Towards Understanding Social Influence in On-Line Social Networks

On-line social network sites provide an excellent platform for studying social influence among on-line friends. One of the crucial factors in analyzing social influence is conformity. Conformity can be defined as the act of matching attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to group norms. This paper analyzed the level of conformity of 175 Facebook users, mostly college students, through an experimental study using the Facebook Graph API protocol and a follow-up user survey. The study was designed as an exploratory-based research relying on factor analysis. We discovered that a high level of posting activity on Facebook is positively related to the subject conformity.