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The Effect of Shocks on Social & Political Networks

PI: Zeev Maoz, University of California

Year Selected for Award: 2015

The Effect of Shocks on Overlapping & Functionally Interacting Social & Political Networks: A Multi-Method Approach

Principal Investigator: Zeev Maoz, University of California - Davis

Co-Investigators: George Barnett, Raisa D'Souza, Brandon Kinne, University of California, Davis Camber Warren, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey

Years of Award: 2015-2019

Managing Service Agency: Army Research Office

Project Description:

When a shock-such as a natural disaster or a man-made calamity-originates in one network it often propagates into other networks. Interrelationships between different types of systems/networks are poorly understood. This project will develop and validate new models to assess how a shock in one network (e.g., a communication network) cascades into other networks (e.g., political systems, economic systems).
We plan to investigate:
(a) How network structures may affect the emergence of shocks;
(b) Different types of interdependence between and among networks, including full and partial node overlap, correlated edge dynamics, and purely functional dependencies such as complementary or competitive interactions;
(c) How shocks propagate within a given social network and how they propagate to other functionally-related networks; and
(d) How these networks re-organize following shocks.
We examine cases such as 9/11/2001, the Arab Spring, and more historical global shocks such as the great depression of 1929, the two world wars, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the Arab Spring.

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