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The protests in Cherryville
In this video protest of Cherryville and a simple spatial model will be introduced
SPEAKER: Welcome to Cherryville, a beautiful, cosy, and well-organised place surrounded by cherry orchards. It’s well known from the production of Cherryville chocolate-dipped cherries, a symbol of local identity and the source of pride of its inhabitants. Recently, one of the largest global corporations made an offer to the town’s authorities to buy the factory and produce sweets under their brand. Cherryville residents are outraged. Several of them decided to protest and hang cherry posters in the windows of their houses. The protests begin to spread. Some of the initiators neighbours notice the posters and also put them in their windows. The concerned authorities ordered the development of a model for the spread of the protest in order to predict what will happen.
An expert adopted some simplifications. So draw the town on the chessboard plan. Assuming that before making a decision on the protests, every resident looks at eight houses in the closest neighbourhood. Every inhabitant has a threshold, a minimum percentage of neighbours who must take part in the protest in order for him or her to join. Suzy has a threshold of 50%. If at least half of her neighbours hang the banners in the windows, she will do it too. For example, if four or five out of her eight neighbours hang the posters, she’ll definitely join them. Enrique is more eager to express his anger. His threshold is only 10%.
It means that if at least one of his neighbours hang the poster, he will also hang it in his window. So let’s look at one fragment of Cherryville. We can see houses of Sandy and Li who are initiators. Enrique can see banners in their windows, so he can see 1/4 of his neighbours protesting. So he will join them. Suzy is also looking around, but she can see only one banner and her neighbourhood. So she won’t join the protest.
In the next steps, we will learn more about this model. You’ll have a chance to experiment with it on a bigger scale and investigate how such special protests spread and what factors influence the process.
In this video you will meet the inhabitants of Cherryville and you will accompany them in their protests. Then we are going to describe the spatial model developed in order to study this protest.
This article is from the online course:
People, Networks and Neighbours: Understanding Social Dynamics
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This article is from the free online
People, Networks and Neighbours: Understanding Social Dynamics
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