How to Create a Smart Mob:Understanding a Social Network Capital

P. Takis Metaxas, Ashley Hubbard Harmon

Wellesley College, USA

E-Democracy, July 2010

Web: cs.wellesley.edu/~pmetaxasE-mail: pmetaxas@wellesley.eduTwitter: takis_metaxas

Smart Mobs of the 21st Centurytechnologically-mediated self-structuring social organizationstechnologically-mediated self-structuring social organizations

Manilla e-Revolution

Go 2EDSA. Wear blckGo 2EDSA. Wear blck

Lost Sidekick

Balloon Spotting

Many more examples…

(partial) List of better-known Smart Mobs 2007 Kenyan post-election violence 2007 Burma riots 2009 Iranian elections Kiva’s micro-financing model Haiti earthquake relief initiative “Snowmageddon” Groupon network 4chan trolling

What do they have in common?

Can you create them on-demand? Rheingold’s blog: Characteristics of the leader (?)

Challenges in creating Smart Mobs

Not just a social network facebook, twitter: are not

Smart Mob on demand? Could I start a revolution? Could I find my stolen

laptop?

What does it take to create a Smart Mob?

An agreement between N participants seems to need a large number of handshakes

Sufficient (& necessary) ingredients

Desire for Communication Innate desire of humans to communicate “Man is by nature a social animal.” – John Locke

Affordable Communicating Devices Smart Mobs need to include a large group of people Possible, thanks to “Moore’s Law”

Opportunities for instantaneous communication A network, a forum to enable the formation “When the network enables transactions between the individual nodes, the value is

squared. When the same network includes ways for the individual to form groups, the value is exponential” – “Reed’s Law”

Shared Goal Without it, we simply have a social network. Traditionally successful actions towards a cause have often been limited to well-funded,

organized groups. Not anymore

Small time-frameNeed for urgency in its formation

Long periods of time will not provide the focus or urgency necessary.

Ingredients to create a Smart Mob

Manila e-Revolution

Lost Sidekick Balloon spotting

Desire for Communication

Seeking political justness

Sense of justice Seeking success in research goal

Affordable Comm. Devices

Cellphones Computers GPS-enabled cellphones

Opportunities for instantaneous Comm.

Texting network Web blogs, Web pages

DARPA’s challenge

Shared Goal Ending Pres. Estrada’s regime

Returning a cell-phone to owner

Financial gain; bragging rights

Small time-frame Jan. 17-20, 2001 Jun 6-15, 2006 Dec. 5, 2009

It is neither a particular technology, nor the skill of a leader:it is a confluence of 5 factors.

Kenya post-electionsviolence

Dec. 27, 2007 election results are disputed by opposition.

Violence erupts between ethnic/political supporters of Kibaki and Odinga.

At least 1,000 people killed, 200,000 displaced.

Difficult to find out where help was needed.

Proposition from Ory Okolloh attract attention of a few programmers who create Ushahidi in a few days.

Ushahidi: Smart Mobs on demand…

Smart (and nasty) Mobs: 4chan.org

Ongoing smart mob of unsocial types

Responsible for a variety of attacks for (their) fun Introducing new memes Threats against Church of Scientology Revenge YouTube by posting porn “Show off” by adding strobe-lights on Epilepsy page Voting “moot” as the 2009 Time 100, …

Persistent over time

Destroying a Smart Mob

Break any of its five criteria Desire for communication is innate, can only be broken from within Affordable communication devices: If available to few, SM ineffective

Opportunities for Communication Burma regime’s 2007 taking down the internet “for maintenance”

Shared Goal Iran regime’s insertion of rogue elements inciting violence

Small time-frame Declared effort to “defeat Creationism in schools” had no time urgency

So, all 5 sufficient criteria are also necessary