Content Weapons Primer: Conflict Carrying Capacity

Conflict Carrying Capacity

Conflict Carrying Capacity:

Before we get into the definition of CCC, let me explain the relevance of the Ultron Avengers movie quote. Just because things are quiet, does not mean they are peaceful. In fact, in most cases the opposite is true. Diseases, Ninja’s and Special Operations forces operate in silence and the nature of their intent is violent. On the other hand, peaceful protests, rallies and marches are usually noisy depending on the number of participants.

Conflicts just don’t happen by chance. Before there is a conflict, there are many different factors that lead to it. The problem is that, in most cases, we just can’t see them all together- It is just like if you have all the pieces of the puzzle laid out in front of you without a picture of the completed image. But once you see the end result of what it is supposed to be, you can see how all of the small little pieces work together to create the whole.

Political Crisis

The world is always changing, and it may be hard to keep up with all these changes. More and more people are unhappy with their lives. Either they don’t like their jobs, they may believe they are underpaid, they don’t have time to raise a family, or maybe they don’t have “real” friends because social media and text messaging have served as stand ins for actual conversations or connections.

There are a lot of reasons for people to feel unhappy. However, it should be part of the government’s job to ensure they (the government itself) are not the sole cause. There is a need for governments, as well as private entities, to understand their own conflict-carrying capacity so they can sort things out before there are intense internal conflicts. By using this capacity (metric), governments should be able to acknowledge what the population’s key hot-button issues are, and find ways to alleviate this mounting pressure.

Unfortunately, most governments and or organizational leaders alike, either don’t want to or don’t have the interest to do something about it. These conflict situations don’t just fade. On the contrary. They tend to get worse and worse. They occur, seemingly, out of nowhere and cause everything form PR disasters to ousted leaders or Violence.

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The Ability of Political Systems to Regulate Internal Conflicts

While this is not an easy task, it is the job of politicians/leaders in general to solve each entities’ issues and problems, whether a country or organization. One of the most recent studies published about this topic mentioned the PANDA Project which was used between 1983 and 1994. The authors of this study use the PANDA Project to show how the conflict carrying capacity index is able to capture different political systems. The ones that are mentioned in this study include the institutionalized democracy in the United States, the institutionalized Communist regime in China, the bureaucratic-authoritarian regime in Mexico, and the peaceful democratic transition in Poland.

In addition, the Conflict Carrying Capacity index even alerts or delivers warning signs of a civil war in Sri Lanka and Algeria as well as moves toward political stability in Peru. Up until now, there wasn’t any empirical study that would be able to show that the early sign of protracted political violence would lead to political crises. Remember from earlier chapters, the connectivity and data available now, combined with the analytics capabilities of today, this is now possible. Even though it makes perfect sense, saying it is not the same as showing it. And this is exactly what the authors of this study did. In fact, they even took this study one step further since they were able to show a wide range of examples where the CCC index was used.

According to this CCC, and unlike what most of us think as obvious, state repression and civil contention are not the ones that are destabilizing. Rather, there is a simultaneous combination of these aspects we just mentioned with violent contention. And this is ultimately what leads to political stabilization or to political crises. I know what you are thinking at this stage, “What does this have to do with Content as Weapons?” More than you are aware, if you are generating content that is being consumed at a significant level, you had better implement proactive means for your message consumers to vent their frustrations and offer adaptable policies for the alleviation of stress on them or your system. Whether it’s based-on delivery system functionality of a current theme in the content you are providing or a rising sentiment amongst your message consumer base. All systems need an avenue to release the buildup of contention. It’s not your job to make everyone love you, it’s your job in this specific capacity to plan for and execute means to increase the stability and usability of the content you are providing. Perhaps users will disagree and maybe you need to implement moderators in your forums, or going back to Social Media Monitoring, you might need oversight regarding the comments allowed on certain content. Or possibly, you may even need to take a proactive stance through disclaimers and the immediate removal of content providers that are showing a propensity to bring down whatever you are building whether a brand, company or technology platform. Users need to understand that their concerns will be heard, and action will be taken to allow for the trust and community norms to continue to flourish and stabilize.

I know you are probably wondering what this has to do with Content Weapons and assaulting the attention economy. This study was based on populations in different types of political systems. There is a correlation and it matters. As stated far back in the beginning of this book, tech companies are amassing not only the economics, but the following, equivalent to small or medium sized countries and with much, if not more, of the same types of power structures. There is considerable importance with regards to this construct. The reason I added it here is based on the Pressure Cooker scenario that we have all witnessed throughout history: If a collective is not allowed to let off steam, then the whole pot blows; Riots, civil breakdown, economic fallout, etc.

Understanding that once you are successful with a large-scale attack and victory, you want to maintain this resource and ensure that your massive fans, followers, supporters, etc. stay with you. To do so, you should implement systems or processes for those internally to express their concerns and show proof that they have been heard and action is being taken. Not only does this go a long way in snuffing out discontent within your population but in most cases, it entrenches the ones who brought up the discontent, appeases them and pushes them deeper into the fold.

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