Slashdot Mirror
Study: Online Social Influence Has the Strongest Effect On Voting Behavior
sciencehabit writes "Brace yourself for a tidal wave of Facebook campaigning before November's U.S. presidential election. A study of 61 million Facebook users finds that using online social networks to urge people to vote has a much stronger effect on their voting behavior than spamming them with information via television ads or phone calls."
That's only because a lot of people haven't yet become as adept at ignoring the adds on social media platforms as they already are on TV and print mediums. This noted effectiveness will wear off as more and more people get used to ignoring a new form of advertising.
The (insert latest social/consumption trend here) influences voting behavior more than (insert declining fad here).
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
You're talking about ads, but your friend might recommend something to you, and if it's someone you know or trust you are a lot more likely to look at it. And that's something that's probably never going to change. Gossiping would go away before that would.
Not at all. The internet is always wrong when it comes to political choices. Ref: John Kerry was going to beat W, Hillary was going to beat Barrack, McCain was going to beat Obama.
Also in the news, a study of H.P. Lovecraft fans showed Cthulhu has the most impact on voting behavior
PocketPermissions Android Permission Guide
tidal wave of facebook campaigning leaves everyone as jaded about social media as they are about television ads and phone calls
Pff. The advantage of television (To the political BSers) is that it's a one-way, unmodifiable medium where you can make a statement without being refuted.
On the internet you're closer to verification and cross-references that can counter the shallow lies.
So, who's up for making a browser addon that automatically cross-references online political ads to various fact checking sites? ..Or just get adblock+ and opt out of it all.
Then maybe overlays a nice helpful graph or color to tell you how much BS you're being fed.
Really? I tend to block updates from everyone who posts a strong political opinion until about Thanksgiving, on election years.. and I use AdBlock plus.. Hit me up with that fail sign
.... is effective on the unwashed
For those who are seasoned and thick-skinned, we have developed the habit of using our brain, instead of letting others to think for us
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
If one wishes to remain employable or retain customers for the self-employed, one must not mention political stances. However, political stances can be derived from how one lives as depicted in photos, videos. and text.
--
I'm waiting for the day when reasonable people start whispering "The white supremacists were right all along".
Typical of an Alien Being to try to create civil unrest so that he can weaken our governments and take over the earth.
I'm on to you.
Damn, I knew I should have chosen a different handle. From now on, think me as he whose name shall not be spoken.
Also this seems the article may be pushing the conclusions a bit to far. If my online "friend" votes and it motivates me to vote it doesn't necessarily translate to me voting for the guy he voted for. If there is a strong correlation between online friends and their party affiliations then it may make sense. But I think we try to keep our party preference away from friends - its easy to lose one or the other.
Seriously though, doesn't everyone have a DVR?
It could be that a facebook page doesn't interrupt you during dinner, or your favorite movie, or during sex.
That it doesn't use a melodramatic voice actor to sound all serious about the $TotallyEvilShit that $OtherCandidate does, and basically conflate that not voting for $EndorsedCandidate is a vote for raping babies with wood rasps.
Seriously. People are losing patience with the mud slinging. A facebook page can be ignored. It doesn't shove itself in your face. It doesn't scream. It doesn't rant. It doesn't turn the volume up 30 additional decibels to blast your brains out.
Given the substantially fewer sets of clear and present BADs being injected, is it any wonder that people would react more favorably to them?
Current TV ads are like the $PoliticalParty edit wars on Wikipedia for $CandidateHistory. Look, the ministry of truth bullshit with your truthiness gets old. Say your bit, the shut the fuck up already. If I want to know about your party or your candidate, let me do so on my own. Don't try to control my access to information. Don't try to poison that well. If you do, you expose yourself as dishonest shysters, and I will only want you to go away and stop bothering me.
I suspect many other americans feel the same way.
Grow the fuck up, grow a pair, own up, and let us make up our own damn minds.
It's spelled "Oiho".
The article says "0.39% more likely to vote than those who received messages with no social information" which suggests to me social information made very little difference rather than the opposite?
Methinks Facebook may have found a new revenue stream.
Are they saying that ads on social networks are more effective than other net ads and offline ads? Or that social networks, writ large, are more influential than advertisements?
Because I suspect that social networks are just a medium; the bit that's effective is the peer groups. People, in other words, are highly influence by those they choose to socialize with. Something which is true online and off.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
a) They asked facebook-users. Nobody with any real life is one of them.
b) Nobody pays attention to television anymore, and phone calls are just an insult.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Breaking news: Facebook users find Facebook to be the most effective means of influencing them.
Film at 11
This signature is false.
The article doesn't actually describe a test of online influence vs. offline influence. What it describes is a contrast between direct appeals from friends, using pictures, and a more abstract Facebook system. In other words, they are simply saying that being told that your friends voted with a picture of said friends was more effective than a text message or no message at all. It's a reasonably robust study of what it does, but it's a long way from the grandiose claims of the title.
It's possible that they are contrasting this with other studies (that they don't mention). Unfortunately, since they don't include descriptions of those studies, we can't know if they are the equivalent of this study. Do they include the many partisan appeals to vote for a candidate? Do they adjust for the tune out effect of the partisan appeals hiding the non-partisan appeals? Do they adjust for the differences between the Facebook audience and the other audiences? For example, people with land lines tend to be older than average while Facebook users tend to be younger than average. Older people vote more reliably, so a pure get out the vote effort will tend to have less effect on them (it can't make people who already vote vote more).
All this really says is that pictures are more effective than text at arousing interest. This may simply mean that the pictures make the notice bigger and thus more likely to catch people's attention.
Quoth TFA:
People who received messages alerting them that their friends had voted were 0.39% more likely to vote than those who received messages with no social information. That translates to an additional 282,000 votes cast,
With elections being as tight as they have been in the last 15 years, and with the coming presidential election looking every bit as tight, this could be enough to make a significant difference.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
...so in a bid to influence other voters through an online medium:
DON'T VOTE FOR A DICKHEAD!
If everyone takes notice of this we could fix the political system pretty quickly.
" a much stronger effect on their voting behavior..."
The effect quoted is a 0.39% increase in number voting. That's it-- an effect of less than half a percent.
One wonders how bad the "conventional" methods of increasing are, if an effect of 0.39% is "much stronger".
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Why do we care what affects voting habits when we have no real choice in who to vote for in the first place? Will the outcome of this falls election really have any bearing on what laws are passed, which countries we invade, what services we have or how much we're taxed? No.
Hi,
Sorry, but "social media", et al? Yet another venue for manipulation, especially Facebook.
Consider the latter: It's primary focus is social. This is by no means a bad thing: Human beings are social creatures, and Facebook is a great place for social interaction [1].
However, social interaction doesn't necessarily translate to "informed political awareness" [2].
My impression is this: Yes, the campaign managers are savvy about social networking, yes, they will use this, and, given the nature of social networking, properly manipulated? They will not only get more people to vote (a good thing, in general), but they will get more people to vote the way they want, so long as they get enough presence... if they look good to "someone" on Facebook? Well, odds are they're going to look good to that someone's friends, too, right, wrong or indifferent.
In many ways, leveraging Facebook and other social networking sites is the best way for any politician to go now: The cost to do so is next to nothing [3] and the impact is not only nation-wide, it's also self-selecting and self-perpetuating.
And, cynically? Where else are you going to find more "warm bodies" with so little effort?
Regards,
dj
Notes:
[1] Or so I've been told. I'm proud to admit that I don't have, nor ever will have, a Facebook account, nor accounts on similar services. And no, that doesn't mean that I don't have friends, it just means that I don't have any Facebook friends.
[2] Hell, I'd argue the contrary: People gathering together socially for extended periods of time tend to have similar views in most things, and so their political views will be similar and fairly immutable. So, they're self-selecting, and easily targeted and leveraged.
[3] After all, Facebook doesn't charge for an account... so, it's every politician's campaign manager's wet dream: Free, unfettered access to an enormous number of voters, who will also, potentially, recruit their friends, family, etc.? Hell, from their perspective, Facebook is an ocean, and its members are chum that willingly gather together to be eaten.
Facebook users tend to be young. Younger members of the electorate are more easily influenced, period. This is an oversimplification, sure, but it's likely to be the primary reason.
...the Zoidberg of online social influence?
I will NOT be "influenced".
I do not "book my face".
I am not one of the borg.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
and here I was just thinking it was one of the reasons I left facebook (again...).
So ... 60.7 million out of the 61 million would ignore the ads ??? really impressive eh?
and this is the impressionable facebook demographic
and no indication that this could or would impact voting intentions either
This is just useless facebook marketing material !!!!
The more spent on Facebook ads, the less spent elsewhere.
Waste the time of the people who are wasting their time by using facebook in the first place.
Of course the biggest reason why I support facebook ads, is the fact I deleted my facebook account over 2 years ago.
Looking for a job?
Want your resume written professionally?
DON'T USE TUNAREZ!!!
This is the only way I'm going to get through the next couple of months without strangling some of my FB friends and acquaintances:
http://lifehacker.com/5940319/how-to-block-annoying-political-posts-on-facebook
Short version: browser add on that lets you (among other things) filter FB to not show you posts containing words like Romney and Obama.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
Anything that makes them spend less on telemarketing is FINE with me!
Is that one of those 57 states?
Others have pointed out reasons to doubt the significance of this study. I noticed one thing which raises questions about the effectiveness of Facebook political ads. The study found that people who got messages from their friends saying that those friends had voted were more likely to vote. No where did it discover if the message recipients were any more likely to vote the same as their friends. Nor did it say whether they actually did vote the same as their friends. Perhaps this effect was the result of people going out and voting in an attempt to counteract the vote of the friend who messaged them (I know that is unlikely, but with a result that is less than one half of one percent it can't be ruled out).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The conclusion is pure conjecture. There is no time dimension in their analysis. This shows that people who saw Facebook pictures of friends who voted are slightly more likely to admit that they also voted. To prove that the Facebook pictures actually influenced whether people voted the study would have to know the time people saw the Facebook message AND the time they voted to know whether the person voted before or after seeing the message. They couldn't have gotten that information from voting rolls.
Interpreting the results leaves no clear causal conclusions. It just opens the door for more studies to find more information.
After all, the guy calling me on the phone, or shouting at me through the idiot box is obviously a paid shill. The person telling me about his favorite candidate on Facebook is a Friend (tm) and I trust him completely. Even if I don't know him IRL.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.