Web Vigilantes

I don’t want to give readers the impression that coherent behaviour is only about commerce. Here is an example of how a digital photograph taken on mobile phone and then loaded onto the Internet focused the attention on an entire country. The spontaneous indignation of a few people was turned into a coherent nationwide phenomenon by the web.

In July 2005 a young woman was travelling with her lap dog on a South Korean subway train, when the dog was ‘taken short’ and defecated on the carriage floor. A fellow passenger gave the woman a tissue, and she promptly cleaned up her pet, but left the mess on the floor. Angry passengers demanded she wipe it up; the woman rudely refused and left the compartment. A few elderly complainants on the train then did the job themselves.

But the story didn’t end there. One passenger had taken photographs of the drama with a mobile phone, and incensed, posted the pictures on the internet. The story spread like wildfire and it wasn’t long before the ‘dog-poop’ girl was identified, and her details broadcast on the net. Consequently she and her family faced a barrage of abuse from ‘netizen vigilantes’, and according to some sources she was forced to terminate her education programme.

This is no isolated incident. One of my Chinese students, who will remain anonymous until I have permission to use his name, has told me that in his country organized vigilante groups are forming on the web with the sole aim of ‘naming and shaming’ alleged corrupt businessmen and officials.

He cited the ruination of Jiugeng Zhou, a former senior official from Government of Nanjing, the capital city in Jiangshu Province. In November 2008, Zhou stated that soaring property prices were beneficial to the economy. Some members of a large internet forum took great exception to this statement, and published his home address, mobile phone number and other private data online.

With attention now firmly focussed on Zhou, someone posted the information that he had brother, a property developer, who had won many lucrative government contracts in Zhou’s own precinct. Comments were made about Zhou living the good life in a large house. Questions were asked as to how he could afford this on his annual salary, and why the official media hadn’t investigated this fact. More postings and angry comments poured in. Soon everyone in the province saw Zhou as a hate figure. Eventually the mounting coherent attack on Zhou forced his supervisors to sack him.

If you have any examples of web vigilantes let us know.

Related posts:

1. The ‘Devil Woman’ denial of service attack
2. Web Ecologists wanted
3. The ‘Digital Bounty Hunter’