IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0134811.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Effect of Media Usage Selection on Social Mobilization Speed: Facebook vs E-Mail

Author

Listed:
  • Jing Wang
  • Stuart Madnick
  • Xitong Li
  • Jeff Alstott
  • Chander Velu

Abstract

Social mobilization is a process that enlists a large number of people to achieve a goal within a limited time, especially through the use of social media. There is increasing interest in understanding the factors that affect the speed of social mobilization. Based on the Langley Knights competition data set, we analyzed the differences in mobilization speed between users of Facebook and e-mail. We include other factors that may influence mobilization speed (gender, age, timing, and homophily of information source) in our model as control variables in order to isolate the effect of such factors. We show that, in this experiment, although more people used e-mail to recruit, the mobilization speed of Facebook users was faster than that of those that used e-mail. We were also able to measure and show that the mobilization speed for Facebook users was on average seven times faster compared to e-mail before controlling for other factors. After controlling for other factors, we show that Facebook users were 1.84 times more likely to register compared to e-mail users in the next period if they have not done so at any point in time. This finding could provide useful insights for future social mobilization efforts.

Suggested Citation

  • Jing Wang & Stuart Madnick & Xitong Li & Jeff Alstott & Chander Velu, 2015. "Effect of Media Usage Selection on Social Mobilization Speed: Facebook vs E-Mail," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(9), pages 1-12, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0134811
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0134811
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0134811
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0134811&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0134811?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jeff Alstott & Stuart Madnick & Chander Velu, 2014. "Homophily and the Speed of Social Mobilization: The Effect of Acquired and Ascribed Traits," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(4), pages 1-9, April.
    2. Alex Rutherford & Manuel Cebrian & Iyad Rahwan & Sohan Dsouza & James McInerney & Victor Naroditskiy & Matteo Venanzi & Nicholas R Jennings & J R deLara & Eero Wahlstedt & Steven U Miller, 2013. "Targeted Social Mobilization in a Global Manhunt," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(9), pages 1-8, September.
    3. Robert M. Bond & Christopher J. Fariss & Jason J. Jones & Adam D. I. Kramer & Cameron Marlow & Jaime E. Settle & James H. Fowler, 2012. "A 61-million-person experiment in social influence and political mobilization," Nature, Nature, vol. 489(7415), pages 295-298, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vincent A Traag, 2016. "Complex Contagion of Campaign Donations," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(4), pages 1-20, April.
    2. Alan Gerber & Mitchell Hoffman & John Morgan & Collin Raymond, 2020. "One in a Million: Field Experiments on Perceived Closeness of the Election and Voter Turnout," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 287-325, July.
    3. Ruyi Ge & Juan Feng & Bin Gu, 2016. "Borrower’s default and self-disclosure of social media information in P2P lending," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 2(1), pages 1-6, December.
    4. Jiang, Lincheng & Zhao, Xiang & Ge, Bin & Xiao, Weidong & Ruan, Yirun, 2019. "An efficient algorithm for mining a set of influential spreaders in complex networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 516(C), pages 58-65.
    5. Yann Algan & Quoc-Anh Do & Nicolò Dalvit & Alexis Le Chapelain & Yves Zenou, 2015. "How Social Networks Shape Our Beliefs: A Natural Experiment among Future French Politicians," Working Papers hal-03459820, HAL.
    6. Daniele Barchiesi & Helen Susannah Moat & Christian Alis & Steven Bishop & Tobias Preis, 2015. "Quantifying International Travel Flows Using Flickr," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(7), pages 1-8, July.
    7. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/78vacv4udu92eq3fec89svm9uv is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Julian Freitag & Anna Kerkhof & Johannes Münster, 2021. "Selective sharing of news items and the political position of news outlets," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 056, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    9. Donati, Dante, 2023. "Mobile Internet access and political outcomes: Evidence from South Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    10. Yuho Chung & Yiwei Li & Jianmin Jia, 2021. "Exploring embeddedness, centrality, and social influence on backer behavior: the role of backer networks in crowdfunding," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 49(5), pages 925-946, September.
    11. Liberini, Federica & Redoano, Michela & Russo, Antonio & Cuevas, Angel & Cuevas, Ruben, 2018. "Politics in the Facebook Era Evidence from the 2016 US Presidential Elections," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 389, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    12. Jan Trzaskowski, 2024. "Manipulation by design," Electronic Markets, Springer;IIM University of St. Gallen, vol. 34(1), pages 1-13, December.
    13. DiTraglia, Francis J. & García-Jimeno, Camilo & O’Keeffe-O’Donovan, Rossa & Sánchez-Becerra, Alejandro, 2023. "Identifying causal effects in experiments with spillovers and non-compliance," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 235(2), pages 1589-1624.
    14. Andrea Tesei & Filipe Campante & Ruben Durante, 2022. "Media and Social Capital," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 14(1), pages 69-91, August.
    15. Shota Saito & Yoshito Hirata & Kazutoshi Sasahara & Hideyuki Suzuki, 2015. "Tracking Time Evolution of Collective Attention Clusters in Twitter: Time Evolving Nonnegative Matrix Factorisation," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(9), pages 1-17, September.
    16. Komatsu, Hidenori & Nishio, Ken-ichiro, 2015. "An experimental study on motivational change for electricity conservation by normative messages," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 35-43.
    17. Jukka Jouhki & Epp Lauk & Maija Penttinen & Niina Sormanen & Turo Uskali, 2016. "Facebook’s Emotional Contagion Experiment as a Challenge to Research Ethics," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 4(4), pages 75-85.
    18. Alexander A. Kharlamov & Aleksey N. Raskhodchikov & Maria Pilgun, 2025. "Social media actors: perception and optimization of influence across different types," Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Springer, vol. 49(2), pages 1-39, March.
    19. Borondo, J. & Morales, A.J. & Benito, R.M. & Losada, J.C., 2014. "Mapping the online communication patterns of political conversations," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 414(C), pages 403-413.
    20. Han Woo Park, 2014. "Mapping election campaigns through negative entropy: Triple and Quadruple Helix approach to South Korea’s 2012 presidential election," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 99(1), pages 187-197, April.
    21. Jae Yeon Kim & Jaeung Sim & Daegon Cho, 2023. "Identity and Status: When Counterspeech Increases Hate Speech Reporting and Why," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 25(5), pages 1683-1694, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0134811. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.