Read the passage below and check your comprehension by answering the following questions. Then “submit” your work.
On a particular day each year, more than four thousand straphangers in New York City board mass-transit trains in their boxers, briefs, or bloomers for a coordinated “no pants subway ride” (Improv Everywhere, 2014). A seemingly spontaneous dance performance also erupted a few years ago among passengers at a train station in Shanghai—it was to celebrate the Chinese New Year and renew interest in Chinese folk traditions.
What do these stories have in common? They are both examples of smart mobs: large groups of individuals who act in concert, even though they do not know each other, and who connect and cooperate with one another, at least initially, via electronically mediated means (Rheingold, 2002). But smart mobs have two important additional characteristics that a generic social network lacks: a shared goal and a finite time frame (Harmon & Metaxas, 2010; also see www.smartmobs.com). Like all electronic social networks, smart mobs are grounded in a shared desire for communication and rely on affordable devices that offer instantaneous communication. Simply communicating is not enough to make a smart mob—there must be a tangible goal that is organized via mediated communication and achieved quickly and effectively.
There is a difference, of course, between a social movement and an absurd, pants-free subway ride. The latter is what has come to be called a flash mob—a form of smart mob in which people come together for a brief public act that may seem pointless or ridiculous. Even if the goal, often entertainment or artistic expression, seems not so smart, flash mobs are still smart mobs: through technology, the participants are organized and quickly mobilized to carry out their collective act. Political protests, on the other hand, are largely made up of activists who may already be connected and organized but use technology—including smart mob demonstrations—as tools for making their political or social goals more visible (Conover et al., 2013).
Social media–fueled revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and other Middle Eastern nations— sometimes referred to as “Twitter Revolutions” by media pundits—have bolstered the notion that electronic communications are somehow responsible for modern social movements. This is, most likely, an oversimplification: social movements are usually the culmination of frustrations that have been building for many years, which come to a pinnacle when activists begin to organize. Smart mobs utilize traffic as a means to allow their message to register with the greatest number of people (Rheingold, 2002). If a no-pants subway ride is held at 3 a.m., or if a Twitter revolution has a handle that is hard to remember, far fewer people would participate. The point of smart mobs is to generate community dialogue regarding artistic expressions or, more importantly, to express political or economic displeasure (Sutzl, 2016). Without the utilization of traffic paths, where people can see and then easily spread the message, smart mobs would not be nearly as effective.