The Power of Smart Mobs

When looking back at international history, we will often see incidents of citizens overthrowing their dictating and authoritarian government. And still today we see this happening where citizens band together to stir up some powerful political action. However, the difference between then and now is the means of instigating the political action.

In Howard Rheingold's article, "Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution", he saw a future of people using mobile technology to cause political uproar and make a difference in the lives of many. This future he anticipated started to unfold before his eyes in 2000 and this future is now the society we live in today, almost thirteen years later. Rheingold defines smart mobs as people "who are able to act in concert even if they don't know each other, cooperate in ways never before possible because they carry devices that possess both communication and computing capabilities" (xi). Smart mobs are ad hoc organizations, meaning they meet on the fly. They are a decentralized organizational structure that is self-regulated and lack a hierarchy. These characteristics of smart mobs are what make them so powerful -- no one can see them coming.

One prime example of a smart mob was the Kony 2012 campaign promoted by the Invisible Children group. This group sought to bring awareness to the activities of Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army in Central Africa. Joseph Kony went around Central African towns kidnapping children to join his children army. Any child who tried to escape would be killed and the children in his army forcefully participated in the kidnapping and killing of others. To promote this awareness, the group created this video:

The video was uploaded to YouTube and the Invisible Children homepage with the intention to not only promote awareness of the Central African atrocity, but to inform the world of a global plan. Invisible Children planned a day in 2012 where people would attack the night posting KONY2012 flyers and stickers all over the world and they informed the world of this plan via this video.

This was the smart mob; those who participated in the KONY2012 campaign that one midnight in 2012. They were an ad hoc organization who were informed of the event with the use of the Internet. They could also document the event using their mobile technology to either record or take pictures. This ad hoc organizational structure sought to make a difference in the world by promoting awareness all around the world and make a difference in the international political arena.

Outrageous Parental Reactions to Cyberbullying

I'm sure we can all think back to a time when we were the victim of bullying. Bullying commonly takes place on the school grounds where the popular student either verbally or physically pick on the not-so-popular students. However, in this day and age, bullying has taken a new form. It no longer stays at school, but now extends to social media websites. This changes the scheme of bullying in the sense that there is a much larger audience to encourage, condone, or simply witness the bullying. The bullies can hide behind a screen and thus be more vicious in their verbal attacks. A relative issue is the reactions that some parents take when they find out that their child is being bullied.

In Danah Boyd's article "The Drama! Teen Conflict, Gossip, and Bullying in Networked Publics", she defines bullying as involving unwanted, negative actions, an imbalance of power or strength, and a pattern of behavior repeated over time (7). An article posted by ABC online news titled "Parents: Cyber Bullying Led to Teen's Suicide" clearly emulates this definition of bullying. A 13-year-old girl named Megan committed suicide after being verbally bullied by her former friend's mother. The mother created a fake MySpace account in the name of "Josh Evans" and started an online relationship with Megan only to call her a slut, say she might as well kill herself, and break up with her in the end on the opinion that she is mean to her friends. The mother's intention was to teach Megan a lesson in defense of her own daughter but ended in Megan's suicide. The obvious issue here is the mother's reaction to her belief that Megan was mean to her daughter at one point in time.

ABC news also covered the story of a similar incident in the case of inappropriate parent action. Mother Debbie Piscitella intervenes when her daughter, McKenna, becomes the victim of Facebook cyberbulling. McKenna posted a photo on Facebook that received unwanted, cruel comments by another boy. The comments hurt McKenna so much that she had considered hurting herself just like in Megan's case. One day when the mother and daughter were at the mall, they ran into the boy who was bullying McKenna and Debbie started cussing him out as a way to tell him to stop bullying his daughter. When he said that he did not have to stop and he would not stop, she choked him.


It is outrageous the steps a mother will take to defend their child when it comes to bullying. Danah Boyd suggests that parenting today seems to require absolute belief that you're child is the best child ever and many parents think that their child can do no wrong and, thus, are unable to hear critiques of their own children. And that it is this belief that causes the parents to go to outrageous measures to defend their child, like Debbie did when she choked the bully. It is time for parents to take a step back and ask themselves if it is their job to get involved in bullying. And if they believe they must do something about the situation, reasonable and thought-out measures must be taken rather than instinctive, knee-jerk reactions out of anger.