Comments on: The cartoon protests: Smart mobs at work? http://www.ojr.org/060208niles/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=060208niles Focusing on the future of digital journalism Sun, 07 Apr 2013 15:02:13 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Robert Niles http://www.ojr.org/060208niles/#comment-480 Robert Niles Thu, 09 Feb 2006 13:28:58 +0000 http://www.ojr.org/?p=1002#comment-480 True. But I was trying to use a familiar term for the concept of mobile device-prompted gatherings. (Even though it is a lousy term, agreed….)

]]> By: Jon Garfunkel http://www.ojr.org/060208niles/#comment-479 Jon Garfunkel Wed, 08 Feb 2006 22:00:39 +0000 http://www.ojr.org/?p=1002#comment-479 The conjunction of the words “smart mobs” is a book title and no more; the theory that technology alone makes mobs smarter is pure folly. This WaPo article tomorrow by Kevin Sullivan (and 8 contributors!) is more in line of what I was getting at:

Danish Prime Minister Rasmussen:
“We are confronted by misinformation passed on by mobile messages and Web logs at such high speed that it is picked up and acted upon before we have a chance to correct it.”

Also:
Abdul-Rehman Malik, a contributing editor of Q-News, a popular Muslim magazine in Britain, said he had received hundreds of e-mails and dozens of text messages about the cartoons. He said some messages were computer-generated so that thousands of phones could be reached nearly instantly, such as one telling him to reply “no” to a British TV survey about whether to broadcast the cartoons.

Otherwise known as spam, propaganda, etc.

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