'Social voting' does really rock the vote
'Social voting' does really rock the vote
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.
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On Election Day, about 60 million people received a message that encouraged them to vote. It included links to local polling stations, a clickable "I Voted" button, and photos of six of their randomly chosen friends who had already clicked the "I Voted" button. Two control groups, each containing about 600,000 people, either received a version of the message with voting information but no photos of their friends, or no message at all. Then, to track who actually voted in the election, the team matched people's names and birth dates with those in the official state election rolls. If the influence of Facebook friends extends beyond the Internet, then seeing the profile photos should translate to voting out in the real world.
The photos apparently worked: 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
Guess that means you need to nag all your Facebook friends to GOTV.