title: Effect of Media Usage Selection on Social Mobilization Speed: Facebook vs E-Mail.
abstract: Social mobilization is a process that enlists a large number of people to achieve a goal within a limited time, especially through the use of social media. There is increasing interest in understanding the factors that affect the speed of social mobilization. Based on the Langley Knights competition data set, we analyzed the differences in mobilization speed between users of Facebook and e-mail. We include other factors that may influence mobilization speed (gender, age, timing, and homophily of information source) in our model as control variables in order to isolate the effect of such factors. We show that, in this experiment, although more people used e-mail to recruit, the mobilization speed of Facebook users was faster than that of those that used e-mail. We were also able to measure and show that the mobilization speed for Facebook users was on average seven times faster compared to e-mail before controlling for other factors. After controlling for other factors, we show that Facebook users were 1.84 times more likely to register compared to e-mail users in the next period if they have not done so at any point in time. This finding could provide useful insights for future social mobilization efforts.
authors.affiliation: Management Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China.
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Sloan School of Management and School of Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America.
authors.forename: Stuart
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Madnick
authors.affiliation: Department MOSI, HEC Paris, Jouy-en-Josas, France.
authors.forename: Xitong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Brain Mapping Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Jeff
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Alstott
authors.affiliation: Institute for Manufacturing, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Chander
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Velu
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D003146:Communications Media; D034742:Electronic Mail; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D012919:Social Behavior; D061108:Social Media; D055815:Young Adult