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« Wayne Baker on Social Capital and Generalized Reciprocity | Main | Networked Publics »
6 May 2007
Interesting article in today's Boston Globe about the competition for dollars between Obama and Clinton in Massachusetts. Of particular relevance to this blog is the following quote:
"You don't give to causes, you give to friends," said mystery writer Robert Parker of Cambridge, who contributed $4,600 to Obama. "Larry Tribe asked me to contribute to Obama, and so I did." But Parker added that while he would like to see Obama win the nomination, "I'm not an enthusiastic political supporter of anyone."
This highlights the fact that contributions are, in part, mobilized through social networks of like-minded people. It would be interesting to examine the contribution data as 2-mode network data (candidates x contributors) to see (1) how contributors are connected; and (2) how candidates over time are linked to each other through their contributors.
Posted by David Lazer at May 6, 2007 8:44 PM
It seems that the strength of tie would be particularly meaningful here, since if a large corporation connected two competing candidates but there was a large disparity in the dollar amount you would have data indicating that a donor was hedging their bets, rather than actually linking two candidates.
Posted by: Ben Waber at May 8, 2007 7:48 PM