Pricing a Protest: Forecasting the Dynamics of Civil Unrest Activity in Social Media

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dc.contributorVirginia Techen
dc.contributor.authorGoode, Brian J.en
dc.contributor.authorKrishnan, Siddharthen
dc.contributor.authorRoan, Michael J.en
dc.contributor.authorRamakrishnan, Narenen
dc.date.accessioned2017-10-23T14:52:10Zen
dc.date.available2017-10-23T14:52:10Zen
dc.date.issued2015-10-06en
dc.description.abstractOnline social media activity can often be a precursor to disruptive events such as protests, strikes, and “occupy” movements.We have observed that such civil unrest can galvanize supporters through social networks and help recruit activists to their cause. Understanding the dynamics of social network cascades and extrapolating their future growth will enable an analyst to detect or forecast major societal events. Existing work has primarily used structural and temporal properties of cascades to predict their future behavior. But factors like societal pressure, alignment of individual interests with broader causes, and perception of expected benefits also affect protest participation in social media. Here we develop an analysis framework using a differential game theoretic approach to characterize the cost of participating in a cascade, and demonstrate how we can combine such cost features with classical properties to forecast the future behavior of cascades. Using data from Twitter, we illustrate the effectiveness of our models on the “Brazilian Spring” and Venezuelan protests that occurred in June 2013 and November 2013, respectively. We demonstrate how our framework captures both qualitative and quantitative aspects of how these uprisings manifest through the lens of tweet volume on Twitter social media.en
dc.description.sponsorshipThis work was supported by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) via DoI/NBC contract number D12PC000337; the US Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints of this work for governmental purposes notwithstanding any copyright annotation thereon. Disclaimer: The views and conclusions contained herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of IARPA, DoI/NBC, or the US Government.en
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0139911en
dc.identifier.issue10en
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10919/79740en
dc.identifier.volume10en
dc.language.isoen_USen
dc.publisherPLOSen
dc.rightsIn Copyrighten
dc.rights.urihttp://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/en
dc.titlePricing a Protest: Forecasting the Dynamics of Civil Unrest Activity in Social Mediaen
dc.title.serialPLOS Oneen
dc.typeArticle - Refereeden

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