Global Civil Unrest: Contagion, Self-Organization, and Prediction
Name
Braha-2012-Global Civil Unrest_.pdf
Size
1.08 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
2863d4d2313a167bbc97db32a719e7f3
Author(s)
Braha, Dan
Date Issued
October 2012
Journal
PLoS ONE
Publisher
Public Library of Science
Citation
Braha, Dan. “Global Civil Unrest: Contagion, Self-Organization, and Prediction.” Ed. Yamir Moreno. PLoS ONE 7.10 (2012).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Civil unrest is a powerful form of collective human dynamics, which has led to major transitions of societies in modern history. The study of collective human dynamics, including collective aggression, has been the focus of much discussion in the context of modeling and identification of universal patterns of behavior. In contrast, the possibility that civil unrest activities, across countries and over long time periods, are governed by universal mechanisms has not been explored. Here, records of civil unrest of 170 countries during the period 1919–2008 are analyzed. It is demonstrated that the distributions of the number of unrest events per year are robustly reproduced by a nonlinear, spatially extended dynamical model, which reflects the spread of civil disorder between geographic regions connected through social and communication networks. The results also expose the similarity between global social instability and the dynamics of natural hazards and epidemics.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering Systems Division
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0048596
