Supplementary material from "Evolutionary dynamics of sustainability ideas in China: inferences from ecological and economic concepts usage in People’s Daily"

Previous cultural evolutionary analyses have exploited the use of neutral
models, or random copying models, analogous to neutral genetic drift, as
null models to distinguish the unbiased copying and biased transmission of
neutral cultural traits, but the dynamics and underlying mechanism of
non-neutral cultural traits have not yet been explored. Adopting an
ecological perspective, we define ecological and economic concepts as
non-neutral cultural traits constitute a complex ecosystem of meaning
representing sustainability ideas. We analyse the frequency distribution,
turnover and innovation rates of nearly 4000 concepts appearing in
People’s Daily from 1946 to 2015. The results reveal that, ecological
concepts show stronger tendency towards random copying than economic
concepts. The popular ecological and economic concepts may experience
conformist bias and anti-conformist bias respectively. Semantic and
pragmatic differences of popular concepts affect the variability which
indicate stronger cultural drift in the ontological domain. The frequency
change in popular concepts also suggests positive selection due to
political strategy and governmental policy.