George Rebane
Rensselaer Polytechnic researchers have discovered a dynamic network model that explains how a minority opinion can become a majority opinion when certain tipping point parameters are exceeded. In the internet age this process has also been labeled ‘going viral’, and many of us have seen and studied its technical properties. The RP researchers have been able to identify the tipping point as being somewhere around 10% minority opinion holders when the network of communicants is sufficiently connected. (more here)
With modern media the spread of ideas enjoys a very dense network of connections over which compelling opinions and notions travel and become influential. This would also apply to the spread of memes.
I guess bloggers in some way sense this and keep up their incessant efforts to put out thoughts they hope will gain some traction out there. Of course, many of these thoughts are also re-transmissions of things they heard elsewhere, modified somewhat, and then passed on. Again we come back to the secret life of memes (see also the work of Richard Dawkins and Julian Jaynes).
In sum, the spread of memes is a very non-linear process – hence the notion of a tipping point – and goes a long way to explain why poorly polling politicians keep plugging along, and sometimes even catch a breeze from a seemingly unknown quarter that blows them into office. Now the system sciences are starting to develop explicative models that may some day soon evolve into predictive models (heaven help us then). I look forward to this work being connected to the research reported by Bryan Caplan in The Myth of the Rational Voter.
This would do a lot to explain the rapid rise of the Tea Party movement. Good luck to them all as they destroy the world's economy.
Posted by: Douglas Keachie | 28 July 2011 at 11:27 AM
If the public becomes aware of the predicted behavior, it is likely their behavior will change. BTW, Robert Heinlein discusses the notion of predictive social sciences repeatedly in his novels.
Posted by: Douglas Keachie | 28 July 2011 at 12:13 PM
Is the advertising model the old paradigm, or top-down model, and the new paradigm the viral, or grass roots, model?
Advertisers think that by hitting us with newspaper, email, TV, IPad, smartphone, grocery store, and direct mail ads, they will achieve a tipping, or saturation point where potential costumers finally will give them a try.
The top-down advertising model might be called the saturation bombing model. With the saturation bombing method, people can become shell shocked and desensitized, lessening the effectiveness of the method making it difficult to rapidly increase market share for advertiser’s products.
With the viral, or Fad, model, an idea for a Christmas present (like a Pet Rock), or a political or social idea (like the Tea Party) receives new energy or enthusiastic support as it is passed from person to person by word of mouth (or word of web), keeping the good buzz going and creating exponential support. At least that seems to be how the fad mentality works. But fads, like viruses, tend to dissipate over time as newer fads take their place.
Posted by: Brad Croul | 28 July 2011 at 01:23 PM
DougK - how is a movement that the liberals have long advertized as being on the wane have the ability to "destroy the world's economy"? What mechanism would they be able to use?
Posted by: George Rebane | 28 July 2011 at 05:55 PM
Mr. Keachie has something wrong with him. Who has been destroying America's economy? Certainly not the Tea Party. From where I stand...the rise of the TP is a natural phenomena to restore balance and a return to common sense.
Posted by: Bonnie M | 28 July 2011 at 10:34 PM
HAS AMERICA REACHED A TEA PARTY TIPPING POINT? “Yes, there is a long,
long way to go. But the idea that America doesn’t, in fact, have to be
governed for eternity as a debtor nation with a mammoth, out-of-control,
ever-expanding government is winning the day. It is tipping the balance
with increasing decisiveness against an idea that has become so much a
part of conventional wisdom that even some conservatives, startlingly
including, inexplicably, the Wall Street Journal, have displayed the
wobblies at the thought of confronting the Leviathan.”
Posted by: Russ Steele | 02 August 2011 at 04:46 PM