James Fowler, co-author of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, will be one of the presenters at the iDiplomacy symposium. Fowler, a political science professor at UC San Diego, along with co-author Nicholas Christakis, was named “most original thinker of the year” in 2008 on the McLaughlin Group. Their research on social networks was featured in Time’s Year in Medicine in 2007 and 2008 and in Harvard Business Review’s Breakthrough Ideas. He also was named one of the Nifty Fifty “most inspiring” scientists by the San Diego Science Festival.

Fowler’s current interests include social networks, behavioral economics, evolutionary game theory, political participation, cooperation, and genopolitics (the study of the genetic basis of political behavior). His work includes studies of how social networks affect legislative success and how altruism and social identification increase political participation.

Connected, published in September 2009, was featured in Wired and named an Editor’s Choice by the New York Times Book Review, makes provocative assertions about the extent to which social networks can influence you and how people you don’t even know but are your friend’s friend’s friend can affect your behavior.

Fowler’s and Christakis’s examination of how your friends and their friends can help determine whether you gain weight (and vice versa) was the subject of a New York Times Magazine cover article, “Are Your Friends Making You Fat?” last month.

Among other phenomena Fowler has documented, he has shown that the so-called “Colbert bump” is real. In a February 2008 Los Angeles Times Op-Ed that advised Hillary Clinton to appear on Stephen Colbert’s satirical show in order to boost her fundraising numbers. Fowler wrote, “Democratic candidates who appear on ‘The Report’ receive 44% more money than those who do not in the first month after their appearance.”

Colbert made note of Fowler’s “Colbert bump” analysis in this video: