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Research Article

Limits of social mobilization

Alex Rutherford, Manuel Cebrian, Sohan Dsouza, Esteban Moro, Alex Pentland, and Iyad Rahwan
PNAS first published April 1, 2013; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1216338110
Alex Rutherford
aComputing and Information Science, Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi 54224, United Arab Emirates;
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Manuel Cebrian
bDepartment of Computer Science and Engineering, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093;
cNational Information and Communications Technology Australia, Melbourne, VIC 3010, Australia;
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Sohan Dsouza
aComputing and Information Science, Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi 54224, United Arab Emirates;
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Esteban Moro
dDepartamento de Matemáticas and Grupo Interdisciplinar de Sistemas Complejos, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 28911 Madrid, Spain;
eInstituto de Ingeniería del Conocimiento, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 28049 Madrid, Spain;
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Alex Pentland
fMedia Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139; and
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Iyad Rahwan
aComputing and Information Science, Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi 54224, United Arab Emirates;
gSchool of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9AB, United Kingdom
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  • For correspondence: irahwan@acm.org
  1. Edited* by Jon Kleinberg, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, and approved March 1, 2013 (received for review September 19, 2012)

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Abstract

The Internet and social media have enabled the mobilization of large crowds to achieve time-critical feats, ranging from mapping crises in real time, to organizing mass rallies, to conducting search-and-rescue operations over large geographies. Despite significant success, selection bias may lead to inflated expectations of the efficacy of social mobilization for these tasks. What are the limits of social mobilization, and how reliable is it in operating at these limits? We build on recent results on the spatiotemporal structure of social and information networks to elucidate the constraints they pose on social mobilization. We use the DARPA Network Challenge as our working scenario, in which social media were used to locate 10 balloons across the United States. We conduct high-resolution simulations for referral-based crowdsourcing and obtain a statistical characterization of the population recruited, geography covered, and time to completion. Our results demonstrate that the outcome is plausible without the presence of mass media but lies at the limit of what time-critical social mobilization can achieve. Success relies critically on highly connected individuals willing to mobilize people in distant locations, overcoming the local trapping of diffusion in highly dense areas. However, even under these highly favorable conditions, the risk of unsuccessful search remains significant. These findings have implications for the design of better incentive schemes for social mobilization. They also call for caution in estimating the reliability of this capability.

  • social networks
  • human dynamics

Footnotes

  • ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: irahwan{at}acm.org.
  • Author contributions: A.R., M.C., E.M., A.P., and I.R. designed research; A.R., S.D., and I.R. performed research; A.R., M.C., E.M., A.P., and I.R. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; A.R. analyzed data; and A.R., M.C., E.M., A.P., and I.R. wrote the paper.

  • The authors declare no conflict of interest.

  • ↵*This Direct Submission article had a prearranged editor.

  • This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1216338110/-/DCSupplemental.

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Limits of social mobilization
Alex Rutherford, Manuel Cebrian, Sohan Dsouza, Esteban Moro, Alex Pentland, Iyad Rahwan
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Apr 2013, 201216338; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1216338110

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Limits of social mobilization
Alex Rutherford, Manuel Cebrian, Sohan Dsouza, Esteban Moro, Alex Pentland, Iyad Rahwan
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Apr 2013, 201216338; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1216338110
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