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Social science

Poked to vote

Nature volume 489, pages 212–214 (2012)Cite this article

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A Facebook message sent out during the 2010 US congressional elections influenced the voting behaviour of millions of people. The experiment illustrates the power of digital social networks to spread behavioural change. See Letter p.295

Political mobilization has been central to recent discourse about the transformative effects of social media — for example, the part that technologies such as Facebook or Twitter played in the protests collectively known as the Arab Spring, or may play in the forthcoming US presidential election. The question is: what role do peer influence and digital social signals have in mobilizing political expression? Do our friends' behaviours inspire us to be politically active, to protest or to vote?

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sinan Aral is at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University, New York, New York 10012, USA.,

    Sinan Aral

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  1. Sinan Aral
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Correspondence to Sinan Aral.

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Aral, S. Poked to vote. Nature 489, 212–214 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/489212a

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