The team calculated that the manipulated social messages sent 60,000 additional voters to the polls in the 2010 midterm elections, as well as another 280,000 who cast votes as a result of a “social contagion” effect, for a total of 340,000 additional votes. In their concluding remarks, the researchers asserted that “we show the importance of social influence for effecting behavior change… the results suggest that online messages might influence a variety of offline behaviors, and this has implications for our understanding of the role of online social media in society.…”

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 938