Political Information Cascades
With an increase in social media, candidates have been able to extend their reach to a greater number of people than ever before, informing them of their respective policies, beliefs, and overall electoral ideologies. With more information readily available, people are given more opportunities to educated themselves about the election. On the other hand, social media has also given voters an impact on other voters — for example with Facebook’s new “I’m Voting” feature, which they rolled out just in time for this year’s election. As the article states, the feature allows the Facebook user to share on his or her wall, as well as the newsfeeds of many friends, that he or she voted in the election. From this, researchers have concluded that an additional 2.2 percent of people voted in this election because they saw that their friends had voted.
Apart from the Facebook feature, many other forms of social media allowed users to indicate that they voted on election day. Even more, on some of the social networking sites, such a Twitter, people announced their allegiance to specific candidates (ie. tweeting “Just voted for Obama!” or “Romney 2012!”). Now, taking this social aspect of the election and tying it into how people decide who to vote for, we can see how an information cascade may be produced in these situations.
Similar to the models we’ve seen, the voters in the election cast their ballots in succession and they have knowledge of who some people voted for due to social media. With this, in addition to their own private information (from reading about the candidates), they make their own decision on who to vote for. One difference, however, is the effect of whether a state is a swing state or not. In the case of a non-swing state, there is more likely to be a larger information cascade because a greater majority of the people will have chosen one candidate, thereby making people more likely to join the masses and also vote the same way. In addition, with the knowledge of what color their state will become (ie. I am registered in NY and know that it will remain a blue state), they will be even more likely to continue to vote that way, regardless of how much they actually know about the candidates or how passionate they are about the election.
In the case of a swing state, however, voters are more split and less partial to candidates, thus making it less likely for a large number to be influenced by others through social media (although some still might be), and as a result, more difficult for an information cascade to occur. For example, because the state has people from both parties, it is possible for an information cascade to begin on one side, but then even up. As such, if there were two voters who were pro-Obama and voted for him, and then a few friends of theirs who were unsure, they could end up voting for Obama as a result of their friends’ influence. However, if a few more people were to come who were all pro-Romney, they would vote for Romney regardless of how many people they saw voted for Obama. As a result, people who were more impartial but leaning towards Romney (however, they wouldn’t have voted for him if no one else had) would feel more comfortable now voting for Romney because they saw that some of their friends had as well. This would start a cascade for Romney and thus even out the votes. In effect, this could also be how swing states are created in the first place, as opposed to non-swing states.
Overall, elections today have gained better turnout and more effect on other voters as a result of social media. By being able to see which ones of your friends voted, and even more, sometimes seeing who they voted for, people become more influenced by one another and information cascades have the ability to be created.
– politiks2012
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/blogs/press-here/Facebooks-Im-Voting-Can-Increase-Voter-Turnout-177504231.html