Snowballs in Cyberspace

As discussed in Jan A.G.M. van Dijk’s Social Structure, the Internet is not the level playing field it is often praised to be; some individuals wield disproportionate power, while the majority of people use digital tools ineffectively or for trivial purposes. The most powerful users tend to gain more influence by virtue of being more influential to begin with, a snowball process known to sociologists as the ‘Matthew Effect.’ In history, the Matthew Effect is writ large in the form of colonialism, especially of the non-Western world by the West. Burke cites numerous examples of the dominance of Western over non-Western knowledge, and the resulting loss to the world. European and North American science, art, literature and social practices have spread because their regions of origins have done so, too.

In a different meaning altogether, one mentioned briefly by van Dijk, the Matthew Effect applies not only to the Internet’s users but to its content. Google’s Page Rank algorithm, the basis of its success, works on the notion that the most popular search results are the ones that are clicked on most frequently (van Dijk). Accordingly, these most-clicked links are displayed higher up in the results list, prompting further viewing, and increasing these sites’ popularity. The ‘top ten’ results of any Google query are beneficiaries of the Matthew Effect. In a broader context, Google itself owes its status as a Web giant to its previous acclaim as much as to its technical superiority.