Slashdot Mirror
Can Riots Be Predicted By Social Media?
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.
Black "hooligans" (different from black people) will riot if their home team wins the championship, or if a black person is shot by a white cop, regardless of context or the facts. The shooting of Michael Brown is a great example. His "parents" only gave a shit about him after he was shot and all the SJWs started to riot on social media. This creates a frenzy for the thieves and crazy folk to take advantage of the "outnumbering public" hence the clashes with police. The recent Baltimore shooting is a little bit different. That cop was cold blooded, a sociopath or some flavor. Regardless, the libtard SJWs (this term deserve its fair time slice occasionally mods, please) get all riled up and clash with police. The fundamental problem I see is that all those "oppressed" "protected classes" of people in America are just getting their toes wet compared to other tragedies in other more wild and free parts of the globe. But alas, instead of making for themselves they get the government to declare it legal to take money from society's producers. It every case from Communist Russia to the $22+ billion in debt Liberal wasteland of Detroit. In all cases, liberalism fails. That is all
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