Policy and Complex Systems - Volume 3 Number 2 - Fall 2017
Censorship as / and Social Good : Modeling the Publication of Mark Twain ’ s Autobiography
Jeremy Throne A
Abstract
This paper takes the publication of Mark Twain ’ s Autobiography as a case study for exploring how information circulates through an audience . I examine how agents familiar with media coverage from the nineteenth century respond to the publication of the Autobiography under different scenarios using an agent-based model and conclude that Twain ’ s desire to withhold the text from his contemporaries but not from later generations suggests a belief that his readers were part of a vibrant , engaged , and highly connected community that would endure well into the future . At the beginning of the model , agents are given topics of conversation based on the output of topic models of nineteenth-century media coverage preserved in the Chronicling America project at the Library of Congress . As the model progresses agents attempt to discuss these topics with their neighbors . Failed conversations lead agents to select new topics of conversation that come from either Twain or the press , depending upon the preference of the agent . I track conversation dynamics in the model in order to determine Twain ’ s influence on the environment . The model provides an exploratory tool for constructing counterfactual literary histories . It also offers a framework within which the spread of information through an audience may be examined more generally . This framework may be of interest to policymakers seeking to evaluate the spread of information through an environment and policy critics seeking to work backward from available information in order to construct a window into the worldview behind a particular decision .
Keywords : agent-based model , information dispersal , conversation dynamics , counterfactual literary history , Mark Twain , Autobiography , nineteenth-century U . S . literatures , nineteenthcentury newspapers , topic modeling , chronicling America
A
University of California , Santa Cruz
88 doi : 10.18278 / jpcs . 3.2.6