LEIDEN TRAAG PROFESSIONAL

The first is direct links between people who are members of the same family for example. Traag attempts to tease this issue apart by distinguishing between two different kinds of links.

So what of political donations-how contagious is this behavior? But less well understood is the effect of indirect links across a network-clearly a virus cannot spread via a long-distance telephone call or a group e-mail, but gossip certainly can. Network theorists know that direct links are an important factor in the spread of everything from disease to gossip. And because each donation is time-stamped, he can calculate how the process of donation spreads through the network like a virus. This data has allowed Traag to build a network of links between these individuals-a kind of Facebook of political donors. It shows who donated, when, and by how much. In total, LittleSis has data on 120,000 individuals who are together members of over 40,000 organizations, such as businesses, universities, clubs, and so on.

LEIDEN TRAAG PROFESSIONAL

It also tracks family, social, and other professional links. The site also collects other information about donors, such as the positions people hold in businesses, where they were educated, what organizations they are members of. This gathers data from the Federal Election Committee about donations from individuals to political candidates. Traag begins with data gathered by a website called LittleSis,В set up by the Public Accountability Initiative. And this could have dramatic implications for politics.

Traag says that a famous social network illusion implies that politicians can collect more by targeting people who are relatively difficult to recruit rather than the easy picks. He has studied the structure of the social network between donors and discovered how it influences the way people make payments to candidates. Traag is a specialist in the properties of complex networks. Today we get a unique insight thanks to the work of Vincent Traag at the Leiden University in the Netherlands. One relatively neglected angle in the debate is what light science can throw on the issue. politics: вЂњno money, no campaign,вЂќ so the search for new and bigger sources of income is hugely important for all candidates. With election fever sweeping the U.S., the issue of campaign donations is as contentious as ever.

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