Anger management

I wanted to find out if psychologists have been doing research into on-line comments, discussions, media.

I have noticed virtual unanimity among the Twitter stream for the UBB hashtag. Dissent breads contempt and I have apparently become a lightning rod for the malicious attacks wrought by many who are on the other side of the issue with no interest in engaging in a discussion of the broader issues. But that isn’t what I am writing about today.

It is to try to stimulate the social scientists and political scientists among my more academically inclined colleagues to engage in some research on the behaviour of anonymous groups. There is an interesting piece by Geoff Livingston called The Ethics of Flash Mobs.

“I prefer to live in a society in which laws, however corruptly enforced, not mobs, decide who is guilty and how to punish them,” said Howard Rheinghold, author of Smart Mobs. “There is the public sphere in which demonstrations and boycotts are legitimate actions, and online flash mobs tipped presidential elections in Korea and Spain. But drowning out voices of dissent has no place in a democracy.”

It is an interesting research project. Political operatives will want to understand how to manipulate flash mobs for electoral support, and need to understand the level of credibility to grant to such movements.

An article in the St. Petersburg Times, Online anonymity creates a mob mentality, speaks of the rage that seems to be overtaking e-mails, chat rooms and Web postings, causing University of South Florida psychologist Jennifer Bosson to ask, “Are people that angry all the time?”

2 thoughts on “Anger management”

  1. It has become that disagreeing with the UBB Decision itself has become not enough, you must agree with the OpenMedia views on the issue or you are some sort of corporate hack.

  2. It is not that people will call on you, and need anger management. But individuals can see threw you. Doing a little research they can find out a lot about you and where you were employeed and the corporations you defend. Therefore you mind is shallow in the perspective that you only see the one side.

    As a home business owner and avid internet user, UBB will harm me in many ways. As I have to rely on a home phone residential service, I subsribe to Teksavvy’s internet. 300GB is plenty thus far, but what started out at 14GB a month over the years has increased to 140GB +.

    Bell should not pass its business model to individual companies. Because bell does not want to compete in the market place, and is greedy for revenue to send George Cope to the Oscars it will tack it on the individuals. Just the price increases for SMS messages which is included in the GSM technology and yet they charge a fortune if you don’t have a pack.

    If Bell wants to implement UBB, do it on their customers. Period. What used to cost 40 Bucks a month for 60 GB now will cost 50+$. And if you don’t use that insurance pack you don’t get the money back? You call that Fair? At least if you have 300GB and pay $40.00 and you use 30GB you know what you paid for. A Flat rate service.

    if 1-2% is really causing issues, and bell states they have invested 10Billion $ (number changed from 5-8$ billion as of yesterday) than something is seriously wrong with their network if it can’t handle 1-2%— and at dslreports.com their are bell users exceeding 700GB with sympatico.

    At the end of the day, IF europe can offer 24mbps internet + phone + world wide calling for 50CDN, something is seriously wrong with the market forces here don’t you think?

    Competition. Last mile needs to be open so companies can compete freely, without others dictating what they have to do.

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