We have been talking a lot about network effects where the decisions of one’s peers (fellow decision makers) positively influence one’s choices. Since I am a cynical and jaded college student, this prompted me to investigate more subversive network effects where the decisions of others negatively influence one’s decision. The closest effect I could find after briefly researching the web, is called a “snob effect,” where people seek out goods and actions that will be unique: e.g. buying art and expensive cars, etc. However, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind; I wanted to find a way to characterize the rebellious tendency to undermine or at resist the trends of the mainstream. However, I couldn’t find any information-theoretic analyses of these sort of “counter-culture” network effects, where pluralities of agents resist the trends of the dominant culture. I was surprised at this result since this sort of effect intuitively seems to me an integral part of the ever-important 18-to-24 year old’s decision-making process. I was however able to find some examples where small but powerful media outlets have triggered some serious disturbance in the mainstream cascades.

The first of these examples I found in the New York Times on March 30: Howard Stern Tries to Kill ‘American Idol’ With Kindness for a Weak Link.

The article explains that Mr. Stern has been encouraging his listeners to vote for (objectively) the worst candidate on American Idol, in conjunction with the website votefortheworst.com. Apparently, this has triggered an information cascade of his own that has apparently had some success: the site picked Taylor Hicks as the objectively worst candidate out of five remaining, and he went on to win the competition. That the site had this much of an affect on the competition is just speculation, but the Times was bold enough to suggest the possibility. In any case, this is not the first time that Stern has tried to rally subversive-minded people to underminde mainstream media: he himself moved to satellite radio in order to avoid FCC radio regulation and corporate media giants such as Clear Channel, and much of his fan base moved with him to the new format–despite the fact that the satellite radio networks have been otherwise unsuccessful.

Another, possibly less intentional, subversive force that has emerged as an influential media source is the music review site, Pitchfork. Both Slate and Wired have run articles about “The Pitchfork Effect,” here and here, respectively. The site often gives virtually unknown bands favorable reviews while harshly criticizing lackluster efforts from more successful acts. While the sites’ traffic is not very large, these reviews have a considerable effect on the sales of the bands being reviewed. For example, the Arcade Fire received an extremely favorable review from the site, and their status skyrocketed almost instantly to what is now a nationally-recognizable name. Similar phenomena have happened with bands like Tapes ‘n Tapes and Broken Social Scene. Conversely, some major label artists have been panned by the site–however it does not seem that this affects the sales negatively, likely because the readers of the site would have never bought these types of albums anyway. However, some emerging artists have suffered significantly from unfavorable Pitchfork reviews: some radio stations and record stores will not purchase lesser-known albums that are not given good reviews from the site. The site has drawn accusations of ruining bands’ careers in this way, but it seems that the radio stations and record stores probably would not have even heard of many of these albums were it not for the review.

These two examples I think are both small-scale reactions to large-scale network effects, and are popular in niche communities who want to reject the mainstream. Significantly, both parties have become authorities in their respective markets, and have created information cascades of their own–inspired by the larger information cascades of media giants.