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.

Comments

if the riot is organized on social media...

[Karmashock]

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.

Re:Simple

[ultranova]

That about sums it up

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.