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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."
It's not even a very large effect. From 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". Get a sample group large enough (61 million users), and you'll find many things to be statistically significant.
What it means is that more people are more likely to click buttons online and say they're gonna vote, then they're nowhere to be seen at the polls because they'd rather fuck off on Facebook all day.
No, they checked that in the study. Here's a more complete version from the AP that covers this:
Fowler and colleagues didn't just take the word of people who clicked the "I voted" button. They checked public voting records in 13 states for that election, and found about 4 percent of those who said they voted hadn't really cast ballots.