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Smart Mobs: What Flash Mobs and Political Protests Have in Common
On a particular day each year, more than four thousand straphangers in New York City, and in dozens of other cities around the world, board mass-transit trains in their boxers, briefs, or bloomers for a coordinated “No Pants Subway Ride” (Improv Everywhere, 2020). 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 are able to mobilize quickly and act in concert — even if they do not know each other — because they coordinate through digital communication technology (Rheingold, 2002). Smart mobs utilize social media networks and hashtags to allow their message to reach the greatest number of people. If a lot of people use a specific hashtag, they can find each other more easily, even when communicating across different platforms and social networks. This is particularly important when the smart mob is decentralized, with members participating from all over the world. But simply communicating is not enough to make a smart mob — there must also be a shared goal that is organized and achieved quickly in a given timeframe (Harmon & Metaxas, 2010).
Of course, there is a difference between a social movement and an absurd, pants-free subway ride. The latter is called a flash mob — a form of smart mob in which people come together for a brief public act that may seem to some pointless or ridiculous. Flash mobs use technology to organize participants and quickly mobilize 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). 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 mediated communication, where people can see and then easily spread the message, smart mobs would not be nearly as effective.