Digital Research

I've previously talked about the role of the Internet as a data generator as well as a medium for collaboration. I thought that I'd drive the point home some more by talking about a very specific example of these roles in action.

The Internet: Another piece of lab equipment!

Today, I'm going to talk about a weekend project of mine. It was an open-ended group assignment meant to prime us for the research process of grad school. The fact that we could even get anywhere with the project is a testament to the sheer power of the Internet as a resource.

Internet Vigilantism

Perhaps you heard about the bombings that happened at the Boston marathon last week. The FBI got involved. And so did the Internet.

Pictured: Some poor saps with backpacks. Unheard of in a college-dense city like Boston.

Reddit, 4chan, and some other Internet communities decided to comb through public footage of the Boston marathon. Their aim was to find the marathon bombers themselves, and to piece together the narrative behind the event. After all, they had all the same resources as the FBI, minus the criminal database, the forensic evidence, witness testimony, and all of those other "extra" things.

These internet detectives assembled an extensive gallery of "suspicious" people. Tabloids found these pictures, printed them, and circulated them. When the FBI released blurry photos of the two suspects, the Internet communities doubled down on their efforts. They reduced their list of suspicious people to a middle-eastern-looking guy named Sunil Tripathi, who had gone missing prior to the bombing. People ate up the possibility that the person responsible for the bombings had been identified.

And then it turned out that the Internet got it completely wrong. It wasn't Sunil Tripathi. It was two Chechen brothers (which must have been a relief for middle-eastern people dealing with unwarranted backlash about this already). Of course, that didn't stop people from going on a completely misinformed witch hunt for the first guy before the debunking. And it isn't stopping crackpots from trying to continue that witch hunt. Oops.

This is internet vigilantism - and in this case, it misfired. These events demonstrate the power of the online sphere in shaping public opinion. The Internet can also have a stake in the action themselves, with users often getting involved in pursuing criminals and other targets. This phenomenon has happened before, and it will probably happen again. What is the anatomy of online vigilante justice, and what can be learned from its failure here?

Cracked and Online Information

They say there's more truth in comedy than tragedy.

Somehow, in our age of mass information in news, comedian Jon Stewart has emerged as the most trusted news anchor in our time, despite not being an actual news anchor.  His M.O. is to make light of politics in a humorous fashion. He approaches nonfictional discourse like other news sources, but Stewart uses his observations to point out humorous inconsistencies. Though there have been numerous charges of slant on Stewart's part, Stewart denies having any political ambitions. I guess if your underlying motives are purely for humor's sake, chances are people will trust you more.

Wait, this is all meta, isn't it? The joke is that people trust a comedian for news! Ha! Ha!

Something about that psychology towards comedy gives power towards comedic writing. Humor is non-threatening, but that does not mean that humor can't be challenging. It becomes an interesting platform where information can be disseminated, but people know better than to get defensive because they know that it's meant as humor.

How does this come through online? And what does it force us to consider? Let's look at the website Cracked for a guess at the answer.