Judith A. Nicholson.“Mobs in the Age of Mobile Connectivity” Fibreculture Journal 6 Mobility. (2005) Web.

This week’s reading discusses the phenomenon of flash mobs, how they originated, and how they were facilitated by mass mobile communication. The first flash mob (dubbed the ‘love rug’) occurred on the 17th of June 2003 in Manhattan when a group of 100 people converged in Macy’s furniture department asking about the same $10,000 rug. After 10 minutes, the group dispersed into the crowd. The event was organised by mass communication via text, email and blog posts.

The event was organised by Bill and the term ‘flash mob’ was then coined by Sean Savage (creator of blog cheesebikini?) who defined the new phenomenon as, “a leaderless group of like-minded people who organise using technologies such as cellphones, email and the Web”. The element of the “leaderless group” is vital to the flash mob as they are non-political and “perform a pointless act”. This issue is raised in the reading as Nicholson points out that there is somebody behind the distribution of information to organise the flash mob.

Nicholson focuses on how the shift of mobile phone use facilitated the formation of flash mobs. The mobile phone was initially used for personal or one-to-one communication (1980s and early 1990s) but then shifted to a more collective or one-to-many communication via text messaging (late 1990s and early 2000s). These messages were sent with the message of passing them on to other people and creating momentum so that the flash mob could be formed.

The large convergence of people in a public space did provide security concerns, even though the events weren’t political in nature in comparison to “smart mobs” who use mobile technology to organise protests.

In terms of our event for this semester, a flash mob is an option however it isn’t the only one either. While a flash mob isn’t political, the event we organise can be if we wish. There are so many options that it can be a bit overwhelming. The main question I have for organising our event in comparison to flash mobs is how anonymous should the organisers be in the creation of the social media event?