Facebook friends’ voting has impact on Election Day turnout, study finds

Source: Washington Post

One message sent to 60 million Facebook users on Election Day 2010 got at least 300,000 additional people to vote, according to a study published Wednesday in Nature magazine.

The message showed the recipient which friends said they had already voted. The result was that the recipient was likely to also go out and vote. In addition, for every user who was persuaded to vote, four friends were as well.

But if no friends were shown as having voted, the message had little impact.

The leader of the research said that 300,000 was a conservative estimate. “The actual number is probably closer to a million people,” said James Fowler, a professor of medical genetics and political science at the University of California at San Diego.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/facebook-friends-voting-has-impact-on-election-day-turnout-study-finds/2012/09/12/92024dd2-fce3-11e1-a31e-804fccb658f9_story.html