"As for the planning of a riot, it is very difficult to plan and stage a riot........ "
Unfortunately nothing could be easier nowadays ..... Twitter and Facebook were/are used.
Well, Twitter and Facebook are used to rally and gather, just like word of mouth and early printing presses were. As Layout noted, they are instigated over time, for a plethora of reasons. The Boston Tea Party is a prime example of that. So was the Boston Bread Riots and more Boston riots than you would believe. (Bostonians are a riotous people.
) Passions are inflamed over time. Frustrations build. The gathering of a bunch of people, even if they have violence in mind and the gathering is organized, isn't necessarily all that it takes to create a riot. Like our resident duck murderer notes, it only takes the "spark" to set off the vapors of discord. Except that "spark" is tougher to create than you think. It's certainly not one that can be created via Twitter.
The "sparK" is best known (to professional and amateur sociologists) as a "Schelling incident," after Thomas Schelling, the great master of strategic theory.
In
The Strategy of Conflict (1960) Schelling wrote,
It is usually the essence of mob formation that the potential members have to know not only where and when to meet but just when to act so that they act in concert. Overt leadership solves the problem; but leadership can often be identified and eliminated by the authority trying to prevent mob action. In this case the mob's problem is to act in unison without overt leadership, to find some common signal that makes everyone confident that, if he acts on it, he will not be acting alone. The role of "incidents" can thus be seen as a coordinating role; it is a substitute for overt leadership and communication. Without something like an incident, it may be difficult to get action at all, since immunity requires that all know when to act together.
It's not crucial, in the beginning or generative stage of a riot, that the participants act
literally simultaneously. What's crucial is that offenses occur rapidly enough to overwhelm the police. From the rioter's viewpoint, there is safety in numbers. There comes a point at which the police pass from inadequacy to impotence.
In the 1992 Rodney King Los Angeles riot for example, the police actually pulled back from the trouble when it became obvious to everyone, including themselves, that there was nothing constructive they could do.
Certain kinds of high-profile events have become traditional "starting signals'' for civil disorders, and the UK gives up celebrated examples of that. Incidents can become signals simply because they have been signals before. For example, what ignited the first English soccer (or football, if you like) riot has been lost in the mists of history, but they had become a troublesome problem sometime during the nineteenth century, as Bill Buford (1991) makes clear in quoting old newspaper accounts in his
Among the Thugs.
Today, there is a century's weight of tradition behind soccer violence. People near a football ground on game day know that a certain amount of mischief, possibly of a quite violent kind, is apt to occur. Those who dislike that sort of thing had best take themselves elsewhere. Certain people, though, thrive on the action, the relish getting drunk, fighting, smoking dope; enjoy the whiff of anarchy, harassing and beating respectable people and vandalizing their property. Such people, those rascal hooligans, make a point of being where the trouble is likely to start.
The sort of "soccer fans'' about whom Buford wrote were mostly interested in barbarian camaraderie, not soccer. Some of them do not even go inside the stadium, and some spectators do not watch the game but pass their time in petty thievery. Mr. Hooligan's game is being a part of the crowd that congregates near a soccer stadium, belonging to and sharing its power, especially its power to flout the law.
A Schelling incident is not a signal that tells a person what to do.
It is a signal that tells a person what other people will probably do. In the United Kingdom even an ordinary minor league soccer match might well be a Schelling incident. Buford gives several examples in his book. Here in the US, that sort of game would not be, however having one's team win a NBA championship or the Super Bowl increasingly seems to be. In Detroit in recent years, "Devils Night'' (the night before Halloween) has become a springboard for multiple, independent, almost simultaneous acts of arson. These are examples of how culture, habit, and tradition can overcome major organizational barriers to cooperative social endeavors and lower the cost of transacting business. Twitter, Facebook and Blackberries reduce that cost even further.
