What is the role of digital media in cases of social disorder, be it a riot or a revolution?
The answer on the tips of every social media guru's tongue is that social media - text messaging, group messaging, social networking sites - make organizing protests and mass looting easier and faster. Without this tool, the argument implies, the young men (and it is mostly young men, for what that's worth) would not overthrow the government or burn down the business. Another argument states that it is the way the rulers are behaving (austerity measures, police brutality, and a gap between rich fat cats and the proletariat) that inevitably leads to this kind of behavior.
Both of these arguments seem unsatisfying to me. Riots and revolutions happened without social media and there have been plenty of nations throughout history that had huge disparities between ruling classes and non-ruling classes that didn't erupt into violence for long periods of time. Perhaps both of these things contribute to the likelihood of these events, but perhaps there are other ways in which the new media landscape contributes to this likelihood.
Media content, be it what we see on television, what we read on our favorite site for news, or what we see in our Facebook feed, influences our ideas of what is normal in society or the sub-segment of society to which we believe we belong, which in turn affects our actions. By framing a certain behavior as more or less normal, a message sender can affect behavior of the message receivers. Its possible that various kinds (both positive and negative) of coverage of social unrest frame it as something that angry young men at a certain place in time do, enforcing a kind of norm to engage in civil disobedience, violence, or destruction of property. Instead of relying on the depictions of protesters, freedom fighters, and rioters that the mainstream news give us, we can get a first-hand look at them on social media sites. Even if only 5% of the population goes to these sources instead of MSM for coverage of the unrest, if its the right 5% (i.e. the 5% inclined toward real-world action), it matters. Perhaps this gives readers the impression that these aren't just objects on the screen to be watched, but people who are similar to the readers, who could interact with the readers. Maybe that makes identifying with them easier.
The panoply of opinions and ideologies on the internet makes finding justification (and a group that makes your thoughts about behaving in a certain way more normal) easier to find as well. I think this gets lost in the discussion of how easy social media facilitates the logistics of social unrest. You may start out with anger, but if that anger can't find justification, its unlikely to manifest itself in action. Sure, a mind sufficiently detached from reality can find a justification pretty much anywhere, but even those with a firm grip on reality can find reasons to act in ways that they couldn't when the messages were manufactured by people with too much to lose to advocate civil disobedience, violence, or property destruction.
Perhaps the default sentiment toward authority in complex societies is anger, an instinct that we feel from perceiving that we do not have much control over our fate. But that anger gets channeled into avenues other than civil disobedience, violence, and property destruction when we can't find justification or a group performing these actions to make them seem more normal.
(quote from Mike Butcher, TechCrunch Europe)
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