Meredith Rolfe

Is influence mightier than selection? Forging agreement in political discussion networks during a campaign

Abstract Is political agreement in social networks the product of selection or influence? We investigate this question using the first large, general population sample survey to track changes in the political discussion partners named by respondents over the course of an election campaign. We identify two social processes at work during the nine months prior to the election: “selection”, or the likelihood that people choose discussion partners based on their political views, and “influence”, or the likelihood that respondents exposed to political disagreement change their intended vote choice. We find evidence of both positive and negative selection for political agreement, as well as evidence that people are influenced by their friends and family.

Social Networks and Labor Market Inequality between Ethnicities and Races

This paper analyzes the relationship between unexplained racial/ethnic wage differentials on the one hand and social network segregation, as measured by inbreeding homophily, on the other hand. Our analysis is based on both U.S. and Estonian surveys, supplemented with Estonian telephone communication data. In case of Estonia we consider the regional variation in economic performance of the Russian minority, and in the U.S. case we consider the regional variation in black-white differentials. Our analysis finds a strong relationship between the size of the differential and network segregation: regions with more segregated social networks exhibit larger unexplained wage gaps.