A.I.R.

Social murmurations

How close do you feel?

The AIR project studies flows of agency (the individual and collective capacity to influence the systems around us) – in this case, by listening to social media conversations through the monitoring of prominent hashtags on Twitter during the first six months of 2020.

To demonstrate the shifting levels of agency in society, AIR uses three variables to measure closeness worldwide. Connectivity levels are read as indicators of emotional closeness; stringency (or strictness) as indicators of physical closeness, and the stream of conversations on social media as indicators of affinity between many individuals.

By exploring closeness through these three variables together, AIR looks to offer an insightful reading of agency during this time and, with its own flowing movements, how it transformed the systems in which we all live.

The system under pressure

In January, the first news about a very contagious disease started leaking into the flow of social media. By March, the whole world was facing a systemic breakdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to stop the spread of the virus, governments worldwide reacted simultaneously by announcing stringent isolation and social distancing policies that, for some time, kept the world in stasis. Thanks to the collective effort of #staying_at_home it was possible to gain some control over the situation.

Signals among the noise

As the system was getting tighter, the use of digital platforms for communication and entertainment reached levels never seen before. We dived into the digital realm as if trying to find the closeness that we could no longer reach in the flesh. At the same time, media channels greedily shifted from one piece of news to the next at increasing speed, while social media echoed, distorted and amplified these stories, flooding our digital networks with a deafening background noise.

The breathing body

The exhibit’s transparent outer membrane inhales and exhales at the rate of changes in agency during the first half of 2020. When the body inhales, it takes up all possible space; the system is relaxed and agency distributes loosely among individuals. In this state, activating collective responses requires great effort – we are less connected to one another. When it exhales, the pressure within the system increases, bringing people’s attention together. Agency concentrates: showing us that, when we are close, our ability to trigger radical changes multiplies.

Data sources

Historic Twitter trending topics, #, and trends
Mustafa ilhan
tt-history

Stringency curve
Hale, Thomas, Noam Angrist, Emily Cameron- Blake, Laura Hallas, Beatriz Kira, Saptarshi Majumdar, Anna Petherick, Toby Phillips, Helen Tatlow, Samuel Webster (2020)
Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, Blavatnik School of Government

Connectivity curve Craig Labovitz. NOKIA Deepfield (blog)
Network traffic insights in the time of COVID-19, (june 4, 2020)

Event dictionary of worldwide events 2020
Wikipedia 2020

Timeline of COVID-19 in Ireland Wikipedia
Timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Republic of Ireland (January–June 2020)