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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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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Traag, Vincent A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2016
Materias:
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.
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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.
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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
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