**4.2 Natural viralization**

*Cognitive and Intermedial Semiotics*

During Mexico's federal elections in 2018, information played an important role in the campaign period for the presidential office. This reached such extensions that 97 communication companies asked for the initiative "Verificado" [73], to confront the amount of false news circulating through digital media. The origin of this project refers to two circumstances: the first was a citizen effort facing the 2017 earthquakes in Mexico City; secondly, in response to a growing concern about the possible intervention of foreign governments in the electoral process [74–76].

The following are the three parameters used by the Verificado team to choose the news: (1) news of the 2018 electoral period; (2) news shared more than a thousand times; and (3) false, misleading, or unverifiable news for its content. The data corresponding to "false news" had 155 entries; some are grouped into a single note, and seven of them are not news but announcements [73]. We grouped the data by name; for that, it was necessary to determine the width in the variation in the amount of news propagated per day. It should be considered that the period between March 12 and June 30, 2018, consists of 110 days, while the official period of the campaign lasted only 89 days: from March 30 to June 27, 2018. Therefore, the generation of false viral news was not continuous, but only a few days of the race. Of the complete sample, only eight of the 155 false messages were published around 24 million and 350 thousand times by

accounts in the span of 6 days. That makes them superviral news. However,

the number of times shared, their viral propagation period (from 6 to 80 days), and the content of the notes show that they constitute an anomalous case; it is not natural in human communications. It is remarkable that the content of these eight superviral fake news, which managed to be shared by Facebook accounts millions of times, refers

Five were on Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, two on Ricardo Anaya, and one on Jaime Rodriguez Calderon "El Bronco"; none mentioned the official party candidate (PRI). According to the data found in Verificado-2018 and the Facebook counting algorithm, it is shown that the total of false and misleading information was shared 120 million times. The main theme was a campaign against the former presidential candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who, despite the viralization of false information, won the elections. Illuminated by the data, and contrary to what some North American academic circles have predicted about the manipulation of behavior through viral information, the result in Mexico was in the opposite direction. In the particular case, everything indicates that there is no interaction between people; we are dealing with an algorithm of propagation between ghost accounts (or web

A social network study carried out by Alber-Laszlo Barabasi and Peter Ruppert [76], which Aristegui Noticias (digital news) presented during the 2018 electoral campaign [77], shows several important qualities of the ghost accounts that fictionally followed the candidates: at least 50% of the accounts were bots. These accounts would, mainly, promote positive publicity about the PRI candidate and, also, propagate negative information about other candidates they followed (especially about the candidate of the Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional, [MORENA]). These all mean that someone made an effort to create an informatic automata to repeat fake information millions of times within a closed system; this is no different from repeating a name thousands of times in an empty room (or in our mind). In structural terms, this does not reach out of the microscopic level of communication. In most cases, this information caused laughter or disgust; only in the least cases, it caused the wished effects of a modification in behavior in favor of a candidate.

<sup>3</sup> This number was obtained through Facebook's algorithm: https://graph.facebok.com.

to candidates different from those of the ruling party.

**4.1 Artificial viralization**

Facebook3

robots).

**78**

A case of natural viralization, during the same elections, was *#NoAlPeriodismoSicario* (no to hitman journalism). On a macroscopic scale, a person can share a *fauxto*, 4 what is colloquially known as a meme. On 5 May, the journalist Ricardo Aleman shared a meme with the heading: *"Les hablan"* (they are talking to you). Next, the text in the image read: *"A John Lennon lo mató un fan. A Versace lo mató un fan. A Selena la mató una fan. A ver a qué hora chairos"* (John Lennon was killed by a fan. Versace was killed by a fan. Selena was killed by a fan. We are waiting, *chairos*). In a matter of hours, a reaction was viralized against the communicator with *#NoAlPeriodismoSicario*. The version of the journalist was that sharing this *fauxto* was a warning for the alluded candidate. According to his interpretation, the viral response against him was evidence of a violation of his freedom of speech [78]. This case had a microscopic stable message; in the personal and familiar context of the journalist, magnicide ideas are funny. However, on a macroscopic level, by interacting and establishing diverse trajectories in networks, the meaning of a dark joke became a call to assassinate the candidate. On the macroscopic level, the journalist has the editorial voice of several media. This is why it resulted unthinkable, for network users, the conduct of this communicator in ethical terms.

The difference between the interpretation of the communicator and the interpretation of the users was huge, even contrary. On the microscopic scale, the category and class of the message of the journalist are protected by his freedom of speech. After the cascade effect, which included him being fired of several media, the journalist shared a series of answers to excuse his actions: *"Televisa decidió cancelar la relación laboral con Ricardo Alemán! No la comparto pero la respeto. Toda empresa tiene derecho a contratar a quién convenga a sus intereses! Ganó el linchamiento y el reclamo de censura! Los demócratas de Morena!!!"* (Televisa decided to cancel the work relation with Ricardo Aleman. I do not share it but I respect it. Every company has the right to hire whoever matches their interests! The mob law and the claim of censorship won! The democrats of MORENA) [79].

This is not the first phenomenon of such nature seen in Mexico. Just like the journalist, Ricardo Aleman, TVUNAM's former director, Nicolas Alvarado [80], was in the middle of a controversy for a comment he published on national media (concrete and virtual). The mediatic mob law these people were subject of has a close relation to the dissipative structures that are generated around their original messages. Entering the macroscopic scale, they are exposed to natural forces of tension and distension, which we observe as probabilistic evolution in the network models. In this sense, the information generated, the contents that emerge, and the changes of the concrete original object not only modify the behavior of people but can also have social action as an effect. These long-range effects are those that permit to see a new political class coming, one completely different from that of the twentieth century.

According to the data of the Verificado-2018 site, in total, the false and misleading information was shared 120 million times. Its central theme was a campaign against the candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who despite the virality of the information won the elections.

The INE (Federal Electoral Institute), the electors list of Mexico consists of 41,316,706 women and 44,637,006 men, that is 85,953,712 million citizens. However, in the 2018 election, only 56,611,027 citizens voted.

<sup>4</sup> Friggeri et al. [67] define fauxto as an analysis unit of cascades, which corresponds to an image that has been intentionally altered; the image can be a picture or a heading, for example, a quote or a saying. They are called colloquially "meme."

The candidate with the highest number of false news spread on the networks obtained 30,113, 483 votes, in other words, 53% of the electoral preference voted by Lopez Obrador. The other two candidates of the National Action Party (PAN) in alliance with the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), and the official party (PRI) obtained 22 and 16%, respectively. The implications of this fake news anonymous behavior are at least two:

Some American politicians and scholars predicted that there exists a supposed manipulation of human behavior through viral and false information in the networks. The result in Mexico was in the opposite direction to its predictions.

The debate about the cascades of viral information is still valid. Is the massive data capable of transforming people's behavior? Is it possible to change the voting trend with fake news?

The explanation belongs to a microscopic level. The answer is into the processes of spread within social and cultural interactions.

The social and cultural scenarios are two types: digital and fleshly. A virtual environment consists of matter, energy, and mainly information. Meantime, a concrete situation is composed of primary material, energy, and less information.

The microscopic level has a probabilistic evolution over macroscopic interactions. This feature allows measuring the semiosis evolution through statistical concepts applied to Network theory. The principal notion is the 'dynamic temporal network' (dtn) [70] because data of a dtn set mathematical topologies. It is possible to predict the probabilistic evolution of cascades across five topologic properties [70]: features of the content, root characteristics of the original poster, sharing characteristics, structural characteristics, and temporary characteristics.

These properties are necessary to generate viral behavior. From the scope of systemic-semiotics, they are semiotic units. It is essential to know the limits of our analysis, which in this case are the smallest parts of significance. Umberto Eco called the minimum unit of meaning. They resemble the everyday objects of a culture insofar as they participate in semiosis. The minimum unit of meaning has an upper and a lower limit of interpretation. In this way, there is a logic of understanding within the microscopic level and it becomes different at the macroscopic level.

These fluctuations of significance are the structures of the meaning. The minimum unit of meaning changes with the semantic attributes of each category and class, and the relationship shifts all the time between the sociosemiotic interfaces. They only can occur in a natural network, viral or not.

## **5. Conclusions**

Systems research is divided into three important categories: systems thinking, systems science, and systems engineering. Following this argument, the cybersemiotic approach serves as a systems thinking ontological foundation that studies consciousness. On the other hand, the systemic-semiotics approach is a foundation for systems science that studies semiosis. Systems research is a new way of doing science, sometimes called "postmodern" science, although in quite a different sense than the meaning of postmodernity in the liberal arts. The incorporation of semiotics and cybersemiotics as components of systems research occurred at a time when those disciplines were broadly fragmented and divided, in particular semiotics, and were confronted in open debate with formal linguistics. In other words, the rules of cooperation, and the consolidation of axioms and epistemic concepts about the

**81**

*Semiotic Architecture of Viral Data*

epistemic concepts are extinct.

a million times inside an empty room.

as shown in Formula 1:

shown in Formula 2:

do we signify reality?

and ideas.

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.89153*

processes of semiosis, surpassed a fragmented scientific community to such an extent that in some scientific circles it is often said that philosophy, its actions, and

Transdisciplinarity, nonetheless, demonstrates how knowledge evolves for the benefit of intelligence in new environments. The inscription of semiotics within the foundations of systems science alongside meta-theories, meta-methodologies, ontology, epistemology, axiology, category theory, and praxiology, among others, situates it in its rightful position to answer a most important question: how and why

Semiotics is the doctrine of all signs, and a sign is something that is in place of something else in any of its properties. This definition creates a path to understanding nature's randomness and poses the real phenomena as open problems. Under this view, semiotics integrates Charles Sanders Peirce pragmatic thinking

Systems research, cybersemiotics, and systemic-semiotics are very close to one another: cybersemiotics' scope is an important foundation of systems thinking because of its basis as a second-order cybernetics, rooted in human context and interest in intentionality. On the other hand, a systemic-semiotics' scope is a

About the original question of this essay, is it possible to control electoral preferences through viral information-false, misleading, or true? Yes, but only when the interaction and the degree of communicative efficiency are through real individuals and not through bots. In the cases of natural viralization, it was possible to change and modify behavior, even to lead a population toward social action. On the contrary, the cases of artificial viralization are equivalent to repeating a message

In essence, we measure the efficiency of a communicative situation. How reliable are we communicating? Abstractly, a dynamic system of equilibrium is a kind of communicative event "*e*". It is equal to the sum of its communicative efficiency "η" and its entropy "ξ". Under the rule (1): *When a difference of interpretation is large enough, between the individual and the collective, cascades of viral information arise, in which hundreds, thousands, or millions of subjects share facts (true, suspicious, or false)*,

*e* = η + ξ (1)

The initial entropy in an original semiosis is 0, but as soon as it comes into contact with the macroscopic level, that entropy can grow or decrease according to the difference between the original interpretation and the massive interpretation. Therefore, entropy would be the sum of all the information chains around a category, class, and relationships between them. The rule that operates at the microscopic level is the rule 2: *if the concrete object and the interpretant sign are separated, it is due to its inconsistency with the macroscopic context. As the difference of states in the interpretation gets bigger, the distance between them will grow exponentially as they circulate within the macroscopic level until reaching different regions.* Network theory allows the trackability of the probabilistic evolution as

*f*(*x*) = *R* (2)

In the formula, *<sup>f</sup>*(*<sup>x</sup>*) is a function that changes over time. The result is numerous interconnected nodes, defined by (*R*) [70]. The final size of the cascade is the size of *f*(*x*). Within the statistical properties of cascades, the increase always responds

foundation of systems science and is related to a first-order cybernetics.

#### *Semiotic Architecture of Viral Data DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.89153*

*Cognitive and Intermedial Semiotics*

mous behavior are at least two:

of spread within social and cultural interactions.

They only can occur in a natural network, viral or not.

predictions.

trend with fake news?

characteristics.

macroscopic level.

**5. Conclusions**

The candidate with the highest number of false news spread on the networks obtained 30,113, 483 votes, in other words, 53% of the electoral preference voted by Lopez Obrador. The other two candidates of the National Action Party (PAN) in alliance with the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), and the official party (PRI) obtained 22 and 16%, respectively. The implications of this fake news anony-

Some American politicians and scholars predicted that there exists a supposed manipulation of human behavior through viral and false information in the networks. The result in Mexico was in the opposite direction to its

The debate about the cascades of viral information is still valid. Is the massive data capable of transforming people's behavior? Is it possible to change the voting

The explanation belongs to a microscopic level. The answer is into the processes

The social and cultural scenarios are two types: digital and fleshly. A virtual environment consists of matter, energy, and mainly information. Meantime, a concrete situation is composed of primary material, energy, and less information. The microscopic level has a probabilistic evolution over macroscopic interac-

tions. This feature allows measuring the semiosis evolution through statistical concepts applied to Network theory. The principal notion is the 'dynamic temporal network' (dtn) [70] because data of a dtn set mathematical topologies. It is possible to predict the probabilistic evolution of cascades across five topologic properties [70]: features of the content, root characteristics of the original poster, sharing characteristics, structural characteristics, and temporary

These properties are necessary to generate viral behavior. From the scope of systemic-semiotics, they are semiotic units. It is essential to know the limits of our analysis, which in this case are the smallest parts of significance. Umberto Eco called the minimum unit of meaning. They resemble the everyday objects of a culture insofar as they participate in semiosis. The minimum unit of meaning has an upper and a lower limit of interpretation. In this way, there is a logic of understanding within the microscopic level and it becomes different at the

These fluctuations of significance are the structures of the meaning. The minimum unit of meaning changes with the semantic attributes of each category and class, and the relationship shifts all the time between the sociosemiotic interfaces.

Systems research is divided into three important categories: systems thinking, systems science, and systems engineering. Following this argument, the cybersemiotic approach serves as a systems thinking ontological foundation that studies consciousness. On the other hand, the systemic-semiotics approach is a foundation for systems science that studies semiosis. Systems research is a new way of doing science, sometimes called "postmodern" science, although in quite a different sense than the meaning of postmodernity in the liberal arts. The incorporation of semiotics and cybersemiotics as components of systems research occurred at a time when those disciplines were broadly fragmented and divided, in particular semiotics, and were confronted in open debate with formal linguistics. In other words, the rules of cooperation, and the consolidation of axioms and epistemic concepts about the

**80**

processes of semiosis, surpassed a fragmented scientific community to such an extent that in some scientific circles it is often said that philosophy, its actions, and epistemic concepts are extinct.

Transdisciplinarity, nonetheless, demonstrates how knowledge evolves for the benefit of intelligence in new environments. The inscription of semiotics within the foundations of systems science alongside meta-theories, meta-methodologies, ontology, epistemology, axiology, category theory, and praxiology, among others, situates it in its rightful position to answer a most important question: how and why do we signify reality?

Semiotics is the doctrine of all signs, and a sign is something that is in place of something else in any of its properties. This definition creates a path to understanding nature's randomness and poses the real phenomena as open problems. Under this view, semiotics integrates Charles Sanders Peirce pragmatic thinking and ideas.

Systems research, cybersemiotics, and systemic-semiotics are very close to one another: cybersemiotics' scope is an important foundation of systems thinking because of its basis as a second-order cybernetics, rooted in human context and interest in intentionality. On the other hand, a systemic-semiotics' scope is a foundation of systems science and is related to a first-order cybernetics.

About the original question of this essay, is it possible to control electoral preferences through viral information-false, misleading, or true? Yes, but only when the interaction and the degree of communicative efficiency are through real individuals and not through bots. In the cases of natural viralization, it was possible to change and modify behavior, even to lead a population toward social action. On the contrary, the cases of artificial viralization are equivalent to repeating a message a million times inside an empty room.

In essence, we measure the efficiency of a communicative situation. How reliable are we communicating? Abstractly, a dynamic system of equilibrium is a kind of communicative event "*e*". It is equal to the sum of its communicative efficiency "η" and its entropy "ξ". Under the rule (1): *When a difference of interpretation is large enough, between the individual and the collective, cascades of viral information arise, in which hundreds, thousands, or millions of subjects share facts (true, suspicious, or false)*, as shown in Formula 1:

$$
\mathfrak{e} = \mathfrak{n} + \mathfrak{k} \tag{1}
$$

The initial entropy in an original semiosis is 0, but as soon as it comes into contact with the macroscopic level, that entropy can grow or decrease according to the difference between the original interpretation and the massive interpretation. Therefore, entropy would be the sum of all the information chains around a category, class, and relationships between them. The rule that operates at the microscopic level is the rule 2: *if the concrete object and the interpretant sign are separated, it is due to its inconsistency with the macroscopic context. As the difference of states in the interpretation gets bigger, the distance between them will grow exponentially as they circulate within the macroscopic level until reaching different regions.* Network theory allows the trackability of the probabilistic evolution as shown in Formula 2:

$$f(\mathbf{x}) = \mathbf{R} \tag{2}$$

In the formula, *<sup>f</sup>*(*<sup>x</sup>*) is a function that changes over time. The result is numerous interconnected nodes, defined by (*R*) [70]. The final size of the cascade is the size of *f*(*x*). Within the statistical properties of cascades, the increase always responds

to exponential growth. It usually is characterized as a power law. The probabilistic evolution is (*P*) and has a growing rate. It is the representation of the inverse of the percentage of nodes, raised to the approximate amount of information cascades or total dissipative structures, as shown in Formula 3:

$$P = \frac{1}{R^5} \tag{3}$$

The probabilistic evolution in the macroscopic level shows that the consequent results are irreversible, as the theory predicted [13–16, 28]. Because the communication circuit operates as follows: The initial stage of the signs begins with a message entering into the channel of conversation. The user conduces to match up all the uncertain data through gathering and connecting knowledge with his experience. This behavior creates control parameters. And it is followed by data that emerge attenuated or amplified.

It is the stage of the initial semiosis, and at this time, the semiosis is weak.

The next phase is the generation of disturbances or dissipative structures. Whether they arise or not will depend on the discords between individuals and the interpretation of information. Then, the processes can be measured with the tools of the graph and network theory (as propagation processes).

Finally, the difference between individual interpretations generates dissipative structures as an output.

A complex system has a complex behavior only at the collective, macroscopic level. So it is made up of public, private, collective, and individual networks and without central control, that is without leaders. This property allows generating parameters of control for messages. Consequently, it modifies the behavior of the people.

The decentralized control properties account for the sudden emergence of newly organized states of information, such as discovering new words or meeting in a lynching. Meanwhile, human trolls and web robots have leader, central objective, and centralized control. Accordingly, it is unlikely that an artificial network, such as a web robot, will manage to change people's behavior on its own. They repeat a message in an empty box.

This kind of advertisement campaign is based on creating bots to repeat massively false information inside a closed room, and it comes from the sentence attributed to the Nazis: "repeat a lie with enough frequency and it will become true." The saying attributed to the Nazis preserves a remote relation to an irrational vision from the twenty-first century. Youngsters of this new century are conscious that the effects, in reality, do not depend on wishing something a thousand times, saying hundreds of times a name, or sharing thousands of times a news in an empty room.

The interaction with reality has changed the rules of communication. The clearest example of the new communicative situation of the Web 3.0 was that the only candidate that played the rules of Web 3.0 took the themes of national interest from the macroscopic level and made them his political banner. Even a narrative about a "mafia of power" emerged, the victims of said mafia and their heroes. The narrative of the mafia of power consolidated itself as a consequence of thousands of dissipative structures along a territory during a long period of 15 years. It generated virtual and concrete networks, long-range and deep, with string-like structures.

In our opinion, natural long-range and deep networks are the reason for the massive vote for a candidate, just as it is the reason for the colossal failure of publicity without theory. Thus, the next step in a cybersemiotic investigation or systemic semiotics cut should be about the role of the natural long-range and deep networks in the semiosis process.

**83**

**Author details**

Mexico City, Mexico

Berna Leticia Valle Canales\* and Julio César Chavarría Hernandez

\*Address all correspondence to: bvallec1200@alumno.ipn.mx

provided the original work is properly cited.

Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Escuela Superior de Ingeniería Mecánica y Eléctrica,

© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

*Semiotic Architecture of Viral Data*

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.89153*

*Semiotic Architecture of Viral Data DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.89153*

*Cognitive and Intermedial Semiotics*

attenuated or amplified.

structures as an output.

message in an empty box.

news in an empty room.

in the semiosis process.

total dissipative structures, as shown in Formula 3: *<sup>P</sup>* = \_1

to exponential growth. It usually is characterized as a power law. The probabilistic evolution is (*P*) and has a growing rate. It is the representation of the inverse of the percentage of nodes, raised to the approximate amount of information cascades or

*R*ξ

The probabilistic evolution in the macroscopic level shows that the consequent results are irreversible, as the theory predicted [13–16, 28]. Because the communication circuit operates as follows: The initial stage of the signs begins with a message entering into the channel of conversation. The user conduces to match up all the uncertain data through gathering and connecting knowledge with his experience. This behavior creates control parameters. And it is followed by data that emerge

It is the stage of the initial semiosis, and at this time, the semiosis is weak. The next phase is the generation of disturbances or dissipative structures. Whether they arise or not will depend on the discords between individuals and the interpretation of information. Then, the processes can be measured with the tools

Finally, the difference between individual interpretations generates dissipative

A complex system has a complex behavior only at the collective, macroscopic level. So it is made up of public, private, collective, and individual networks and without central control, that is without leaders. This property allows generating parameters of

The decentralized control properties account for the sudden emergence of newly

control for messages. Consequently, it modifies the behavior of the people.

organized states of information, such as discovering new words or meeting in a lynching. Meanwhile, human trolls and web robots have leader, central objective, and centralized control. Accordingly, it is unlikely that an artificial network, such as a web robot, will manage to change people's behavior on its own. They repeat a

This kind of advertisement campaign is based on creating bots to repeat massively false information inside a closed room, and it comes from the sentence attributed to the Nazis: "repeat a lie with enough frequency and it will become true." The saying attributed to the Nazis preserves a remote relation to an irrational vision from the twenty-first century. Youngsters of this new century are conscious that the effects, in reality, do not depend on wishing something a thousand times, saying hundreds of times a name, or sharing thousands of times a

The interaction with reality has changed the rules of communication. The clearest example of the new communicative situation of the Web 3.0 was that the only candidate that played the rules of Web 3.0 took the themes of national interest from the macroscopic level and made them his political banner. Even a narrative about a "mafia of power" emerged, the victims of said mafia and their heroes. The narrative of the mafia of power consolidated itself as a consequence of thousands of dissipative structures along a territory during a long period of 15 years. It generated virtual and concrete networks, long-range and deep, with string-like

In our opinion, natural long-range and deep networks are the reason for the massive vote for a candidate, just as it is the reason for the colossal failure of publicity without theory. Thus, the next step in a cybersemiotic investigation or systemic semiotics cut should be about the role of the natural long-range and deep networks

of the graph and network theory (as propagation processes).

(3)

**82**

structures.
