Application of the Theory of Self-Organized Criticality to the Investigation of Historical Processes

Zhukov, Dmitry; Kanishchev, Valery V.; Lyamin, Sergey K.

doi:10.1177/2158244016683216

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 25 publications

(41 reference statements)

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“…It is known that the presence of such regularities (together with some other conditions) can be interpreted as manifestations of SOC. These results are reported in papers written by Roberts and Turcotte (1998), Cederman (2003), Picoli et al (2014), Shimada and Koyama (2015), Thietart (2016), Tadić et al (2017), Zhukov et al (2015, 2016, 2017, 2020), Dmitriev and Dmitriev (2021), and Lu et al (2021).…”

Section: Is There Any Experience Of Applying the Soc Theory To The St...supporting

confidence: 67%

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How the theory of self-organized criticality explains punctuated equilibrium in social systems

Zhukov

2022

Methodological Innovations

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Punctuated equilibrium is a characteristic of some natural and social systems that occasionally generate bursts of activity at different scales following periods of stagnation of different durations. This phenomenon can be formalized as pink noise, which is an attribute of self-organized criticality (SOC). This paper outlines the main ideas of the SOC theory and the tools for identifying pink noise. It presents examples of punctuated equilibrium found in computer experiments with artificial societies, as well as in historical and political studies. Such examples are found, in particular, in demographic processes, in the development of markets, in the dynamics of electoral choice, in the Internet activity of network communities, in terrorist and criminal activity, and in protest movements in the past and present. The SOC theory explains why avalanche-like social transformations do not always occur under the influence of some major extraordinary factor. Social cataclysms can be caused by the intrinsic properties of systems as well as by micro-level processes and local impulses. Internal transformational potential can be high enough and, at the same time, subtle. The SOC theory describes the ways in which such avalanche conditions can be identified with mathematic rigor and, at the same time, relatively easily.

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Section: Is There Any Experience Of Applying the Soc Theory To The St...supporting

confidence: 67%

“…The study of births shows that in the 20th century the value of α was close to 1, while in the 19th century the value of α was significantly less (Table 4) (Zhukov et al, 2016). These results can be interpreted as a manifestation of the demographic transition.…”

Section: Searching For Pink Noise: Tracking Down Criticalitymentioning

confidence: 97%

How the theory of self-organized criticality explains punctuated equilibrium in social systems

Zhukov

2022

Methodological Innovations

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“…Although pink noise contains a number of random events, it has a long-term pattern (long-term memory) and differs from absolutely chaotic white noise (Figure 1B). Zhukov et al (2016Zhukov et al ( , 2017 managed to show, based on concrete historical examples, that a change in signal type/color is a marker for finding the moment and direction of social system transformation.…”

Section: Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Online Rebellion: Self-Organized Criticality of Contemporary Protest Movements

2020

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The theory of self-organized criticality (SOC) is applicable for explaining powerful surges of protest activity on social media. The objects of study were two protest clusters. The first was a set of Facebook groups that promoted the impeachment of the Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff. The second was a set of groups on the social network Vkontakte that provided support for anti-government rallies in Armenia, referred to as Electric Yerevan. Numerous groups in the examined clusters were functioning in SOC mode during certain periods. Those clusters were able to generate information avalanches—seemingly spontaneous, powerful surges of creation, transmission, and reproduction of information. The facts are presented that supported the assumptions that SOC effects in social networks are associated with mass actions on the streets, including violence. The observations of SOC make it possible to reveal certain periods when the course of a sociopolitical system is least stable.

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“…An avalanche is recognised as a mesoscopic dynamical structure consisting of a sequence of spatially connected events. It has been newly pointed out that SOC plays a role in functioning of biological [7] and diverse other complex systems from neuronal dynamics [8,9] to animal behaviour [10] and human history [11]. For instance, the analysis of vast amount of the available brain imaging data and theoretical modelings provided the evidence that supports the SOC as an underlying mechanism of the brain functional stability [8,12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mechanisms of self-organized criticality in social processes of knowledge creation

2017

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In the online social dynamics, a robust scaling behaviour appears as a key feature of many collaborative efforts that lead to the new social value. The underlying empirical data thus offer a unique opportunity to study the origin of self-organised criticality in social systems. In contrast to physical systems in the laboratory, various human attributes of the actors play an essential role in the process along with the contents (cognitive, emotional) of the communicated artefacts. As a prototypal example, we consider the social endeavour of knowledge creation via Questions & Answers (Q&A). Using a large empirical dataset from one of such Q&A sites and theoretical modelling, we examine the temporal correlations at all scales and the role of cognitive contents to the avalanches of the knowledge creation process. Our analysis shows that the long-range correlations and the event clustering are primarily determined by the universal social dynamics, providing the external driving of the system by the arrival of new users. While the involved cognitive contents (systematically annotated in the data and observed in the model) are crucial for a fine structure of the developing knowledge networks, they only affect the values of the scaling exponents and the geometry of large avalanches and shape the multifractal spectrum. Furthermore, we find that the level of the activity of the communities that share the knowledge correlates with the fluctuations of the innovation rate, implying that the increase of innovation may serve as the active principle of self-organisation. To identify relevant parameters and unravel the role of the network evolution underlying the process in the social system under consideration, we compare the social avalanches to the avalanche sequences occurring in the field-driven physical model of disordered solids, where the factors contributing to the collective dynamics are better understood.

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Application of the Theory of Self-Organized Criticality to the Investigation of Historical Processes

Cited by 6 publications

References 25 publications

How the theory of self-organized criticality explains punctuated equilibrium in social systems

How the theory of self-organized criticality explains punctuated equilibrium in social systems

Online Rebellion: Self-Organized Criticality of Contemporary Protest Movements

Mechanisms of self-organized criticality in social processes of knowledge creation

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