Online social networks are everywhere. They must be influencing the way society is developing, but hard evidence is scarce. For instance, the relative effectiveness of online friendships and face-to-face friendships as drivers of social change is not known. In what may be the largest experiment ever conducted with human subjects, James Fowler and colleagues randomly assigned messages to 61 million Facebook users on Election Day in the United States in 2010, and tracked their behaviour both online and offline, using publicly available records. The results show that the messages influenced the political communication, information-seeking and voting behaviour of millions of people. Social messages had more impact than informational messages and 'weak ties' were much less likely than 'strong ties' to spread behaviour via the social network. Thus online mobilization works primarily through strong-tie networks that may exist offline but have an online representation.

https://jasonjones.ninja/papers/massive_turnout.pdf

A 61-million-person experiment in social influence and political mobilization

This study explores the relationship between perceived bridging social capital and specific Facebook-enabled communication behaviors using survey data from a sample of U.S. adults N=614. We explore the role of a specific set of Facebook behaviors that support relationship maintenance and assess the extent to which demographic variables, time on site, total and "actual" Facebook Friends, and this new measure Facebook Relationship Maintenance Behaviors predict bridging social capital. Drawing upon scholarship on social capital and relationship maintenance, we discuss the role of social grooming and attention-signaling activities in shaping perceived access to resources in one's network as measured by bridging social capital.

https://www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jcc4.12078

Cultivating Social Resources on Social Network Sites: Facebook Relationship Maintenance Behaviors and Their Role in Social Capital Processes

Social media has skyrocketed to popularity in the past few years. The Arab Spring in 2011 as well as the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns have fueled interest in how social media might affect citizens’ participation in civic and political life. In response, researchers have produced 36 studies assessing the relationship between social media use and participation in civic and political life. This manuscript presents the results of a meta-analysis of research on social media use and participation. Overall, the metadata demonstrate a positive relationship between social media use and participation. More than 80% of coefficients are positive. However, questions remain about whether the relationship is causal and transformative. Only half of the coefficients were statistically significant. Studies using panel data are less likely to report positive and statistically significant coefficients between social media use and participation, compared to cross-sectional surveys. The metadata also suggest that social media...

/pdf/social-media-use-and-participation-a-meta-analysis-of-34tklpk6b5.pdf

Social media use and participation: a meta-analysis of current research

Instagram: Motives for its use and relationship to narcissism and contextual age

POLITICS ACROSS GENERATIONS: FAMILY TRANSMISSION REEXAMINED M. Kent Jennings University of California, Santa Barbara Laura Stoker University of California, Berkeley Jake Bowers University of California, Berkeley Working Paper 2001-15 Working Papers published by the Institute of Governmental Studies provide quick dissemination of draft reports and papers, preliminary analysis, and papers with a limited audience. The objective is to assist authors in refining their ideas by circulating results and to stimulate discussion about public policy. Working Papers are reproduced unedited directly from the author’s page.

Politics Across Generations: Family Transmission Reexamined

Facebook as a toolkit: A uses and gratification approach to unbundling feature use

In the 2008 U.S. presidential election, social network sites such as Facebook allowed users to share their political beliefs, support specific candidates, and interact with others on political issues. But do political activities on Facebook affect political participation among young voters, a group traditionally perceived as apathetic in regard to civic engagement? Or do these activities represent another example of feel-good participation that has little real-world impact, a concept often referred to as “slacktivism”? Results from a survey of undergraduate students (N = 683) at a large public university in the Midwestern United States conducted in the month prior to the election found that students tend to engage in lightweight political participation both on Facebook and in other venues. Furthermore, two OLS regressions found that political activity on Facebook (e.g., posting a politically oriented status update, becoming a “fan” of a candidate) is a significant predictor of other forms of poli...

/pdf/it-s-complicated-facebook-users-political-participation-in-1fawh43ilv.pdf

It's Complicated: Facebook Users' Political Participation in the 2008 Election

Background: Research addressing online social support, especially for new mothers, has typically focused on forums and dedicated Web sites, and not on social networking sites like Facebook. Here we expand on this existing body of work by addressing a Facebook page, Ask the Chicks, themed around questions and answers related to motherhood. Using the uses and gratification lens, we explore motivations for participation as they relate to engagement with the page. Materials and Methods: Individuals were recruited to participant in an online survey through posts on the Ask the Chicks Facebook page made by the page owner over a 1-week period. To be eligible to complete the survey, participants had to be 18 years old or older, female, and pregnant or have at least one child under the age of 5 years. Results: Analyses of survey data collected from users of the page (n=647) revealed that engagement has a positive relationship with the motives of relaxing entertainment, expressive information sharing, soci...

Connected Motherhood: Social Support for Moms and Moms-to-Be on Facebook.

This study explores Facebook users’ management behaviors related to their—and their friends'—political communication via social media, utilizing the concepts of context collapse and self-presentation. A new two-factor measure of Facebook management was developed, pilot tested (N = 139) and implemented in a survey utilizing a national sample (N = 352) of individuals aged 18–29. Results indicated Facebook users are not generally engaging in the strategic management of political disclosures or the political content to which they are exposed. However, as network sizes increase, participants engage in more disclosure behaviors and make greater efforts to manage content exposure. Additionally, participants with strong political beliefs engage in more Facebook management behaviors, possibly indicating an effort to limit cognitive dissonance.

Andrew Smock

Papers

Facebook as a toolkit: A uses and gratification approach to unbundling feature use

It's Complicated: Facebook Users' Political Participation in the 2008 Election

Connected Motherhood: Social Support for Moms and Moms-to-Be on Facebook.

Face[book] Management: Self-Presentation of Political Views on Social Media

Leveraging Social Media for Learning: Communities of Practice on Flickr.