Inside the Secret World of the Data Crunchers Who Helped Obama Win
…the campaign [created] a single massive system that could merge the information collected from pollsters, fundraisers, field workers and consumer databases as well as social-media and mobile contacts with the main Democratic voter files in the swing states. The new megafile didn’t just tell the campaign how to find voters and get their attention; it also allowed the number crunchers to run tests predicting which types of people would be persuaded by certain kinds of appeals. Read more
Join the Northwestern University Ph.D. Program in Media, Technology and Society & the SONIC Research Group – Advancing the Science of Networks in Communities
A must read book for social network analysts: Exponential Random Graph Models for Social Networks – Cambridge University Press
When Networks Network
Small Business Big Use of Social Media – Sponsored – The Atlantic
Data Visualization: Photo-Sharing Explosions
A series of videos that visualizes a single piece of content being shared between hundreds of thousands of individuals on Facebook. We’ve tried to capture the frenetic energy surrounding three of the most shared images, all of which were photos published on George Takei’s Page.
Facebook: Now Serving 1 Billion Users Every Month
Building and Evaluating an Interdisciplinary Team in Oncofertility
Dr. Kate Waimey Timmerman and SONIC lab member Alina Lungeanu have written a blog post in Team Science Toolkit entitled Building and Evaluating an Interdisciplinary Team in Oncofertility. Be sure to check it out.
https://www.teamsciencetoolkit.cancer.gov/public/ExpertBlog.aspx?tid=4
A 61-million-person experiment in social influence and political mobilization
A 61-million-person experiment in social influence and political mobilization
Robert M. Bond, Christopher J. Fariss, Jason J. Jones, Adam D. I. Kramer, Cameron Marlow, Jaime E. Settle & James H. Fowler
Results from a randomized controlled trial of political mobilization messages delivered to 61 million Facebook users during the 2010 US congressional elections show that the messages directly influenced political self-expression, information seeking and real-world voting behaviour of millions of people. Furthermore, the messages not only influenced the users who received them but also the users’ friends, and friends of friends. The effect of social transmission on real-world voting was greater than the direct effect of the messages themselves. Read more…