Mass social-network study shows that influence of close friends raises participation.
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Change history
12 September 2012
The original version of this story stated that only close friends exerted influence in getting users to the ballot box. That was true for the 280,000 extra people 'nudged' to vote in polls by viewing messages in their news feeds. But it is not true for the 60,000 extra who voted because of Facebook's 'social' message; some of those voted even though non-close friends appeared on the message. The text has been clarified.
References
Bond, R. M. et al. Nature 489, 295–298 (2012).
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Corbyn, Z. Facebook experiment boosts US voter turnout. Nature (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature.2012.11401
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature.2012.11401
