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We have all witnessed the power of social media. It helped elect Barack Obama president in two thousand eight. It also helped to support popular revolutions in two thousand ten and eleven that forced several long-time rulers from office. Now, research suggests that social networks could have an even greater effect on elections, helping to increase the number of people who vote. The new report appeared in the journal Nature. It estimates that about one third of a million more people voted in America’s two thousand ten congressional elections all because of a single message on Facebook. James Fowler is a political science professor at the University of California, San Diego. He led the research in partnership with Facebook’s Data Science team. They studied the effect of a “get out the vote” message on more than sixty million Facebook users. The social network placed the message at the top of their Facebook news feeds on Election Day two thousand ten. JAMES FOWLER: “And in the message, there was button that says ‘I Voted’.” There was also a link that you could click on that allowed you to look up your polling place. And in some of the messages we also showed people the pictures of their friends who had clicked on the ‘I Voted’ button earlier in the day.” We spoke to Professor Fowler on Skype. He says the team later compared this information to publicly available voting records. | 
