page_title: Civil disorder
section_title: Formation
hierarchical_section_title: Civil disorder / Crowd / Formation
caption_attribution_description: English: Tear gas, and plastic pellet gunshot used by Venezuela's National Police against a protest in Altamira, Caracas. The image shows distressed students who were peacefully in front of police line at the time of the action. The situation calmed when the majority of protesters managed to convince those throwing rocks to stop. This allowed the peaceful protesters to approach the police. Suddenly a rock thrown from behind the group near the police hit the riot shields and the pictured police action ensued. (Video showing events)
context_page_description: Civil disorder, also known as civil disturbance or civil unrest, is an activity arising from a mass act of civil disobedience in which the participants become hostile toward authority, and authorities incur difficulties in maintaining public safety and order, over the disorderly crowd. It is, in any form, prejudicial to public law and order.
context_section_description: Exploiting a crowd's mood, radicals can manipulate and weaponize a crowd, using skillful agitation to coax the crowd's capacity for violence and turn it into a vengeful mob, directing the crowd's aggression and resentment at the agitator's chosen target.
  Tactical agitators can use media, and social media, to connect with potential crowd-members, and incite them to break the law, or to attempt to provoke others into doing so, without having any direct personal contact.  Conversely, a skilled leader person can also calm, or divert, a crowd using strategic suggestions or commands, or appealing to them with reason in order to deescalate a situation.
  Emotional contagion greatly influences crowd behavior by providing the crowd a psychological sense of "unity."  This sense may provide the crowd with the momentum to absorb a mob mentality, and to take on mob behavior.  Crowd-members feed off of each other's excitement, which produces a high state of collective emotion. The ideas crowd leaders rapidly transmit throughout the group, and also to bystanders, rubberneckers, and mass media.
  When emotional contagion prevails, raw emotion is high while self-discipline is low. Personal prejudices and unsatisfied desires – usually restrained – are unabashedly released.   This incentivizes crowd membership, as the crowd provides cover for individuals to do things they want to do, but would not dare try to do alone.  This incentive can become greater for the crowd than its concern for law and authority, leading to unlawful and disruptive acts.  Once the crowd engages in such acts, it effectively becomes a mob – a highly emotional, unreasonable, potentially violent crowd.
caption: Tear gas used on students in Altamira, Caracas.
exif: {}