The 'email bounce' in meme propagation

Hmm, I had expressed skepticism, so Guido left a comment here yesterday

Guido Fawkes said...

Bet you it reaches 10k Sunday and doubles on Monday.

26 April 2009 13:36

And now it looks like he's right on the money.


The petition ticked over to 10k signatures at 22:00 on Sunday night and if people keep signing up for the rest of today as they have done all morning then it'll be ticking over 22K at midnight today.

When in doubt, trust Guido

Propagation of nation specific internet memes

There's a petition currently running on the Number10 website calling for the Prime Minister to resign. Usually disagreeable petitions get rejected before they take root in the nation's consciousness, but this one has been accumulating signatures for over twenty four hours now.

Its mostly been the blogosphere driving it from what I gather, here are the times the politics blogs I've seen it posted on.

The Register - 24/04/09 12:01
Iain Dale - 24/04/09 16:42
Order-Order - 24/04/09 16:57
Raedwald - 24/04/09 17:41
NHS Blog Doctor - 24/04/09 22:14
Samizdata - 24/04/09 23:50
Charles Crawford - 25/04/09 09:30

Here's a graph of how the petition has accumulated signatures so far. The number on the petition website updates every half hour.


So, last night when the blogs were first mentioning it, there were about 500 new sigs per hour, and today its been a steady 170 per hour.

Its been doing the rounds on Twitter and facebook too, but with these things it drops off the bottom of the screen pretty quickly.

Uncle Guido reckons it'll keep going on Monday morning when people start emailing, but I'm skeptical. I've seen these petitions before, there's rarely a second act.

Charles Crawford notices...

What struck my eye was the list of the petitioners themselves. The latest five first names are Harriett, Stephen, Chris, David and Allan. And so on. And on. And on. All classic English names.

Among the first 500 names listed are only a handful (five or so?) that might be said to reflect, hem, the 'diversity of modern Britain' (ie having some sort of Asian/Middle Eastern/African/Islamic/Latin American/European resonance).

Is the British political blogosphere so unrepresentative of 'modern Britain'?

Maybe its just the demographics of people who sign petitions? Like how the demographics of people of go on protest marches

How to encourage a more diverse mix of people to sign it?

Is someone at Number10 actually going through the list of names and cross checking them with some other list of 'the usual suspects'?

Petitions Roundup

I do very much love the Petitions section of the Number10.gov.uk website. It allows people to start and sign petitions trying to get the government to do things. You have to give you name and address and an email address to confirm your sig, so I guess they're probably building up a database of malcontents, but its not as if they don't already have your details.

My favourite current petitions:-

MP 2nd Homes
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Convert the London 2012 Olympic Village Accomodation into Living accomodation for Members of Parliament and end their second home allowance

So far its got 74 signatures, its a nice sentiment, kind of topical and cost effective.

No National Speed Limit reductions
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Not reduce the national speed limit to 50mph.
Following the announcement that the government is planning to reduce the national speed limit to 50 miles per hour, we the undersigned oppose this, since it will make no difference to road deaths and the cut in carbon emissions is so insignificantly small it's laughable.

I think people should be free to drive as fast as they like as long as they don't harm anyone else. I'm not sure about the effect on carbon emissions, but reducing your speed by 10mph has a tremendous effect on fuel efficiency, but again, that should be a personal moral and economic choice, rather than prescribed by teh state. 20,000 signatures, someone might listen, but compared to the fake charities Brake and Living Streets pulling the other way, it'll be difficult.

Scrap the 696
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Scrap the unnecessary and draconian usage of the 696 Form from London music events
The 696 Form compels licensees who wish to hold live music events in 21 London Boroughs to report to the police the names, addresses, aliases and telephone numbers of performers, and most worryingly, the likely ethnicity of their audience. Failure to comply could result in fines or imprisonment. We believe this places unnecessary and frankly Orwellian powers in the hands of the Metropolitan Police, an institution which does not have the best record of racial fairness. The 696 form can only serve to deter the staging of live musical events - a positive form of activity in London and all cities - stifle free expression and quite possible penalise certain genres of music and ethnic audiences. It is an intrusion too far.

I've written about this one before, it's the polis infringing a little too much, when they could just be using Last.fm. The petitions doing well with 16,000 signatures, but really could do with over 30,000 to get a decent response.

Crisis in the Democration Republic of The Congo
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to To drive awareness of the ongoing civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and to put pressure on on suppliers of Cobalt, Coltan and Cassiterite to supply only legitimatly supplied ore and to introduce a "fairtrade" option in electrical products

Only 43 signatures, someone should do something.