Predictors of Social Mobilization Speed

Mobilization across social networks is becoming increasingly influential, but little is known about what traits of individuals and their relationships affect their speed of mobilization between them. We ran a global social mobilization contest and recorded personal traits of the participants and those they mobilized. We examined how those traits influenced the speed of mobilization. Individuals mobilized faster when they heard about the contest directly from the contest organization, and decreased in speed when hearing from less personal source types (e.g. family vs. media). Mobilization was faster when the mobilizer and the mobilized heard about the contest through the same source type, and slower when both individuals were in different countries. Females mobilized other females faster than males mobilized other males. Mobilization was faster with young recruiters and old recruits, and slower with old recruiters and young recruits. These findings suggest ways to optimize the speed of social mobilization. Alstott et al. Predictors of Social Mobilization Speed 2 | P a g e