Jennifer Larson
Jennifer Larson (Vanderbilt University)
Jennifer Larson is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. She received her B.A. in mathematics and political science from Creighton University, and her Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University. Her research explores how and why social networks affect political behavior in order to explain outcomes such as protests, civil conflict, and informal governance. Her theoretical work uses game theory and agent-based models to isolate the importance of networks, while her empirical work focuses on collecting new data to understand how social networks spread information and motivate people to act in settings ranging from rural Uganda to urban France.
From Chatter to Action: How Social Networks Inform and Motivate in Rural Uganda
From election campaigns to public service announcements, numerous political activities and policy interventions hinge on the spread of new information that motivates behavior. However, few studies directly examine the process by which information spreads via word-of-mouth, or compare that to the separate process by which those who learn the information act on it. Using a novel design that seeded valuable, actionable information in rural Uganda, we show that both processes depend on a group's social network, but in different ways. Information spread via a straightforward contagion process. Behavior did not spread so simply; those who acted were socially proximate to the earliest actors and saw endorsement by their most intimate ties. Puzzlingly, while those most central in the network were most likely to hear the information, those who ultimately acted were the least central among the informed. Connections to highly-connected peers may generate pressure to refrain from doing something new.