Research & draft project proposal for social movement project

[jonas4climate]

"How can we expect the public opinion on climate change to change?"

• Step-by-Step:
  1. Find data on people's perception/urgency of climate change today (source)
  2. Research which factors contribute most to changing these opinions/perceptions (source)
  3. Convert into a mathematical model with input of neighbours (e.g. influence through social network) and/or global parameters (e.g. rise in temperature, financial damage, loss of life, external consequences)
     1. Look into Social Impact Theory for guidance, original paper and Cellular Automata model implementation
  4. Generate a network that governs the interactions between nodes
     1. Find data to recreate a realistic social network OR
     2. Generate social network from thresholds
  5. Simulate the network
     1. Look for patterns, threshold phenomena, phase transitions, clustering, emergence (?)
     2. Under which conditions do which concluding scenarios emerge at date X?
  6. Gather results and report findings
• Extra notes
  • generate social network that governs nodes (individuals) and information spread (CA if simplified, network otherwise)
  • alternative: unable to generate network directly? can we just evolve a network that generates a social interaction network by providing it thresholds that govern how social networks form?
  • initialise nodes with several attributes incl. current state of climate-awareness over time (population-based data) and/or political opinion, whichever makes most sense/we have good data for
  • interactions governed by simplified version of social impact theory/assessment
  • How do these opinions evolve through time? What patterns emerge