As Monty Python Flying Circus used to say, “Now for something completely different!” I am going to attempt to define two complex concepts and attempt to connect those concepts to the everyday world of social media. Those two terms are infotaxis and stigmergy. Both refer to a similar natural function, that is changing embedded information in an environment that other members of a community could translate, understand and use the information for the betterment of other individuals or the community as a whole.
Stigmergy typically refers to the ability of social insects to provide indirect coordination and communication between the members of a community, where the environment changes through interactions between an agent of the community and the environment itself. The changes in the environment translates into either the planning of a task which will be performed by the same or a different member of the community (“to do list”) or translate into new pathways for the community to follow (“redefining the structure of the network”). Stigmergy has been adapted to social networks through the work of Mark Elliot and his theoretical framework for mass collaboration.
Infotaxis is more about applying mathematical analysis to define patterns based on limited information, especially about the zigzag pattern created by social insects. The individual member of the community uses a seemingly random movement pattern to gather information about their environment. For online social networks, an individual member of the network could use an informal ritual to sort through the information present on the network and develop some based on what information has been gathered.
Both of these terms focus on how communities manage self-organization through levels of interaction and the ritualization of communication. In the natural world, this distribution of information helps insects plan and create the necessary social structures needed for basic survival. These actions are conducted without a formal hierarchy of the system delivering information or even actual “face-to-face” communication between members of the community.
I wrote a concise post about how I thought infotaxis and stigmergy would connect to my dissertation topic of how Facebook can help freshman cope and adjust to their first year of college.
So, after thinking more about infotaxis and stigmergy in the broad scope, it makes sense that the typical member of an online social network would use some of the same information gathering skills that are used by social insects. In online social networks, people develop informal hierarchies based on nodes (“groups”) and/or common interests. Informal hierarchies also develop through a folksonomy of the network and a development of shared resources in the network. For the typical freshman entering their first year of college, having access to campus resources through an informal online social network like Facebook would represent a mechanism of adjustment or a coping mechanism depending on what information the student was trying to gather.
The TENCompetence Foundation discussed how stigmergy fits into the new paradigm of social media during their last Winterschool. There was a discussion regarding the ten new principles of social media development; they are adaptability, stigmergy, evolvability, parcellation, trust, sociability, constraint, context, connectivity & scale. It would be fair to make an argument that web developer should look and study these principles to cultivate their audiences.
