Strike and tangle: Crowd control in the digital media environment

Abstract

To better understand crowds and crowd control practices in the digital media environment, this article briefly probes two institutions that practice ‘crowd control’ online: a cybersecurity company called CrowdStrike and a social media analytics service called CrowdTangle. These two firms continue the discourses of crowd theory in the traditions of criminologist Scipio Sighele and crowd psychologist Gustave Le Bon, adjusted for the new affordances of digital technology. The digital media environment affords infrastructure for forensically individualizing and influencing mass behaviour in the styles of Foucauldian and Deleuzian discipline, control and ‘moulding’. The probe concludes by emphasizing the political stakes of increasingly sophisticated crowd control infrastructures made possible through digital media environments.