Personal vs. Know-How Contacts: Which Matter More in Wiki Elections?

TL;DR

This study analyzes social network measures in wiki elections, finding that personal contacts significantly influence nominations and voting, while know-how contacts have a more limited impact, mainly affecting information passing.

Contribution

It demonstrates the greater importance of personal contacts over know-how contacts in online wiki elections using network analysis methods.

Findings

Personal contacts positively influence nominations and voting participation.

Know-how contacts have limited impact on nominations but aid information flow.

Network measures like PageRank and reachability are relevant for understanding influence.

Abstract

The use of social media affects the real world as well. This study relies on specific social network measures to investigate the interactions between election participants and the importance of their contacts. It investigates whether personal contacts matter more than know-how contacts in wiki election nominations and voting participation by using standard tools such as Pajek and Gephi. It further evaluates the significance of a personal contacts in online wiki elections through a number of different graph-based influence identification methods. Additionally, the basic characteristics and cohesive groups in the wiki vote network are explored. This work contributes by discovering the significance of personal contacts over know-how contacts of a person in online elections. It is found that personal contacts, i.e. immediate neighbors (degree centrality) and neighborhood (k-neighbors) of a person have a positive effect on a person's nomination as an administrator and also contribute to the active participation of voters in voting. Moreover, know-how contacts, analyzed by means of measures such as betweenness and closeness centralities, have a relatively insignificant effect on the selection of a person. However, know-how contacts in terms of betweenness centrality for passing information in the network can positively contribute only to the voting process. These contacts also measured in terms of influence domain and PageRank can play a vital role in the selection of an admin. Additionally, such contacts in terms of reachability and brokerage roles have a positive association with the voting process.