Policy and Complex Systems
They occurred at a similar time as other international uprisings such as Occupy Movements , the protests in Greece , the Arab Spring , and the Egyptian Revolution . Around 130,000 people gathered to demand democracy in Spain using the slogan “ Real Democracy Now !” The protesters ’ grievance levels against the government had increased due to the national economic crisis , the high unemployment rate , and the government cutbacks in health care and education . These protests were different from the others that happened in Spain because of their self- organized nature . There were no political parties , unions , or large organizations behind the protests .
The authors consider the 15 M demonstrations an instance of a “ selforganized connective action network with significant differences ” when compared with other collective action events in Spain ( Anduiza et al ., 2014 ). They conducted interviews and postal surveys with protesters . In each demonstration , the researchers contacted the protesters randomly and interviewed them face to face . After that , they handed out a postal questionnaire . Response rates to the postal questionnaire ranged from 18 % to 33 %, and reached 35 % for the 15 M demonstration . They had 2,265 protesters complete the postal survey .
As mentioned before , the structure of 15 M was different with respect to its mobilization processes . Almost 55 % of the participants heard about the demonstration through social media and alternative media sources , and social networks informed 49 % of them . In other protests , these percentages were 26 % and 17 %, respectively ( Anduiza et al ., 2014 ). The role of traditional media as an information channel was very limited . Anduiza et al . ( 2014 ) show with their comprehensive comparative study on Spain demonstrations , the traditional intermediary structures , such as unions , parties , and traditional news are still important for largescale political mobilizations . However , in 15 M case , the researchers claim that union , party , and traditional media involvement were no longer a necessary initial condition for generating high turnouts at protests because the social media network had an enormous role .
These two papers show the results of real events from the European and Middle Eastern countries . Both events occurred around a similar time , and we can use these works to derive theories about technological improvements , focusing on their huge impact on the structure of political protests . We hope to consult these studies in order to improve our theoretical and practical background in the field , and to determine the essential parameters for civil revolutions . Examples would be the nature of a regime that the protesters are for or against ( democracy versus autocracy ), protester types ( experienced versus new protesters ), and social media preferences ( Facebook versus Twitter ).
Overview of the Preliminary Model for Protests with the Social Media Effect with the System Dynamics View
This section introduces our preliminary work for modeling protests with social media ’ s effect . The goal of our study is to build a model that helps us understand the relationships between the level of cops ’ violence and the number of protesters censored who are on social media / communication channels .
Figure 4 displays the causal loop diagram of our work that explains the relationships on the system level . There are three main effects in the model . The first one
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