Computational Modeling of a Social Phenomenon: Evolution of Cultural Identity and Cultural Territory

Cultural identity is one of the core problems in cultural field. Cultural identity problem refers to the phenomenon of cultural erosion and cultural integration appearing on the cultural territory inconsistent with geological boundaries. This phenomenon is caused by the evolution of the sense of cultural identity. Before the social computing methods are introduced in, this problem is a typically social science problem which can’t be applied to computing experiments. In this paper, we apply social computing methods to this problem. The experimental research of it is brought into a risk-free space. Using the artificial social modeling techniques based on the multi-agents, we have identified several computing factors. These computing factors can characterize the cross-cultural communication and the internal stability of the cultural environment. The factors such as cultural resist-digestion inertia factor, cultural identity status factor, geological distance factor among different populations and the psychological and behavior characteristics factors of “hate-to-leave” are included. Based on these factors, the computational model is given to describe the phenomenon of cultural erosion, cultural integration and cultural protection. We make a lot of social computing experiments and the results show that all the selected computing factors affect the evolution of cultural identity and cultural territory in different ways, and the evolution law can be derived from this computational model. In future, this model can play a role in the scheme design of cultural protection and effectiveness evaluation of solutions.