
The Anatomy of a Media Lynching Organizational structures over the cyber mob
This article analyses organizational aspects of media/cyber lynching, especially when performed in the yellow (sensationalist) press and passionate parts of the Internet community. Media and cyber lynching can be defined as extremely aggressive, unjustified, untrue verbal attacks, insults and discrediting in the media. One good book says: “You shall not follow a crowd to do evil. You shall not testify in court to side with a multitude to pervert justice”. However, we often do, maybe because we scroll brainrot media more than we read books. I try to add a drop in the ocean of medicines that our sick societies desperately need, so we might cure them without the accompanying evils of revolution.
The organization behind the media/cyber lynching is based on coalitions of interest, which are common in organized human societies. Houlla Kevin wrote about them particulary well, but today, those interest coalitions have technology at their disposal which Goebbels would envy. The structure of this machinery for organized media/cyber lynching can be presented through the roles played by the main actors in one of the major tragedies of modern society: Bigshot, Media magnate, Media specialist, Passionate commentator, Advisory staff. Such a structure is necessary and sufficient for media/cyber lynching mob perpetuated by the Gustav Le Bon’s crowd psychology. Structurally, it is mostly like the common military line/line-staff organization.
The Bigshot is the first typical role at the top of this organization. The Bigshot gathers an entire coalition for media lynching around some interest, often hidden, perhaps expressed in money. To achieve the goal, one should discredit the opponent to force him to make a decision or surrender; discredit someone who does good so that the Bigshot can do bad; discredit someone who does bad so that the Bigshot can do it worse and wickeder; destroy the institution/organization so someone can buy it cheaper... and so on, most of us can probably have seen and felt actions in the Machiavellian service of particular interests. That goal, formally or informally, becomes an executive order for the structure below. The more powerful the Bigshot is, the less chance he/she will be observed.
The media magnate is a modern-day “Citizen Kane” who has control over the wheels of the propaganda machine and is ready to spin in the direction the Bigshot suggested for power, money or some other kind of compensation. It can be a yellow press editor, the owner of a followed blog, “UberX(Twitter)SturmFuhrer”, the editor/host of a tabloid TV show. A media magnate is also some kind of Bigshot – weaker but strong enough to sometimes independently determine the goal of a modest media lynching here and there. They excel in spreading half-truths or lies to shape public opinions and attitudes in a given direction. A lie looks beyond reasonable doubt like the truth to most if it is marketed arrogantly enough, phrased eloquently enough, and repeated a sufficient number of times through the various “Mouths of Sauron”. Media moguls are often above-average intelligent and usually completely devoid of compassion for the media lynch victims. Narcissistic traits dominate them: they want to be admired, they want to be the centre of attention, they want power, they want to thunder powerfully in an editorial meeting: “People will believe what I tell them to believe!!!”. In the electronic media, they represent a kind of “Internet Parasites” who feed on human stupidity/gullibility and abuse the beautiful possibilities of modern technology to make money, achieve a political agenda, cure their psychological frustration, or all of these somewhat combined. Whether self-educated, or trained by the special services, they achieve specific goals leaving behind more devastated and unhappy society.
A media specialist creates texts, posts, pictures, memes on a given topic. Dozens of executors may or may not exist per one media magnate. They are eloquent writers or talented designers, capable of formulating a text or designing picture, multimedia on a given topic. The goal is to touch the feelings, often increasing cortisol excretion within a reader. They are habitually ready to prostitute intimacy, truth, intellect, compassion or their personality for money/attention/likes on a social network. Desire for money or dark triad personality traits drive them towards these ends, which may make them pay the attention they get incorrectly and too dearly with the evil they do.
A passionate commentator is not a lacking member of a modern global society. History can teach us that there have always been enough and almost always too many. There are many, tens and hundreds of them for one media perpetrator. They shout “Boooooo” or “Yaaaaay”, as required or felt. They repost, transmit gossip, comment and like articles. They amplify the signal in the resonance boxes of single-mindedness, repeating the recycled thoughts and attitudes of others; they are increasing the hate. Craving the attention of others, they compensate with gutturality and ruthlessness for what they lack in intelligence.
Advisors and support staff give strategic advice, and sometimes provide key technical support. By providing specialist services, help or support, they lubricate the wheels of the machinery. They console themselves, if the harshness of the messages bother them, that they are just doing their job in the media. The scheme of the line-staff structure can represent all this. Line and line-staff types of structures are the structures of choice when the organization’s task is simple, when it is important to be precise, when the task is routine, or in some cases, criminal. This structure is also found among firefighters, the army, the police, many administrative or sales services, but also sects, terrorist cells and the mafia (which has been unequivocally shown in trials for organized crime). The evil nature of the media lynching machinery requires such a structure. Not all linear structured organizations are criminal, but all criminal organizations are line structures. Such structures vary in detail from case to case but always follow the pattern drawn above. They are not always formal – often, most participants do not even know that relationships in a structure similar to this connect them.
A word and a quill can’t kill very often. Fortunately, otherwise the advent of the Internet would lead to the direct extinction of the human species. Abused quills hurt the individual and society differently and sometimes worse than the sword, and amplified through this structure, it leaves deep consequences of division, hatred and tendentious distortion of attitudes that I will write about another time.