I’m a big fan of the concept of the Balance Theory concept that we learnt earlier in this class. The idea that given a complete graph K_3, that only the following signed edges are considered balanced: +++, -+-. In my previous article, we explored how Balance Theory can be applied to relationships (in a TV Show nonetheless), and I ended off talking about how it would be interesting in to see how this can be applied to politics.
I think politics can be seen similarly to drama and relationships in this sense. Countries that cooperate with each other or countries that are considered to be “stable” can be seen as balanced edges, while conflict, either between countries or within a country, can be seem as unbalanced edges. Although it may be a stretch, I also think a political deadlock such as the UK over the Brexit process can be similarly analyzed just as Friends was analyzed. The process is not moving forward smoothly due to conflicting incentives, resulting in party infighting, infighting within British parliament, and friction between both the British People and their Representatives in Parliament.
So when looking for an article to write about for this blog post, I was skimming the Wikipedia page for Balance Theory where I noticed that it gave an example of the Theory being used through Celebrity Endorsements. This made sense, in that, if a viewer were to see a celebrity that they liked endorsing a product, they would be moved to also take interest in that product. This also meant that if the viewer did not like the celebrity endorsing the product, they would also develop disdain for the product. This sort of logic could be the explanation for the partisanship we see today, in modern politics.
I also ran into this journal: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1532673X8100900303. It’s about the analysis of applying balance theory between voters, political issues and Gerald Ford. After the data has been collected, it is shown that the predictions that Balance Theory would suggest are probable.