Looking Forward to 2008

Change will be happening in 2008, both technologically and socially.

One of the most important events of the new year in the U.S. will be the presidential election. The first primaries happen just 3 days into the new year -- January 3rd in Iowa. What affect will these early choices have on the overall electorate?

A very interesting article on the social network dynamics of elections by Shankar Vedantam was published in the Washington Post today. Shankar quotes the recent research of Duncan Watts that reveals it is often the local patterns in networks that influence how people think about events and people. And, these patterns can act differently depending on the information they are fed. Watts also points out the high influence of those people who act early in the process -- the voters of Iowa and New Hampshire.

I wrote a chapter for the book Extreme Democracy a few years ago that also looked at the social network dynamics of voting behavior. Based on the literature review, I reached a similar conclusion to that of Watts -- "it's the [local] conversations, stupid". People are influenced by what those around them think and do -- including choosing to vote, and who to vote for.

It is also time to do another political book network map -- the last major version was done for the 2004 U.S. presidential election. I created a interactive political book network for the 2008 election. It is an interactive map that you can play with, move books around, hide them, etc., and see what emerges! Just click the Help button, in the above link, for instructions on how to interact with the map. Enjoy!

Watch how your local social networks react to the election -- share your observations in the comments below.

Happy New Year!

Update: Great new article by Jonathan Tilove on complexity and networks in voting featuring Duncan Watts.

Originally published December 31, 2007