A mob is a parasocial event

Provenance · 7 source record(s)

• retrievableTHE PAPER'S OWN FRAMING IS THIS ENTRY. 'After an accusation of wrongdoing, an outrage mob appears. Initially, just a few condemn the accused. But before long, more and more people pile on, hastily meting out punishment with little regard for evidence or opposing perspectives.' Four studies, n=10,343Kteily, N., & Jordan, J. How reputation does (and does not) drive people to punish without looking. ↗
• unverifiedAND THE FINDING THAT CUTS AGAINST THE MORAL READING: there is NO reputational reward for not looking. Non-lookers were rated more loyal to the cause, but that was outweighed by a larger hit to perceived competence and fairness - evaluators rewarded punishers who LOOKED more generouslyKteily & Jordan, How reputation does (and does not) drive people to punish without looking.
• retrievableThe mechanism, named by the people in it: 'brigading, dogpiling, or calling out'. Amplification is the trigger - content moral-outrage spreads faster within like-minded networks, and 'drama' is consumed as entertainment in front of an audienceMarwick, A. E. (2021). Morally Motivated Networked Harassment as Normative Reinforcement. Social Media Society, 7(2). ↗
• unverifiedWhat it actually achieves: harassment frequently results in the ACCUSED SELF-CENSORING, so the pile-on functions as a regulating force that removes speech from the public sphere. Neither platforms nor legal regulation protects against it. Interviews with 28 targets and 9 Trust and Safety workersMarwick, A. E. (2021). Social Media Society, 7(2). ↗
• unverifiedNot a partisan tactic, which is the part usually left out: this is used across the ideological spectrum, and the amplification runs in both directions depending on which network node shares itMarwick, A. E. (2021), Social Media Society, 7(2). ↗
• retrievableWHY IT ESCALATES: analysis of 231 threads finds networked harassment runs in three phases - target introduction, network decision, network response - and that the crowd added narrative elements in at least 80% of threads, producing Continuous Narrative Escalation. The crowd is not reacting to the story. It is writing itStoking the Flames: Understanding Escalation in an Online Harassment Community. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (2024). ↗
• unverifiedAND THE PART THAT MADE ME STOP: takedown requests are misused by the community and repurposed as ELEMENTS TO FURTHER FUEL THE NARRATIVE. Reporting abuse is itself harvested as contentStoking the Flames: Understanding Escalation in an Online Harassment Community (ACM CSCW 2024), analysis of 100 takedown request threads. ↗