Influence of Facebook Friends
As humans are social animals, social networks are critical in our daily lives. We’ve been deeply weaved into the web, so it’s hard to imagine a person without any connections to other people. Today, the most prevalent online social network site would be Facebook undoubtably. On the election date, the research team had shown a reminder that it was voting day, and a clikable “I voted” button along with a list of 6 of the user’s friends who had already clicked “I voted” button. This interesting research conducted on Facebook users revealed a fascinating fact that a banner message that was shown to the user’s friends who had voted contributed in quadrupling the voting population in the 2010 US Congressional elections. More interestingly, people were prone to be more influenced when many of their close friends, whom they have “strong ties” with, voted than when their distant friends, whom they have “weak ties” with, voted.
In the network perspective, it makes sense that people are more likely to be influenced by the voting pattern of their close friends than their distant friends. One fascinating explanation of this phenomenon provided by the article was that since people with great similarities tend to form strong bonds, friends who voted might share their interest in politics. Friends with strong bonds just may happen to have common interest in politics but I believe this study signifies the “peer influence.” Close friend’s behavior matters in people’s action.
The article said that for every person who changed their voting behavior, there were 4 friends who changed their voting behavior. How can a single person’s behavior influence multiple people’s action? One possible explanation for this phenomenon would be strong triadic closure property. The strong triadic closure property states that if A has strong ties to some 2 nodes, B and C, there needs to be at least a weak tie between B and C. Then, if A and B voted, it is likely that both A and B have a weak or strong bonds with C, which is influential enough to foster C to vote as well.
In sum, this study has shown a great example about our social network system. I believe the results would have been same for any topics other than politics as well. People whom we have strong bonds with have great influence on our lives.
HL
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19571053