Collective Behavior and Public Opinion: Rapid Shifts in Opinion and Communication by Jaap van Ginneken

Author:Jaap van Ginneken [Ginneken, Jaap van]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: General, Social Science, Language Arts & Disciplines, Psychology, Social Psychology, Sociology, Communication Studies, Media Studies, Collective behavior, Public opinion
ISBN: 9780805843866
Publisher: Mahwah, N.J. ; L. Erlbaum, 2003.
Published: 2003-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

level of support, they then often become incorporated in the ongoing organization of the system. For example, termites build elaborate arches and tun-nels by making random deposits of earth, which, after they attain a certain size, become a focus of attention for other termites, and thereafter a focus of deliberate activity. Random piles of dirt thus become transformed into coherent structures. In these and numerous other living systems order and self-organization emerge from randomness, large fluctuations triggering instabilities and quantum jumps capable of transforming the whole system of activity.

(p. 239)

In his book about artificial life, Out of Control, Kevin Kelly (1997), of the vi-sionary computer magazine Wired, gave the example of the “moving” of a natural ants nest: “Large groups of ants head in one direction, with eggs, larva, pupae and all; other groups head in another direction; whereas still other groups run back and forth between the two camps. At a certain point, one approach gains the upper hand. A new site is ‘chosen’, and construction begins” (p. 12). Kelly uses these and other examples to highlight the cybernetic advantages and disadvantages of “swarm systems,” with their emergent self-organization and parallel distributed processing.

The disadvantages are, Kelly (1997) says, that they are apparently non-optimal (because they are redundant and inefficient); noncontrollable by one “authority”; nonpredictable; nonunderstandable; and nonimmediate.

The latter means that they need to “slosh around” for some time before emergent patterns (at various hierarchical levels) settle down. But the advantages are, he says, that they are adaptable (to changing circumstances); may evolve to other levels (and other loci of adaptation); resilient; and boundless. But the most important thing is that they may generate novelty.

Because the size of an effect need not be proportional to the size of a cause; there is an exponential number of ways to link up individuals; whereas variation and imperfection can be allowed.

Such forms of emergent self-organization on completely new levels cannot only be found in insects, but in higher animals as well. Think of the perfect

“super-bird” V-shape, into which geese “self-organize” whenever they mi-grate. Part of that logic is in their organism, part in the situation, part in the way in which they fit together. Some mammals are more solitary, some more gregarious. Some cooperate only on occasion, some more or less continuously. Some form herds with only little role differentiation; some form hordes with much more role differentiation. Just before World War I, the British surgeon Wilfred Trotter spelled out what exactly it means to have a “herd” instinct. Soon after World War I, the Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud directly derived his notion of “super ego” from it and pronounced identification a central psychosocial process (van Ginneken, 1984, 1987).

So social animals and humans have a mental apparatus, a communication potential, and a behavioral repertory to translate emergent self-organ-

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