Modeling and Simulating Student Protests Through Agent-Based Framework

Abstract

This paper presents an agent-based model to study the effect of grievance, net risk, social, sympathy, and political influence on the likelihood of student protests emerging in South Africa universities. Studies of student protests in several fields have been conducted, but no ABM has been used to explore factors contributing to student protests. Student protests have proved to be disorderly, frequently leading to property damage, academic program cancellations, and injuries. Simulation experiments demonstrated that inequality level, number of activists, activist's influential size, number of friendship ties, suspend delay, and sympathy are elements that determine the model of social conflicts, since there are statistically significant in the logistic regression. For university administration to effectively handle disruptive student protest actions, risk management policies should focus on understanding network structures that integrate students' interactions to monitor the spread of opinions that initiate protest mobilization.