Can Riots Be Predicted By Social Media? 141
sciencehabit writes: The broken glass and burned wreckage are still being cleared in the wake of the riots that convulsed Baltimore's streets on 27 April. The final trigger of the unrest was the funeral of a 25-year-old African-American man who had died in police custody, but observers point to many other root causes, from income inequality to racial discrimination. But for a few researchers who are studying Baltimore's unrest, the question is not the ultimate causes of the riot but its mechanism: How do such riots self-organize and spread? One of those researchers, Dan Braha, a social scientist at the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been collecting data from Twitter that spans the riot from buildup to aftermath, part of a larger study of social media and social unrest around the world. He spoke to Science about how researchers are helping to predict the riots of the future.
I certainly hope not (Score:1)
Monitoring, monitoring, monitoring. Pretty soon you won't be able to plan a protest without being added to a dozen watchlists as a dangerous subversive.
Re:I certainly hope not (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't really need to monitor though, riots can easily be predicted by how bad the fuckup was that provokes them.
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The murder of Freddie Grey wasn't all that unusual an occurrence, sadly. A person has been killed by police in the US approximately once every 8 hours. It's not always easy to see beforehand which egregious breach of civil rights by the police will result in widespread protests.
Also, white people have a strong tendency to riot for no good reason whatsoever (e.g. the 2011 Stanley Cup riots in Vancouver).
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A person has been killed by police in the US approximately once every 8 hours.
Sadly, you are right, my father was killed on 5/1/2013 around 4am by Sherriff's officers, the same one's that were accused of raping 5 female inmates as corrections officers 20 years prior and discovered in a related case that he was a juror on that spawned the investigation, and they had set me up to jury tamper him on but the way that panned out they really couldn't press it. It is all part of a larger picture though, my grand
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I don't care about the legal definition. They killed the man.
But you clearly have more faith in our justice system than I do. Police in the US are almost never convicted of anything. I'm glad that they have been indicted (a rare thing for murderous police officers in the US), but there's still a very good chance that they'll face close to zero consequences for their actions, regardless of the evidence.
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BZZT. Implies the fuckup was not planned.
Why do you think it's so easy for any police force to have SWAT teams and a wide assortment of military gear? Riots like these have made it a really easy 'sell'.
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However, there are limited limits. The old "you can't yell fire in a crowded movie house" comes to mind.
I should think the same rules apply to social media? I mean, that tweet that went out saying "there's going to be a PURGE at 3pm..etc" could the powers that be not have that taken down, blocked, etc?
I"m guessing no mechanism now..but shouldn't be hard to figure how to put filters on there, no?
I don't say this type thing lightly either, it is
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The proper quote is "you can't FALSELY yell fire in a crowded theatre".
Pay close attention to that extra word - it's important....
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The proper quote is "you can't FALSELY yell fire in a crowded theatre".
Pay close attention to that extra word - it's important....
It is also so self evident that it doesn't need to be mentioned.
Re:I certainly hope not (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is people - government goons and ordinary internet users - who can't tell the difference between blowing off steam and real incitement.
The standard in meatspace is that you can advocate violence, but you can't advocate specific violent right now. You so can say "we should overthrow the government," you can't say "Let's go burn the FBI building down right now."
Making that distinction online is impossible for most people, because most of the internet is text only, without context or body language, and because most people are hysterical idiots. So the teenage boy who says in some online game "go rape yourself" to some teenage girl, because that's how teenage boys always talk to each other is suddenly under investigation for making terrorist threats. And then the outrage starts from both sides, and the police have no clue what any of it means, or how to respond. They only know that voters are harassing their political bosses to do something, anything, even if it's wrong.
Add in a few Joker types, "who just want to watch the world burn," who are deliberately inciting violence, mixed with the usual retarded morons who gobble down whatever propaganda they're spoon fed, so long as it agrees with what they want to be true, and, well, welcome to 2015.
So the solution (Score:3)
Is to ban Twitter and Facebook?
Re:So the solution (Score:4, Funny)
I'm strangely OK with that.
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I'd be happier if we substitute "nuke from orbit" for "ban."
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I'm strangely OK with that.
Yeah, even a viciously repressive Police State has some advantages.
Re:So the solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure worked great for Mubarak et al.
Funny how quickly we forget how we berated those middle east regent when they tried to prop up their failed regime by banning social medias, then promptly turn around and want to squelch dissent at home by monitoring and controlling them when it threatens our own regime.
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The article is not about *stopping* riots.... (Score:3)
The article is not about *stopping* riots.... it's about *predicting* them, so you know where to set up the news vans, and you know where to go to be on camera so you can demonstrate that you are a "community leader".
If you actually *stopped* the riots, it'd be a hell of a slow news day, and you'd have to run human interest stories about the baby ducks who've infested some guys swimming pool, or stories about cats.
Predicted? (Score:2, Insightful)
Is it really a prediction when someone tells you where and when they are going to riot ahead of time?
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This riot started with a press release (Score:5, Informative)
This riot started with a press release from the Baltimore Police Department:
According to the Baltimore Sun, a call to "purge"—a reference to the 2013 dystopian film in which all crime is made legal for one night—circulated on social media among school-aged Baltimoreans that morning. The rumored plan—which was not traced to any specific person or group—was to assemble at the Mondawmin Mall at 3 p.m. and proceed down Pennsylvania Avenue toward downtown Baltimore. The Baltimore Police Department, which was aware of the "purge" call, prepared for the worst. Shortly before noon, the department issued a statement saying it had "received credible information that members of various gangshave entered into a partnership to 'take-out' law enforcement officers." ...
Meghann Harris, a teacher at a nearby school, described on Facebook what happened:
Police were forcing busses to stop and unload all their passengers. Then, [Frederick Douglass High School] students, in huge herds, were trying to leave on various busses but couldn't catch any because they were all shut down. No kids were yet around except about 20, who looked like they were waiting for police to do something. The cops, on the other hand, were in full riot gear, marching toward any small social clique of studentsIt looked as if there were hundreds of cops.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/04/how-baltimore-riots-began-mondawmin-purge
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Re:This riot started with a press release (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of us are willing to create civil unrest about something, at least in theory. That's why you have all those guns, right? It just has to be bad enough that you see civil unrest as the only available option.
For emotional teenager minds, police in riot gear surrounding you and presumably yelling at you to disperse while simultaneously preventing you from leaving might be that trigger. Sure the first guy who threw a rock was probably an asshole who should have been expelled for something else months ago, but others might join in who would have also been perfectly happy to just get on a bus and go home if they had been allowed to two hours earlier when school let out.
That's where the police failed - by creating a situation where immature people feel rioting is their only option, when they just as easily could have tackled the rumors of a riot by trying to disperse the kids into the city and away from trouble instead.
In other words, police showing up in full riot gear and marching in unison down the street at you is an incentive to start a riot. Honestly I'm surprised the libertarian gun-loving wing of Slashdot isn't rising up to support people "resisting the police state".
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That's why you have all those guns, right?
I have mine for hunting and target shooting
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Perhaps you haven't noticed that this site rivals Stormfront for racial intolerance? Always bothered the fuck out of site founder Rob Malda, who is a decent guy.
Guns and liberty are for the pale-skinned, around here. Read the comments with negative
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"You know, normally, I'm a law-abiding citizen. And I was about to get on the bus to go to church and then my volunteer job when the desire to throw molotov cocktails at random buildings just came over me. I tell you, something in the air that night made me want to loot several armfuls of Nikes from that shoe store down the street too. Kind of wacky, huh? Call it the zeitgeist, I guess," said one of the noble oppressed.
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Bear these facts in mind too, every day hundreds of kids leave Frederick Douglass and walk across the street and through the mall to catch the buses on the far side of the mall. Their school releases at about 2:25.
I just wish people could recognize how insane this would be if their kids were released from school to buzzing police helicopters, police in riot gear, and their child being prevented from taking transportation home. It would be a national outrage.
— Meg Gibson, a Baltimore City school teache
Re:This riot started with a press release (Score:4, Informative)
You can add years of thuggery by Baltimore law enforcement:
https://www.themarshallproject... [themarshallproject.org]
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The Michael Brown case is a great example of what's wrong with this whole jumping to conclusions thing. While there ARE clear cases of cops illegally killing suspects (like in the recent cases in Charleston and Arizona), the physical evidence in the Michael Brown case conclusively showed that the cop's story was, in fact, accurate. The bullets and blood trail made it clear that Brown fought the officer for his gun, started to walk away, then turned around and charged him again--just as the cop claimed. Cons
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I would like to also add that, before the mods judge me as a "racist" (the leftist definition), I simply chose black people as one topic to talk about. Whites riot too, but whites rarely riot in the US they same way some lower classes (of all colors) do. Typically if white people are rioting it's because their students. Liberal students commonly. Whites rioting in other countries is actually because their government has really pissed them off a lot more than the US has ever to its own citizens. I don't mean
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Stupid SJW's... don't they know that government exist to protect businesses, not fret over the welfare of the little people?
one more "/." summary for libtards! (Score:2)
The final trigger of the unrest was the funeral of a 25-year-old African-American man who had died in police custody, but observers point to many other root causes, from income inequality to racial discrimination.
I think some "triggers/root causes" are (deliberately) left out from this "/." summary...
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Libtard SJWs love a good riot, go look up mayday in the bay area for example.
As anyone knows, it's futbol fans that really love rioting.
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Up here in Seattle we have both... and come tomorrow I don't think it will be the football fans who will be engaging in their annual riot.
You need to research that? (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, the unrest is brewing in our towns. The powder keg is filled to the brim, all it takes is a spark, and any kind will do, to blow it up. You're getting close to a critical mass of people who are severely unhappy with how things are going, the only thing missing is a focal point for this anger. As soon as a justification is found to vent that anger, you have a riot.
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Seriously? Critical Mass? Seriously?
I kinda doubt it...this is pretty isolated. Seems mostly to just be a problem in the few highly p
Yes and No (Score:2)
I would agree that our so-called "News" blows some things out of proportion. At the same time I lived most of my life near Detroit and more recently in CA (SF Area). I have friends and family in most Southern states. There are absolutely pockets where the economy is bad enough that I'd agree with GP about the powder keg waiting for a spark. Even in the SF Bay area, I wonder how much it would take to see riots. Here there are the people with money, and those those without.
Measurements on just about ever
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Well it's their own fault for voting for a guy who draged us through the gutter for the last eight years.
Enjoying your Obamaphones?
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Yeah, the alternatives would have made all the difference.
Whether a broken vase is red or blue matters little concerning its usefulness.
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It's harder to riot when you have a job.
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It's harder to riot when you have a job.
It's easier to have a job (at least, in a manufacturing sector) when you don't approve the Trans Pacific Partnership, or ask for the ability to fast track it. IT's also easier to have a job when your government imposes tariffs on nations like China, based on environmental and labor standards that are enforced locally, such that it makes no sense to offshore the manufacturing sector in the first place.
That said, I think that most inner city teens wouldn't have jobs, even if that discrepancy were corrected,
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Sigh:
Conservative critics have claimed the FCC's Lifeline program is a wasteful government handout and referred to it as the "Obamaphone" program.
"Here’s the truth. The Lifeline program long predates the current administration," Clyburn said in the speech at the New America Foundation. "It was actually created during the Reagan administration, so let's give credit where credit is due. The Lifeline program is a legacy President Reagan could be proud of."
Congress first enacted the Lifeline program in 1985, and the FCC expanded the program to cover cellphone service in 2005 during the George W. Bush administration.
The program pays for phone service, not the phones themselves. But many companies that receive funding through the program offer free and low-cost phones to their subscribers.
- http://thehill.com/policy/technology/322041-fcc-chief-reagan-could-be-proud-of-obamaphone-program
So correctly say:
Enjoying your Reaganphone/Bushphone?
Psychohistory (Score:1)
Ask Harry Seldon!
Cameras do not last long in high crime areas. (Score:2)
They tend to be rather quickly destroyed by criminals so that there's no admissible record of their criminal activities.
Flash Mobs? (Score:2)
Officer at computer console: "Sir, there seems to be a lot of Twitter traffic about a gathering at 6:30pm by the river!"
Supervisor: "Damned pinko commie terrorists! Deploy the usual - tear gas, sound cannon, fire hoses, horses, flamethrowers, yadee yadee.. Tell the boys to avoid breaking any backs if possible, the boys in Baltimore are having a hard time of it right now and we don't need that noise."
Officer at computer console: "Roger that!"
Meanwhile, down by the river... [youtube.com]
so sorry...but.. (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm terribly sorry that there's poverty. But:
I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. I mean, pretty seriously on the wrong side of the tracks.
I thought speaking English was a good idea, so I learned how to speak, and how to write.
I thought education was important, so I learned to read and even where teachers were inadequate, I taught myself.
I thought that nobody owed me a life but I had to make it for myself.
It's really that simple.
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I'm terribly sorry that there's poverty.
No, you're cowardly sorry.
Why should we believe you've got it as bad as people who are rioting?
Why should we believe anything you wrote?
Mod parent up. (Score:2)
Why should we believe you've got it as bad as people who are rioting?
Mod parent up.
People stupid enough to riot definitely have it worse off than people smart enough to not riot. Because they're not only in poverty, they are also stupid.
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I think you are mistaking "stupid" for "desperate" or "hopeless" or "disillusioned".
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I think you are mistaking "stupid" for "desperate" or "hopeless" or "disillusioned".
You can be those things without rioting. They are not synonymous with "being an asshole", which is what rioting is all about. Wanton destruction of property achieves no reasonable political or social agenda, other than harming people already operating hand to mouth in cash flow businesses, and forcing them into poverty with you.
If you weren't "just being an asshole", you'd be rioting in areas where there would be a net political effect from the reaction in the desired direction. Directionless riots are c
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While there is a long history of "productive" riots in the u.s. going all the way back to the 1700s, I agree with your point that these riots are ill targeted. There is no easy focal point for the rage because the entire way society is setup is against this group.
I think the drug war has a lot to do with it. One arrest and few businesses will hire you for a good job so you can't get money legally to buy products so you are mad at everyone for not hiring you and for carrying things you can't afford to buy
Re:so sorry...but.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well I grew up rich, and I think people have a social responsibility to each other.
Is my story any more relevant than yours? Did growing up poor provide you with special insights?
I mean aside from how to cook Kraft dinner.
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Say hello to survival bias.
criminals (Score:2)
In Brazil is very Predictable ! (Score:1)
In Brazil, the governor of Parana State, government take the money from the people and give to Judiciary, to help the judges have a lot of privileges and stewardships. A Judge in the beginning of career , get a salary of 20 teachers. Judges receive housing assistance, even they have houses. The value is 2 times a salary of an teacher. All this stewardships, take a price, and the State go Bankrupt. To save state finances, governor have a great idea of to get pension fund of the state p
What's the point of predicting if we do nothing? (Score:4, Insightful)
What's the point of predicting riots if all we're going to do is stand around and give people "space to destroy" when they do riot?
These aren't thunderstorms...
if the riot is organized on social media... (Score:4, Interesting)
Flash mobs are organized on social media... if you do a riot the same way then... sure, if you monitor the whole fucking internet like skynet or something then you might be able to predict a riot.
However, here is a better idea... when a riot starts... How about you actually send the actual police to the actual disturbance and stop it before it gets completely out of control.
It is really not that hard. You get the police out there with a megaphone and you say "you have a right to peacefully protest so long as you do not obstruct traffic or businesses. Be peaceful and respectful of the community and you are welcome here. If however there is vandalism, intimidation, or other illegal activity, the police will break the up the crowd by any means. You have been warned."
Then have the police there with tear gas and gas masks and a meat wagon. If the protest is peaceful like an MLK protest, then leave them alone because they're not hurting anyone. If however they pull a Rodney King, Katrina, Frugison, Baltimore type riot... then you say over the megaphone "We are not dispursing the crowd as members of the crowd have begun vandalizing property etc. Leave the area if you do not live here and if you do live here then go home. You have five minutes to dispurse"
Anyone that doesn't want to choke on tear gas is going to leave right then and there. Those that remain get to eat tear gas. And while they're on all fours vomiting up their breakfast, the police can come in with gas masks, zip tie everyone that decided to stay, and cart them all away in the meat wagons.
No one gets hurt. Property damage is kept to a minimum. Everyone is warned of what is going to happen before it happens. No one is subjected to the tear gas without being given an option to not be hit with tear gas. And the riot is stopped cold.
The looting and lawlessness that is typical of riots happens because there is a break down in order. You do not solve that problem by backing off and letting the whole area turn into Mad Max. You stop it by going in there and laying down the law.
I am NOT advocating brutality or infringing anyone's rights. You do not have a right to riot any more then one person all by himself doesn't have the right to walk around throwing bricks through windows. You don't inherent rights in a mob that you don't have by yourself. If you don't have the right to tip cars over whenever you feel like it then you don't have the right to do it in a mob simply because a lot of people are doing it with you.
The gas is largely harmless. We subject our own soldiers to tear gas in basic training. If it actually caused any lasting harm to anyone then we wouldn't do that. The gas will also break up all but the most die hard members of the riot. Ideally you want as many people to leave the area on their own without requiring the police to deal with each individual person.
That leaves the core of the riot. And those people tend to have long criminal records, be mostly interested in exploiting the chaos to steal, and are generally people that society rarely suffers from having in jail.
I was in Los Angeles during the King riots. And the same stupid thing happened in LA that happened in Baltimore. You do NOT give the riot space or assume that it will just burn itself out if you leave it alone. It is as likely to turn into the Lord of the Flies in there as anything else. They're more likely to eat each other than they are to calm down on their own.
What is so sad is that modern police in the 21st century are failing to do something that the average city guard throughout history had no trouble handling.
It isn't rocket science. Let the police do their jobs and the riot will be over before it starts.
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Ok. You've by and large described what actually happens, and it's just wrong. Let's take a look at why it's wrong.
First, collective punishment is wrong. Treating a large crowd as being fully responsible down to the individual level for what a smaller, possibly not even connected, group of people did blocks away is stupid and wrong. There's a reason collective punishment is forbidden in all sets of rules on human rights. If a massive crowd were really acting as one as they do in the pretend fantasyland where
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Okay, lets go through your list.
1. As to collective punishment, you are conflating keeping order with punishment. This is your first error. Punishment would require a court of law, a judge, a trial, a sentence... none of these things is happening so there is no punishment happening here. When I tell someone to put the gun down or I'll shoot... I am not punishing them. I am protecting the peace, order, and safety of the community. I am not judging the person to be guilty of anything. I am judging rather that
That's not a riot. (Score:2)
Flash mobs are organized on social media... if you do a riot the same way then...
Sorry, that's not a "riot". If you organize it in a premeditated fashion, it's called "insurrection".
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No, an insurrection requires an intention to subvert the government and take over as the new rulling authority.
Are you suggesting that the rioters in Baltimore thought they were going to replace the government of Baltimore and the existing political and legal system?
If not, then there is no insurrection. You need to have the intention to take over for it to be an insurrection.
This was just a riot. A riot has no specific intentions. Just chaos.
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No, an insurrection requires an intention to subvert the government and take over as the new rulling authority.
Incorrect; you are confusing an insurrection with a revolution:
insurrection: noun: a violent uprising against an authority or government.
rebellion: noun: an act of violent or open resistance to an established government or ruler.
revolution: noun: a forcible overthrow of a government or social order in favor of a new system.
An insurrection can lead to a revolution, as can a rebellion, but it's not a sufficient condition. Planned rioting with no political or social goals is insurrection. Unplanned rioting i
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... *sigh*... okay, then how is this different from a riot?
I think you're just latching on to insurrection because it has fewer negative connotations which is basically linguistic pathos. I find this type of meaningless rhetoric to be counter productive.
A thing is what a thing is indifferent to whatever you call it. I can call something great a pile of shit or I can call a pile of shit something great... it is still going to be itself.
I find no positive or redeeming qualities in this "incident" nor do I fin
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I think you're just latching on to insurrection because it has fewer negative connotations which is basically linguistic pathos. I find this type of meaningless rhetoric to be counter productive.
You are incorrect. The difference between a riot and an insurrection is that, for an insurrection, I'm perfectly happy bringing in the National Guard and shooting the assholes.
A rebellion can be either violent resistance or open resistance. For violent resistance: bring in the national guard. For merely open resistance: put them on national television, and hear what they have to say. Occupy Wall Street was an open resistance rebellion; Rosa Parks was open resistance rebellion; Mahatma Gandhi was open re
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You haven't differentiated a riot from an insurrection. You're suggesting that a riot is the same as a non-violent sit in now which is not credible.
Historically, riots have been dealt with using military forces. That goes back to ancient times. The legions were used on occasion if things got really out of hand.
And in any case, if you use the police as I said in the first place, you don't need the national guard.
Things only got so out of hand that the national guard had to step in because the fucking stupid
Re:if the riot is organized on social media... (Score:4, Insightful)
Doesn't matter.
That's a struggle for anyone that wants to organize a protest.
Look at the protests put on my MLK jr. He was a big fan of sit ins for example. He'd have all his people sit down somewhere and then King would lead them in a prayer or a sermon or something. And anyone standing up and acting crazy was understood to not be part of his protest.
What is more, if anything crazy started to happen, he would tell his people to go home immediately.
His family has actually been very outspoken in these latest racial issues. Ferguson and Baltimore got responses from the King family and they said in both situation that the protesters should have gone home or organized very differently because the whole thing is indistinguishable from a riot which is counter productive.
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The NSA thought the same thing and has found it to be more complicated than that.
Wouldn't prevention be better? (Score:1)
Instead of trying to predict riots, wouldn't it be better to prevent them in the first place? Putting effort into righting the injustices that cause the riot would be the best thing for everybody.
Pope John XXIII said "If you want peace, work for justice." Seems to be some wisdom there.
Baltimore was ripe for this (Score:2)
Baltimore represents the best of urban decay. Sure there's new developments, the Harbor etc. but most of Baltimore resembles Detroit. If you take the plight of people living in that squalor and add a few professional malcontents and any reason, you can have a riot. Unfortunately Baltimore's leadership also failed, miserably. The Mayor should resign because from all news accounts and her public statements she didn't sufficiently protect the neighborhoods and businesses becoming trashed in the name of "ra
An easier method to predict them (Score:2)
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Larry Niven, "Flash Crowd", 1973: prior art (Score:2)
I can't say whether the police killed this particular man, but taking more than 24 hours for an after-action report that involved a prisoner's death would have been grounds for court-martial where I was trained.
Predicting future riots (Score:1)
'Diverse society will fail' --Putnam; (Score:1)
'Diverse society will fail' --Putnam;
Let black Police deal with black Culprits;
http://www.boston.com/news/glo... [boston.com]
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What's funny about your comment is that you and the asshole that modded your post up are so ignorant on the topic that you're blissfully unaware of your contribution to the problem you're criticizing.
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Yes, they very noisily don't care.
Re:Simple (Score:4, Interesting)
Watching from the outside, it sure seems so. I wonder why, though? It couldn't possibly be because the country refused to give up racism when offered the carrot of a dream, so now it gets the stick of fire and brimstone, now could it?
Humanity seems utterly unable to learn tgat injustices are weaknesses that lead to destruction yet the universe seems just as unable to stop hammering the lesson home. Unmovable object of human stubborn evil meets the unstoppable force of obvious consequences. We haven't met any aliens because they're addicted to, mesmerized by and terrified of the epic farce that's human history. Assuming they're even alive anymore - not helping when able inserts them right back into the same pattern, after all, most likely by opening old scars.
We should really make ethics a branch of national defence, since most problems and threats originate from someone racking up bad karma in the name of short-term benefit.
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And if I did, I'd be taking out the predations of some punch-happy psycho on innocent people because I was too scared to confront the real culprit. That might make me a fine citizen for such bastions of greatness as North Korea or East Germany, but in the West, it just makes me a collaborator - a traitor to myself, my country, and humanity.
It's one thing to be a coward, it's another to internalize a lie and st