Danger Boy's Belated Blog

Zombies are attacking......let’s turn off Media to prevent panic?

Hi everyone Danger Boy here and no Zombies are not attacking the mainland of America.......at least not quite yet!!

Let’s suppose that there was some sort of catastrophic disaster that could cause wide spread panic? Where would you hear about it? Well based on studies that have been done on current media outlets odds are you could hear about it on the news, Facebook, newspapers and Myspace to name a few.

Today’s world with the advent of the internet it has become surprisingly easy to receive news and communications quickly. Many of the governments of the world are starting to view this access as a means of delivering the social virus of public "panic". This is why more governments are considering censoring content or creating provisions for information blackouts (a so called ON/OFF switch for social media sites or the internet as a whole)

Terms You Should Know:

Mass hysteria —other names include collective hysteria, group hysteria, Mass Psychogenic Illness, or collective obsessional behavior—is the sociopsychological phenomenon of the manifestation of the same or similar hysterical symptoms by more than one person. A common manifestation of mass hysteria occurs when a group of people believe they are suffering from a similar disease or ailment

The Gorbalis Vampire - The 1954 incident that occurred in Gorbalis district of Scotland, sparked by an urban myth that a vampire had killed two local children, was blamed on American horror comics such as Tales from the Crypt, despite none of the comics referring to the creature in question, and the ensuing moral panic led to an increase in comic censorship.

The War of the Worlds(Radio Broadcast)- was an episode of the American radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a Halloween episode of the series on October 30, 1938 and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. Directed and narrated by actor and future filmmaker Orson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds.

The first two thirds of the 60-minute broadcast were presented as a series of simulated "news bulletins", which suggested to many listeners that an actual alien invasion by Martians was currently in progress. Compounding the issue was the fact that the Mercury Theatre on the Air was a 'sustaining show' (it ran without commercial breaks), thus adding to the program's quality of realism. Although there were sensationalist accounts in the press about a supposed panic in response to the broadcast, the precise extent of listener response has been debated.

In the days following the adaptation, however, there was widespread outrage and panic by certain listeners who believed the events described in the program were real.[1] The program's news-bulletin format was decried as cruelly deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast, but the episode secured Orson Welles' fame. Welles' adaptation was one of the Radio Project's first studies.

Reflecting on the history of social media before the Internet and Facebook there have been many examples of society reacting to news in a negative manner resulting in mass hysteria. One prominent example that sticks out in my mind is the 1938 radio broadcast of George Orwell's War of the Worlds. Where many of the listeners that tuned in missed the introduction and did not realize that the news updates and were part of the show and took them to heart.

The result was thousands of people being sent into a panic, fleeing from cities and even some farmers trying to shoot a water tower thinking it was an invading alien ship.

There is also another example of hysteria generated from the comic book "Tales from the Crypt" called the "The Gorbalis Vampire incident" where mobs of children were reported after reading the comic to go out vampire hunting in the nearby cemetery. This event disturbed the community so much that it lead to the censorship of comic books.

With some the of examples that I have mentioned above it comes as no surprise that governments are starting to follow the example of China and its government controlled censorship.

The U.K. has long criticized countries like China, Iran and Libya for censoring the web and clamping down on dissent, which appears incredibly hypocritical to the rest of the world if he then proceeds to do the same thing on his own turf. Opinion pieces in international newspapers have already started popping up with headlines like "what goes around, comes around."

The Telegraph (A prominent British newspaper) quotes one commentator in China’s official Communist Party mouthpiece — People’s Daily — going even further. The commentator says "The West have been talking about supporting internet freedom, and oppose other countries’ government to control this kind of websites, now we can say they are tasting the bitter fruit [of their complacency] and they can’t complain about it."

Chief among the claims by those who want to see more controls on freedom of speech on the web is that social networks amplify panic, spread misinformation and cause already-stretched police communications channels to be overloaded by people worried about some rumor they’ve read online.

If the UK decides to implement this sort of solution they are just laying the foundation and argument for other democratic states to follow suite with their own government based censorship and firewalls.

What does this mean to you?

Well with examples of mass hysteria and wide spread panic do you think the government should have the ability to control what news/information is released to the public? The USA will be sure to follow with talks already in place to start blocking certain websites like WikiLeaks at a Internet Service Provider level.

I would love to hear what your opinions are and questions you may have!

Is this a good or bad thing for the citizens of the internet?

What would you do if all social media was turned off for a week?

This is Danger Boy signing out for now......