Human Crowd Behavior: An Artificial Society Model-Building Approach

Crowd phenomenon is a complex human behavior that has been investigated in different disciplines. The mystery of crowd lies in the strange pattern in which people tend to behave when they are among a group than their typical pattern when they are in isolation. Revolutionary crowd, as a special crowd type, has not been fully examined in the literature. However, due to the recent and current turbulent sociopolitical global environment, it turns to be a hot research topic. The aim of this book is to investigate the influence of a set of internal and external factors on the crowd pattern and dynamics in an attempt to understand the conditions that lead to or prohibit the formation of revolutionary crowds. A complete framework for the book is developed with a computer agent-based simulation testbed for testing a predefined set of experiments. The proposed model shows a number of emergent behaviors including the insignificance of highly intensified media under unfavorable satisfaction levels, the failure of contagion theory in sustaining a revolution without supporting external media, and the positive influence of the number of acquaintances on maintaining an ignited revolution.