory is introduced through a real incident, a party organized through Facebook. A mathematical model of this theory is presented through certain questions that students are expected to answer. The use of social networks might shorten this distance and this is the hypothesis the students are invited to investigate.
The c-book unit consists of three phases connected to each other in a linear way. These are the following:
• Understanding the degree of friendship: The story of a Dutch girl that used Facebook to announce her birthday party. Finally about 30,000 people attended the party, and this ended in riots.
• Small world: This phase explains the theory of “Six degrees of separation” using a series of questions included in its five pages. It concludes with an open question about the validity of this theory.
• You on Facebook: Several questions guide the investigation of the degrees of separation of the reader’s Facebook friends, using Wolfram Alpha. It leads to the conclusion that the degrees of separation are smaller, due to Facebook.
Available in 6 languages:
in Greek: http://mc2dme.appspot.com:80/mcs/tablet/DWOplayer.html?locale=en#c:5114369981546496
in French: http://mc2dme.appspot.com:80/mcs/tablet/DWOplayer.html?locale=en#c:6013355626070016
in English: http://mc2dme.appspot.com:80/mcs/tablet/DWOplayer.html?locale=en#c:5677319934967808
in Dutch: http://mc2dme.appspot.com:80/mcs/tablet/DWOplayer.html?locale=en#c:5202961198219264
in German: http://mc2dme.appspot.com:80/mcs/tablet/DWOplayer.html?locale=en#c:6233536453410816
in Spanish: http://mc2dme.appspot.com:80/mcs/tablet/DWOplayer.html?locale=en#c:5152359638368256