Contagious Politics: Tie Strength and the Spread of Political Knowledge

This work explores the influence of social connections on young people's political knowledge. Extending previous research on individual and interpersonal predictors of political learning, the study examines relational characteristics and their role in informed citizenship. Factors expected to affect social contagion in political behavior include conversation content, interaction frequency, relational closeness, mutual communication partners, and shared ideology. The analyses were based on longitudinal network data from 13 residential student communities. The study found evidence consistent with social contagion. The political knowledge of participants was predicted by the knowledge of their strong social ties. Political discussants were not as influential as high-frequency general conversation partners. These findings have important implications for research exploring social influence on political behavior. They signal that the contacts we tend to identify as political are not necessarily the ones that matter most in shaping our opinions and attitudes.