  The use of social media affects the real world as well. This study relies on
specific social network measures to investigate the interactions between
election participants and the importance of their contacts. It investigates
whether personal contacts matter more than know-how contacts in wiki election
nominations and voting participation by using standard tools such as Pajek and
Gephi. It further evaluates the significance of a personal contacts in online
wiki elections through a number of different graph-based influence
identification methods. Additionally, the basic characteristics and cohesive
groups in the wiki vote network are explored. This work contributes by
discovering the significance of personal contacts over know-how contacts of a
person in online elections. It is found that personal contacts, i.e. immediate
neighbors (degree centrality) and neighborhood (k-neighbors) of a person have a
positive effect on a person's nomination as an administrator and also
contribute to the active participation of voters in voting. Moreover, know-how
contacts, analyzed by means of measures such as betweenness and closeness
centralities, have a relatively insignificant effect on the selection of a
person. However, know-how contacts in terms of betweenness centrality for
passing information in the network can positively contribute only to the voting
process. These contacts also measured in terms of influence domain and PageRank
can play a vital role in the selection of an admin. Additionally, such contacts
in terms of reachability and brokerage roles have a positive association with
the voting process.
