3/15/2012 1 T i ’ ‘b R l i Tweetin’ ‘bout a Revolution The growth of the Spanish Occupy movement in an online network Joint work with Javier Borge-Holthoefer and Yamir Moreno Person of the Year 2011: The Protester • The word ‘protest’ appears in The word protest appears in newspapers exponentially more in 2011 than ever before • Global tipping point for frustration • SNSs did not cause the movements, Dec 26, 2011 but kept them alive • Technology helped spread “the virus of protest”
Together with colleagues from the University of Zaragoza, Dr. Gonzalez-Bailon applied advanced mathematical methods to the analysis of the role played by Twitter in facilitating protest mobilization in Spain in 2011. Their findings “shed light on the connection between online networks, social contagion, and collective dynamics, and offer an empirical test to the recruitment mechanisms theorized in formal models of collective action.”
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3/15/2012
1
T i ’ ‘b R l iTweetin’ ‘bout a Revolution
The growth of the Spanish Occupy movementin an online network
Joint work with
Javier Borge-Holthoefer and Yamir Moreno
Person of the Year 2011: The Protester• The word ‘protest’ appears inThe word protest appears in newspapers exponentially more in 2011 than ever before
• Global tipping point for frustration
• SNSs did not cause the movements,
Dec 26, 2011
but kept them alive
• Technology helped spread “the virus of protest”
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New Media and Social Unrest
Wave of Protests (2011): Timeline of Events
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12
January
Tunisia Algeria Saudi Arabia
February
Yemen Bahrain Libya
May
Spain GreeceChile
July
Israel
August
UK
September
US
December
Russia
Egypt Syria Jordan
y
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Research Question
The Spatial Diffusion of Protests
Q
Overlapping Networks
Research QuestionQ
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Networks and Collective Action
Some historical examples:
• insurgency in Paris commune in1871 (Gould 1991)
• the 60s civil right struggles in the USthe 60s civil right struggles in the US (McAdam 1986)
• demonstrations in East Germany (Opp and Gern 1993; Lohman 1994)
Threshold Models
Watts, D. J., & Dodds, P. S. (2010). Threshold Models of Social Influence. In P. Bearman & P. Hedström (Eds.), Handbook of Analytical Sociology, OUP
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Threshold Models – Main Findings
• the shape of threshold distribution determines the global reach ofthe shape of threshold distribution determines the global reach ofcascades;
• individual thresholds interact with the size of local networks;
• critical mass depends on activating large number of low threshold actors that are well connected in the overall structure;
• exposure to multiple sources can be more important than multiple exposures from the same source (complex contagion)
Influence in Online Networks
Centola, D. (2010). “The Spread of Behavior in an Online Social Network Experiment”. Science
Romero, D. M., Meeder, B., & Kleinberg, J. (2011). “Differences in the Mechanics of Information Diffusion Across Topics”, WWW
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Activism in the Internet Age
• lower costs outdates resource mobilisation theory
• what is ‘success’ in the era flash activism?activism?
The Spanish ‘Indignados’ Movement
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Data
#hashtags
15m.bifi.es
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The Twitter Network: StatisticsFull SymmetricalFull