Social Snowflake

{Free Worksheet Below}

I have participated in several Equity, Diversity and Inclusion workshops over the past year that have stretched my thinking. As a hetero-normative, middle-class, white guy I too often forget that the systems in which we work and live have been built for people like me. These workshops have forced me to learn – and unlearn – a lot about the experiences of others.

Over the same time, I have been reading about Artificial Intelligence, algorithms, and the biases that seem baked into our technology. This forced me to consider my own media consumption. I read the news headlines, I read some long-form journalism, but mostly I scroll through short burst of information on social media.

I began wondering whether my feeds were the result of algorithms delivering me programmed content, or whether I had unconsciously curated a homogenous list of social media accounts – creating a very narrow view of the world. Naturally, I created a worksheet to explore my influences.

Completing the worksheet is simple. Start with your top four social channels (IG, YT, FB, LI, etc.). Look at who you follow and then mark the level of diversity along the six dimensions (e.g., socio-economic, ethnicity, etc.). Pro tip: use different colours for each of the different channels you’re evaluating. Once you’ve completed your mapping, step back and look at the shape of your Social Snowflake. What does it tell you?

If you don’t like the dimensions I’ve chosen, feel free to choose your own.

Sure, the science is inexact. The Social Snowflake worksheet doesn’t fully answer the question about my unconscious bias or algorithmic bias, but it is an interesting way to audit your social channels and find patterns.

Copyright, Use and Distribution

This worksheet is part of my Worksheet Wednesdays experiment. It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. You are free to copy and redistribute this worksheet. You can remix it or adapt it to your purposes, providing you share your revised version too. If you use this worksheet, please attribute Thirdway Think and link to thirdwaythink.com

Inspiration

Various Equity, Diversity and Inclusion workshops and follow-up conversations.

Note: This has been updated from an archived post and republished.