At its origin Facebook attempted to be a digitalization of the social networks that exists in many parts of our lives, including the college campus where Facebook made its genesis. Facebook manages to recreate some of the hierarchy found in traditional networks, by creating status through the amount of followers an individual may have or how many likes they receive on a post. With the creation of Facebook groups, Facebook even allows for individuals to create smaller more specific networks based on a common interest. For example in the documentary series Don’t F**k With Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer, participants used online forums and Facebook groups to come together as amateur sleuths and even broke off to create smaller more selective groups to work on the specific Luka Magnotta case. Even though all these people were very physically separate they were able to create an effective online network over a common goal where certain hierarchies emerged over time. However, as the text points out there are certain limitations to communicating over the internet as all the data in the world will never be able to full encompass the complexity of an individual human.
Link to trailer for Don’t F**k With Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer (available on Netflix): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x41SMm-9-i4
I think you make an interesting point about how networks can exist to serve a specific goal. You mentioned how people came together to solve a case. This is one of the more positive examples often used in marketing social media, the sort of “coming together with diverse individuals” angle. This is what we saw in the Facebook ads that highlighted the skateboard group from Ghana. However, as we all know, social media is often not as positive of a community, or “network”, as it is made out to be. It is interesting that the very power structures of the network that allow individuals to directly comment on the posts of politicians or other powerful individuals are also weaponized to make users with a lesser number of followers or likes feel inferior.