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Complex Contagion of Campaign Donations
Money is central in US politics, and most campaign contributions stem from a tiny, wealthy elite. Like other political acts, campaign donations are known to be socially contagious. We study how campaign donations diffuse through a network of more than 50000 elites and examine how connectivity among...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Public Library of Science
2016
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4831683/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27077742 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0153539 |
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author | Traag, Vincent A. |
author_facet | Traag, Vincent A. |
author_sort | Traag, Vincent A. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Money is central in US politics, and most campaign contributions stem from a tiny, wealthy elite. Like other political acts, campaign donations are known to be socially contagious. We study how campaign donations diffuse through a network of more than 50000 elites and examine how connectivity among previous donors reinforces contagion. We find that the diffusion of donations is driven by independent reinforcement contagion: people are more likely to donate when exposed to donors from different social groups than when they are exposed to equally many donors from the same group. Counter-intuitively, being exposed to one side may increase donations to the other side. Although the effect is weak, simultaneous cross-cutting exposure makes donation somewhat less likely. Finally, the independence of donors in the beginning of a campaign predicts the amount of money that is raised throughout a campaign. We theorize that people infer population-wide estimates from their local observations, with elites assessing the viability of candidates, possibly opposing candidates in response to local support. Our findings suggest that theories of complex contagions need refinement and that political campaigns should target multiple communities. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4831683 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-48316832016-04-22 Complex Contagion of Campaign Donations Traag, Vincent A. PLoS One Research Article Money is central in US politics, and most campaign contributions stem from a tiny, wealthy elite. Like other political acts, campaign donations are known to be socially contagious. We study how campaign donations diffuse through a network of more than 50000 elites and examine how connectivity among previous donors reinforces contagion. We find that the diffusion of donations is driven by independent reinforcement contagion: people are more likely to donate when exposed to donors from different social groups than when they are exposed to equally many donors from the same group. Counter-intuitively, being exposed to one side may increase donations to the other side. Although the effect is weak, simultaneous cross-cutting exposure makes donation somewhat less likely. Finally, the independence of donors in the beginning of a campaign predicts the amount of money that is raised throughout a campaign. We theorize that people infer population-wide estimates from their local observations, with elites assessing the viability of candidates, possibly opposing candidates in response to local support. Our findings suggest that theories of complex contagions need refinement and that political campaigns should target multiple communities. Public Library of Science 2016-04-14 /pmc/articles/PMC4831683/ /pubmed/27077742 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0153539 Text en © 2016 Vincent A. Traag http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Traag, Vincent A. Complex Contagion of Campaign Donations |
title | Complex Contagion of Campaign Donations |
title_full | Complex Contagion of Campaign Donations |
title_fullStr | Complex Contagion of Campaign Donations |
title_full_unstemmed | Complex Contagion of Campaign Donations |
title_short | Complex Contagion of Campaign Donations |
title_sort | complex contagion of campaign donations |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4831683/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27077742 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0153539 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT traagvincenta complexcontagionofcampaigndonations |