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The purpose of this paper is to explore the evolutionary dynamics of literary genre: the developm... more The purpose of this paper is to explore the evolutionary dynamics of literary genre: the development of the 19th Century British novel is used as a motivating case study. The author constructs an agent-based model in NetLogo consisting of two interacting levels: (1) a genetic algorithm in which cultural forms (e.g., works of literature, pieces of music, etc.) are represented as binary feature strings. Cultural forms evolve across generations via asexual and sexual reproduction. Genres are represented as hierarchical clusters of similar feature strings. (2) Cultural forms are subjected to the selection pressure of consumer preferences. Preferences are heterogeneous: each consumer's tastes are represented by an ideal point in feature space. Preferences are configured in landscapes that vary in their levels of structure, entropy, and diversity. Landscapes are dynamic and may change due to (i) exogenous demographic shifts (e.g., population growth, generational turnover) or (ii) endogenous feedback (e.g., conformity / anti-conformity effects).
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AAAI, Nov 2011
This paper explores the application of computer simulation techniques to the fields of literary s... more This paper explores the application of computer simulation techniques to the fields of literary studies and narratology by developing a model for plot structure and characterization. Using a corpus of 19th Century British novels as a case study, the author begins with a descriptive quantitative analysis of character names, developing a set of stylized facts about the way narratives allocate attention to their characters. The author shows that narrative attention in many novels appears to follow a “long tail” distribution.The author then constructs an explanatory model in NetLogo, demonstrating that basic assumptions about plot structure are sufficient to generate output consistent with the real novels in the corpus.
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Computational Models of Narrative, Aug 2013
This paper models narrative as a complex adaptive system in which the temporal sequence of events... more This paper models narrative as a complex adaptive system in which the temporal sequence of events constituting a story emerges out of cascading local interactions between nodes in a social network. The approach is not intended as a general theory of narrative, but rather as a particular generative mechanism relevant to several academic communities: (1) literary critics and narrative theorists interested in new models for narrative analysis, (2) artificial intelligence researchers and video game designers interested in new mechanisms for narrative generation, and (3) complex systems theorists interested in novel applications of agent-based modeling and network theory. The paper is divided into two parts. The first part offers examples of research by literary critics on the relationship between social networks of fictional characters and the structure of long-form narratives, particularly novels. The second part provides an example of schematic story generation based on a simulation of the structural balance network model. I will argue that if literary critics can better understand sophisticated narratives by extracting networks from them, then narrative intelligence researchers can benefit by inverting the process, that is, by generating narratives from networks.
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Philosophical Computation
Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 2016
This article distinguishes nine senses of polarization and provides formal measures for each one ... more This article distinguishes nine senses of polarization and provides formal measures for each one to refine the methodology used to describe polarization in distributions of attitudes. Each distinct concept is explained through a definition, formal measures, examples, and references. We then apply these measures to GSS data regarding political views, opinions on abortion, and religiosity-topics described as revealing social polarization. Previous breakdowns of polarization include domain-specific assumptions and focus on a subset of the distribution's features. This has conflated multiple, independent features of attitude distributions. The current work aims to extract the distinct senses of polarization and demonstrate that by becoming clearer on these distinctions we can better focus our efforts on substantive issues in social phenomena. ARTICLE HISTORY
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Philosophical Computation