Influence the Influencer

Learning goals

• To define “influence”, and link the term ‘influence’ to the hidden mechanisms and actors behind technology.
• To identify tools of the hidden influencers behind technology.
• To identify and communicate problems related to influence that affect young people directly.

Duration

• 65-90 minutes (depending on size of the group)

Outline

Part 1: Influence / 20-30 minutes

• Discuss, what does influence mean? What are the different types of influence?

  • When you hear the word ‘influence’, what do you think of? Participants can shout out words, phrases, definitions, associations (e.g. influencers, money, power, knowledge, etc.).
  • Explain that sometimes influence is something we see (e.g. an influencer on social media, a like button) but sometimes these things are hidden. This can be an algorithm that selects and prioritises what content we see, a facial recognition camera that nudges us to change the way we behave, or misinformation that shifts what we think.

• Watch a video ‘How your phone is designed to grab your attention: Six easy steps to get us addicted to our phones‘ to explore some design tricks which are used to provoke or manipulate people into buying something, signing up for something, or providing more personal data than they wanted to.

• Watch a video ‘How TikTok's Algorithm Figures You Out | WSJ‘ explaining how the TikTok algorithm works and can influence us. (English subtitles are available.)

  • Recommended parts of the video:

    • Start with this brief introduction: 0:57-4:33.

    • Watch the case study: 8:40-9:45.

      • Key takeaway: They explain that one of the accounts created on TikTok for the purpose of the video, kentucky_96, which the Wall Street Journal profiled as depressed, started to be automatically presented with even more depressive content after only 40 minutes of using the app.

• Wrap up: As we can see, there is a wide range of methods people, companies or authorities use to influence us – persuasive design techniques and algorithms, but also facial recognition, scoring systems, data collection, personalisation, political propaganda, fake news, etc.

 Part 2: Influence the Influencer / 30-40 minutes

• Now that we have dived into the different ways people can be influenced online, this section explores one the ways that people can influence those who influence them.

• Divide participants into small groups of 3 to 4 people.

• Each of the groups has the task of coming up with a campaign, in a form of a poster, based on this scenario:

  • A tech company (e.g. Google, Facebook, TikTok) are setting up a new office in your town or city. You and your friends are frustrated by the way they influence their users and you want to create a campaign to change their practices.

• Groups follow the steps on the activity card and create a poster (or set of posters):

  • Think of how social media or technology influences you in a way that you disagree with or find potentially harmful or damaging.
  • What is it about the way the company influences their users that frustrates or concerns you?
  • Think of a strong message to use in a campaign to address the influencer using this practice, explaining and presenting your points.
  • Make a poster (or set of posters) that represents your campaign.

Part 3: Presentation / 15-20 minutes

• Ask each group (or a representative from each) to present their poster and explain their thought process (3-5 minutes per group).

• Questions you can ask each group:

  • What is the problem your campaign is reacting to?
  • Who is the audience of your campaign?
  • What do you hope to achieve with the campaign?

Variations

• Part 1: If you are using the What the Future Wants exhibition you can work with the poster set - ‘How Your Phone Is Devious by Design’. The content of this poster is similar to the video ‘How your phone is designed to grab your attention: Six easy steps to get us addicted to our phones‘. 
• Part 2: Organise a letter-writing campaign in order to practice professional writing and structuring an argument.
• Part 2: Help participants turn their concepts into videos. Encourage and support participants to maintain privacy online and avoid using personally identifiable details in their campaigns. For example, if they record videos, can they avoid faces, wear masks or learn to use simple stop motion animation techniques with clay models or drawn figures?
• Part 3: Posters can be displayed after the activity on the wall so everyone can enough time to have a look at them.

Materials

• Activity cards
• Sheets of paper
• Pens or markers
• Pins or adhesives to hang the posters
• Projector and online access for Part 1

Facilitator tips

• This activity is designed to be done in groups, however the group work section can be done individually.
• The duration of each part is an estimation. Be aware that the size of group, how active or passive participants are in the discussions or the option to include the proposed  variations can impact the duration of each activity.

Preview the activity card

Download the activity cards and outline

Are you an educator? Do you want to use these activities as part of a lesson or a workshop? See our Further Learning materials page to find guides and mini workshops based around the What the Future Wants activities.