Social media mobs threaten civil order due to their potential size, speed, scale, and central organization.
If online platforms continue to promote hatred, there is a good case for closing them down for public safety.
The Internet adds new twists to mob psychology, but the beast remains much the same.
We live in an era where a single negative post or comment concerning even a well-established company can rapidly turn into a social media crisis. Humans have a penchant for adopting certain behaviors based on the influence of their peers. One’s point of view can be easily altered based on their circle of influence, causing a person to act emotionally rather than rationally and driving a group of individuals to make different decisions than they perhaps would have on their own. Psychologists refer to this phenomenon of following the actions and behaviors of one’s peers as mob mentality or herd mentality, and it is important to fully understand it before crafting your crisis response plan.
After a triggering event occurs, an organization has a limited window of time to create the kind of psychology-based messaging that will resonate in a crisis situation. We know that founded or unfounded stories that can capture the attention of a social media mob can quickly go viral and develop into a social media crisis.
How should you factor mob mentality into your crisis response plan?
Social media mobs result from the narrative that is created following a triggering event. Organizations must understand that once a story goes viral, they have little to no control over whether or not a social media mob will form, which means they cannot wait to take action. Factoring mob mentality into a crisis response plan means understanding that the focus must be on the initial formal response, from which all other narratives will build.
With roots in social pressure, mob mentality is a circumstance that has occurred throughout human history. Humans are inherently social, and neurobiologists have found that when they gather into large groups, thinking and acting as one, their brains produce chemicals that cause them to depart from logical cognition and regress into a more primitive state.
Whether it occurs consciously or unconsciously, individuals have a tendency to align their attitudes and behaviors with those around them. This compliance with social norms, or responding to the expectations of one’s peers, is almost instinctual, a part of evolutionary psychology as the prefrontal cortex plays a decisive role in guiding the kind of cooperative behavior that leads to a person acting in ways they would have never considered independently. Many people find it almost impossible to go against what’s socially acceptable. In the end, a person’s natural desire to be part of the group is likely also the catalyst for damaging their independent decision-making ability.
When it comes to mob mentality and social media, the anonymity of the Internet can diminish the sense of individual identity, accelerating the path of yielding to mob or herd mentality. Reduced to avatars and usernames, individuals may more quickly let go of a sense of self-restraint that might deter them in a face-to-face setting. Not only may people lose control of their usual inhibitions, but they may also assume that the anonymity of the Internet releases them from any consequences of their actions.
Is the internet indirectly shifting this collective consciousness by causing more and more people to cut the ropes of social norms? In this online, virtual landscape, people allow their dark insecurities to rise up through a weakened sense of self and spew down to sweaty fingertips to tap untactfully on keyboards.
The internet is not only allowing us to easily dissolve our sense of self through anonymity, it also exposes us to many ‘mobs’ and allows people to become easily influenced by others’ ideals. In some cases, extreme ideals. You see, I believe that once our sense of self is dissolved and anonymity has cloaked us, we become even more vulnerable to negative mob mentality. It’s as if, with no sense of self, our egos subconsciously desire to attach to something, a false-self, even if it’s hateful and negative group-think.
It’s now easier than ever to get infected by negative thoughts or bullied by digital egos. This is making a lot of people very anxious and very depressed. It can cause so much hurt and grief that people feel the need to take their own lives.
So what does the future hold? Face-to-face interactions are on the decline, so what will become of our individual self in an expanding virtual, online existence? We no longer identify with causes through attending rally’s or meeting together. Instead, we click ‘like’ and our news feed magically feeds us a global collective. The internet has brought us wonders, it’s changed the world, created positive global societies, but with the good comes the bad, as soul-eating trolls lurk in dark corners waiting to attack your sense of self.
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