Following the Crowd: The Arab Spring
https://www.npr.org/2011/12/17/143897126/the-arab-spring-a-year-of-revolution
The Arab Spring refers to the sequence of anti-establishment revolutions, that took place in Arab countries, during late 2010 and early 2011. The seed of this sequence was a man in Tunisia who was selling fruits and vegetables to provide for his family, but was abused and humiliated by the police for doing so without a permit. Already struggling under the current system and feeling desperation from his confrontation with the police, the man “marched in front of a government building and set himself on fire” (NPR). This sparked a chain of reactions, in which days later thousands of protesters in Tunisia marched on to the street, demanding President Ban Ali to step down. After only a month of protests, Ben Ali fled the country and the revolution was then deemed successful. After this Tunisian revolution, other revolutions were then sparked in both Egypt and Libya. Both countries also followed a similar chain of results, starting with one or few protestors and growing to thousands within days.
The story of the Arab spring reflects two examples, one on an individual level and one on a country level, of information cascades and the idea of following the crowd. On an individual level, when a single protestor demonstrates against the government, it signals information to others who are dissatisfied with the system and prompts them to follow the crowd by joining protests. As more people join the protests and the crowd gets larger, the private information of protesters becomes more trustworthy and valuable (even without knowing exactly what that information is). Then the more trust people have in the private information of the protestors and the more likely they are to join them, in turn making the crowd even bigger. It is also more likely for people to follow the “wisdom of the crowd” when the state’s power is questioned and what happens in the future is unclear. On a greater level, countries also follow in each other’s lead when they see revolutions happening in neighboring countries. With analogous information-based benefits and information cascades to individual protesters, countries have a lot to gain from following the crowd, and this is how you get a phenomenon such as the Arab Spring.