Online Social Ties Mirror Offline Relationships: Implications for Political Science Research

### The Question

Does social network data gathered online accurately reflect real-world offline relationships?

### Our Approach

This article directly compares online and offline social ties, using novel experimental methods. We collected data on both types of connections to test external validity.

### Key Finding

We found strong similarity between online and offline relationships despite their different contexts. The nature of these ties appears consistent across domains.

### Why It Matters

These results confirm that online network data can effectively test long-standing theories in political science about social networks' role in collective action.