1. Pragmatism - Semiotics - Social Networking - Virtual Mobilization
Peircean pragmatism for
understanding social movements
in digital contexts
Débora de Carvalho PEREIRA
•PhD student at the School of Information Science of
Federal University of Minas Gerais - BRASIL
•Researcher at Center for the Study of Mediation and Social
Uses of Knowledge and Information in Digital
Environments, NEMUSAD
•Supervised by Professor Maria Aparecida MOURA.

2. • Peircian pragmatism - how beliefs are formed.
• Can be used to analyse organization of
information on socio-semantic networks.
• Such networks are highly nebulous and
anonymous, but also allow the emergence of
a global agenda on human rights.

3. Case studies
• Both encourage
social mobilization
in virtual spaces
• In the semiosic
processes of both,
different levels of
interpretant were
found

9. Peircian Pragmatism
• How are beliefs formed
• How do we perceive things?
• Necessities define the
degree of interest.
• In the semiosic process, truth is substituted
with probability, or with success.
• Logical method

10. ?

11. Fixation of beliefs
• Two methods
Tenacity: eg. religious
fanaticism.
Authority: the
enunciation of some
authority

12. •Common
sense is
authentic
•Thoughts
tend to
build
systems
•Make life
knowable

13. Cultural Naturalism – Dewey 1938
• No escape from the cultural matrix.
• Cultural naturalism helps to understand the
dynamics of information
• Informational mediations on ‘global justice’
can help fix a belief

14. Socio-semantic networks
• Aggregation semantics
Cognitive networks can be characterized (COINTET, 2009)
Reveals semiotic agreement
Combination of :
– a social network
– a socio-semantic or socio-semiotic network
– a semantic network
• A semantic background is generated

15. The practice of collective sharing on
informational networks results is actions in the
world life.
Perfomative identity – Computer interface

16. Avaaz
• Global web movement
• Campaigns in 14
languages.
“Avaaz empowers millions of people from all walks of life to take
action on pressing global, regional and national issues, from
corruption and poverty to conflict and climate change”

17. • 193 countries • An action = clicking to sign a virtual petition
• Over 7 million members • Petition handed over to relevant authorities
• Only a few seconds to read the appeal and act.
• Average 5 campaigns each
• Total < 35 million actions.

18. Wikileaks
Corruption
Human rights
War crimes.
• Strained relationships between governments

19. November 28th, 2010
Wikileaks published over 250,000 documents
Opinions on world leaders:
– Cristina Kirchner
chafes at criticism
– Chavez is crazy
– Ahmadinejad is
reminiscent of
Hitler

20. – Hamid Karzai
no say in anything,
– Angela Merkel
won’t risk anything,
– Binyamin Nethenyahu
not be trusted...
– Hillary Clinton asked
ambassadors to act as
spies.

21. Interoperability
• The capacity of
systems to
communicate
between themselves
• Owed to the adoption
of common protocols

22. Page Rank
• Used by Google
• Method of evaluating interconnections of a page
• Measures the quantity of links from other sites
• Evaluates semantic relationship between pages.
Avaaz: 6 Wikileaks: 7

23. Alexa
• Developed by Amazon
• Measures trafficability of sites.
• Calculates number of users visiting
• Classifies origins of access.
• Site is ranked in comparison with all others in
the world, or in the country.

24. Avaaz by Alexa: 5.881
• Roughly 46% of visits to the site are bounces
• Audience tends to be
Caucasian; Childless women over 35;
postgraduates; browse from home.
• Located in the US.
• Roughly 70 seconds per pageview
• Two minutes during each visit.

25. Wikileaks by Alexa: 7.951
• Tends to be
male; childless; low-income; under 35; postgraduates
• Roughly three minutes per visit
• 47 seconds per pageview.
• 21% of visitors from India (ranked #7,498)
• Also popular in Kenya (ranked #640)
• Bounce rate of 45%

26. Avaaz vs. Wikileaks

27. Google Insights
• Follow searches
• Compare them in real time, or since 2004.
• Data are collected from millions of
unidentified users
• Only results with significant traffic displayed

29. Final Considerations
• Both high indexes of traffic and access
• Different strategies for organization /use of information.
• Semiosis in digital contexts reflects otherness of the
processes for forming values.
• Reflected also
in the formation of circles,
in the reactions originating in these cognitive dynamics.

30. Avaaz
• The public (essentially white students from
developed world) already have a semantic
background suited to appeals for global justice.
• Messages are more iconic and emotive than textual
• Already have a general consensus.

31. Wikileaks
• More text documents than images - more effort
• Alexa: Wikileaks (3 mins) Avaaz (2 mins)
• Have to look through thousands of documents
• Avaaz offers ready information.

32. Avaaz: Interpretant affective
• Small peaks = temporal regularity of campaigns.
• Semiosis - begins when site divulges a campaign
- prompts mass visitation
- Immediate interpretant of solidarity.
• Dynamic interpretant – not beyond emotional interpretant.
• Energetic shock not neccessary to decide about whales.
• Ramifications of affective interpretants remain within
scope of interpretation – not behavioural change.

33. Wikileaks: interpretant energetic
• Energetic interpretant, within a dynamic
interpretant, determines change in behaviour.
• Process of semiosis in one peak – the fuse of
revolution
• Shock over the legitimacy of Wikileaks.
• Obscenity of war mistakes and gossip vs. sex
crime scandal. Shock between the sign and
the mind interpreting.

34. Demographics
• Wikileaks: male, under 35, low-waged
Africans, Arabs, South Americans
• Avaaz: post-graduate white women,
home users
French, Germans and Canadians.

35. Interoperability
• Avaaz: Only click – easy.
Friends automatically networked in
• Wikileaks: To be a “mirror”
Programming time, download, upload
Risk

36. • Avaaz - clicktavism
• Wikileaks - concrete action.
• Proof is PayBack attack
• Simultaneous, decentralized actions, geared
to achieve a collective objective, like an
orchestra, (example given by Peirce to
describe a logical interpretant).

38. Thank you – Muito grata
• Email: debcarpe@gmail.com
• Web site: deborapereira.blog.br