Mandatory Blog Post #12 - Shirky and the digital mob

I love technology. I love how it brings us together faster and better than we have ever been. I love how simple it is for me to form a group on the Internet with like-minded individuals like myself. Facebook groups allow for multiple people to post and share images and those members can share those pictures with others outside of that group. No matter how annoying it is to see these posts on our feeds 24/7, it is nothing short of amazing. I don't like the pictures, but I love the idea behind them. What I don't love, however, is the mob mentality that forms because of such technologies.

Thomas Jefferson said this

In chapter 1, Shirky describes an event where a cellphone was left on a cab and then went from a missing phone case to a theft case. I'm not going to describe the events because all of you should have done the reading and understand exactly which incident I am referring to. The results of the "theft" led to somewhat of a mob mentality towards Sasha, the girl who "stole" the phone. Sure, the phone was recovered, but at what cost? Sasha was exposed to sexual harassment, threats and was arrested at 16-years-old. That is a lot for a person to go through for a missing phone, even though she didn't do the right thing and return it to the owner. This whole event is one big gray area in which we are confronted with the paradox of whether we embrace or fear technology and the people who use it.

I'm sure that we all remember the Piers Morgan article we read in class. Morgan used language that many felt was inappropriate, including the person he was interviewing. This led to thousands of people attacking him for simply using language that wasn't accurate enough for them. It is a touchy subject and he used what language was available to him. It was easy to see him as the bad guy when so many people were defending the person offended and were harassing Morgan.

It's simple logic really: he did something they didn't like, they responded negatively in mass, others saw and joined in, 'oh, he must be the bad guy if so many people are acting like this.'

I think a more accurate thought process would have been more effective in handling the situation. He said something they didn't like, people respond negatively in mass, before others join in, they think 'what is it like from his angle? did he do this deliberately or was it a mistake of language?'

I think it's better for people to look at something critically, rather than grabbing their torches and marching towards the evil.

          

 

Another example of mob rule from our class is the article where Justine Sacco was fired for her tweet consisting of the words AIDS and Africa and "I'm white." She deserved to be fired for what she said and websites like Twitter were able to get the news out and get her fired form her job while she was still in the air. This happened so fast and quick that there were crowds of people with signs waiting for her plane to land. She got what she deserved in terms of treatment and punishment from work and it's good that she was fired, but did the ends justify the means?

Was it right or safe for the Internet to do this? On one hand, she got what she deserved and on the other hand, she could have been physically harmed by these mobs. Again, it's just one big gray area. It's too complicated to say in a few words, so I'll use five.

We need to be cautious.