Policy and Complex Systems
Preliminary Model Explanation with Agent-Based Modeling
Each agent aims to protest according
to their grievance levels against the government ’ s actions and the environment , and she protects herself according to her risk aversion . Agents interact with each other if there is an available communication channel ; however , cops have an aim to stop protesters by increasing their violence level . They do not kill the protesters , but by increasing their violence level , they attempt to dissuade protesters from demonstrating .
We assign each agent ’ s grievance levels randomly and there is a diverse group of agents in terms of grievance level and risk aversion . Cops interact with the number of protesters . If there is an increase in the ratio
of the number of protesters to the number of cops , then the cops ’ violence level rises . A cop ’ s violence level affects an agent ’ s risk aversion , which means that this is an internal variable for agents . When the cop ’ s violence increases , agents become more risk averse .
We construct this model to answer two questions : What is the impact of cops ’ violence on the ratio of protesters among the population ? What is the impact of censorship on the ratio of protesters among the population ?
We build this simulation experiment of the ABM using NetLogo software . The global variables are max-copsviolence , threshold to determine protest , and censorship . The model has two main procedures : setup and go . We introduce the steps for these procedures in Table 3 .
Table 3 . Setup and go procedures in the preliminary model
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