Then, when I got out of my THON committee, I overheard many people speaking about a riot going on downtown. Some friends and I decided we should check it out. We walked over to Old Main and it looked more like this...
When we got there, I was pretty surprised walking by Paternoville. While I expected the students there to be protests or rioting in some way, they all simply stood watching the crowds roll by in complete silence. I think it was sort of their way of saying--this isn't the correct response to such a situation.
When I finally arrived to the area that the protest/riot/rally/whatever-you-want-to-call-it was commencing, there were between one to two thousand students all standing in the street, screaming, cheering, and chanting. Soon after, a few members of the band (not sure if it was Blue Band or some other band...I couldn't see them in the middle of the crowd) started playing the Penn State fight songs. It was really powerful to all be there together in the middle of the street outside of the stadium, arms around eachother, singing loud and proud. For me, that's what last night was about. It was about being proud Penn Staters and coming together to share that pride. While for many, it was about protesting Spanier or supporting JoePa, I didn't really engage in that.
What was so incredible was the amount of students all in the same place all at the same time. There were oodles of Facebook events, text messages, picture messages, tweets and blog posts about it that made the word spread faster than one could imagine. The use of technology in these events have been absolutely essential. Facebook events have been created to "Blue Out" the stadium on Saturday in order to support the fight against child abuse. The event can be found here. There is also a candlelight vigil planned for Friday evening as a memorial for the victims of this tragedy. This article written by the Daily Collegian reports on many different events that have been created.
This is globalization at its peak. Students informing each other of their efforts so that they can all go into the streets together. Like I mentioned in a previous blog, that's the point of this new technology and these new social media resources in instances like this. It is to inform and educate, to coordinate and plan. And after last night, I can honestly say, it is working.
I wrote one of my personal statements for graduate applications about this very event. The idea of how social networks are causing changes in how groups gather and protest is one that is both not well understood and important to learn more about.
ReplyDeleteI believe that we are reaching a point where collective action has become almost effortless to organize, as long as there is an issue that elicits a strong emotional reaction from a population. It is interesting to see the bandwagon effects that have been observed on social networks translating into real-world gatherings.
Many of the riots that have happened here at Penn State in the past years have not been organized by word of mouth as they were in my Dad's time here, but through social networks. I had friends who live far of campus who heard about the riot going on Wednesday night on twitter, and came down to campus to participate. A decade ago, without texts or the ability to share things on the web from a phone, these individuals would have missed out and only found out the next day in the Collegian.
I believe the same phenomena that is causing these gatherings at Penn State is responsible for more political protests that are going on elsewhere in the world, such as the Arab Spring protests and the Occupy movement. Social networks are providing a way for those who were previously unable to organize to collectively act to address issues they may have felt powerless to address as individuals.
Like other communication technologies before, this intersection of social networks and mobile technology is allowing people to coordinate more broadly and more efficiently. It is vital that we understand how these processes work, so we can both interrupt them when they are dangerous and encourage them when they are beneficial.