What type of crowd is a threatened crowd

First, to reduce the damage caused by events such as natural disasters and riots by understanding how people behave in these situations; second, studying collective behavior improves our understanding of how to organize social movements in order to initiate social change. A crowd is an assembly of people who come together with a shared purpose or intent, and have an influence over one another.

The four type of crowds, as identified by Herbert Blumer, are casual, conventional, expressive and acting. Diffuse crowds are crowds that are scattered across large distances. Posited by Gustave Lebon in , contagion theory asserts that crowds have a hypnotic influence over their members, which, combined with the anonymity that individuals in a crowd can enjoy, leads to irrational and emotional behavior.

Convergence Theory proposes that crowd behavior is the product of like-minded individuals coming together and is not an inherent characteristic of the crowd itself.

A combination of the theories of convergence and contagion, the emergent- norm theory states that crowd behavior is the product of the convergence of like-minded people, the sense of anonymity in a crowd and shared emotions. Underlying this theory is the symbolic-interactionist perspective. Moreover, seeings crowds as gatherings also refutes the idea that crowds can impair judgment. A panic is a sudden terror which dominates thinking and can affect groups of people. A moral panic is a mass movement that arises when an invidual or group, frequently a minority or subculture, is perceived to be a threat to society.

A riot is a form of civil disorder that is characterized by disorganized groups lashing out and disturbing the peace in a sudden and intense rash of violence, vandalism or other crime.

Riots typically reflect grievance or a sense of dissatisfaction with existing conditions. Unlike a mob, a riot is violent crowd behavior without a specific objective.

A fad is a fashion that gains salience quickly in a culture or subculture, and remains popular for a brief period of time before losing its appeal dramatically. A rumor is an unverified account or explanation of events circulating from person to person and pertaining to an object, event, or issue in public concern. Key Terms riot : Wanton or unrestrained behavior; uproar; tumult.

Collective behavior : The expression collective behavior was first used by Robert E. But even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause too. Our data do suggest that one form of anonymity i. Published continuously since , the quarterly journal is international in scope, covering a full range of topics of current interest to sociology and related social science disciplines.

Sociological Focus is peer reviewed and committed to publishing high quality research on substantive issues of importance to the study of society. The journal's mission is broad in scope, encompassing empirical works both quantitative and qualitative in nature , as well as manuscripts presenting up to date literature review of any field of sociology.

All research articles in this journal have undergone rigorous double-bind peer review, based on initial editor screening and anonymous refereeing by two anonymous referees. Sociological Focus. Cite this Item. Read and download Log in through your school or library. As a whole, though, collective behavior is regarded as less spontaneous and less structured than conventional behavior, such as what happens in a classroom, a workplace, or the other settings for everyday behavior with which we are very familiar.

As just noted, the term collective behavior refers to a miscellaneous set of behaviors. As such, these behaviors often have very little in common with each other, even if their basic features allow them to be classified as collective behavior. Common forms of collective behavior discussed in this section include crowds, mobs, panics, riots, disaster behavior, rumors, mass hysteria, moral panics, and fads and crazes.

Another common form of collective behavior is the social movement. The study of social movements exploded in the s and s, and social movement scholarship now dwarfs scholarship on other forms of collective behavior.

The second part of this chapter thus focuses solely on social movements. A crowd A large number of people who gather together with a common short-term or long-term purpose. Sociologist Herbert Blumer Blumer, H. Collective behavior. Lee Ed. The four types he distinguished are casual crowds, conventional crowds, expressive crowds, and acting crowds. A fifth type, protest crowds, has also been distinguished by other scholars. A casual crowd is a collection of people who happen to be in the same place at the same time.

It has no common identity or long-term purpose. This gathering of people waiting to cross the street is an example of a casual crowd.

The people in this type of crowd have no real common bond, long-term purpose, or identity. An example of a casual crowd is a gathering of people who are waiting to cross the street at a busy intersection in a large city.

True, they are all waiting to cross the street and to this degree do have a common goal, but this goal is temporary and this particular collection of people quickly disappears once this goal is achieved. As Erich Goode , p. A conventional crowd is a collection of people who gather for a specific purpose. They might be attending a movie, a play, a concert, or a lecture.

Goode Goode, E. An expressive crowd is a collection of people who gather primarily to be excited and to express one or more emotions. Examples include a religious revival, a political rally for a candidate, and events like Mardi Gras. Goode , p. Crowd activity for its members is an end in itself, not just a means.

In conventional crowds, the audience wants to watch the movie or hear the lecture; being part of the audience is secondary or irrelevant.

In expressive crowds, the audience also wants to be a member of the crowd, and participate in crowd behavior—to scream, shout, cheer, clap, and stomp their feet.

A conventional crowd may sometimes become an expressive crowd, as when the audience at a movie starts shouting if the film projector breaks. As this example indicates, the line between a conventional crowd and an expressive crowd is not always clear-cut.

In any event, because excitement and emotional expression are defining features of expressive crowds, individuals in such crowds are engaging in collective behavior. As its name implies, an acting crowd goes one important step beyond an expressive crowd by behaving in violent or other destructive behavior such as looting. A mob An intensely emotional crowd that commits or is ready to commit violence. Many films and novels about the Wild West in U. Beginning after the Reconstruction period following the Civil War, lynch mobs in the South and elsewhere hanged or otherwise murdered several thousand people, most of them African Americans, in what would now be regarded as hate crimes.

A panic A sudden reaction by a crowd that involves self-destructive behavior. Acting crowds sometimes become so large and out of control that they develop into full-scale riots , which we discuss momentarily. Wohlstein , McPhail, C.

Individual and collective behaviors within gatherings, demonstrations, and riots. Annual Review of Sociology, 9 , — As its name again implies, a protest crowd is a collection of people who gather to protest a political, social, cultural, or economic issue. The gatherings of people who participate in a sit-in, demonstration, march, or rally are all examples of protest crowds. A riot A relatively spontaneous outburst of violence by a large group of people.

The term riot sounds very negative, and some scholars have used terms like urban revolt or urban uprising to refer to the riots that many U. However, most collective behavior scholars continue to use the term riot without necessarily implying anything bad or good about this form of collective behavior, and we use riot here in that same spirit.

Rubenstein, R. Rebels in Eden: Mass political violence in the United States. Boston, MA: Little, Brown. Between 75 and such riots are estimated to have occurred between and Riots continued after the new nation began, as farmers facing debts often rioted against state militia.

Rioting became even more common during the first several decades of the 19th century. Celebration, politics, selective looting and riots: A micro level study of the Bulls riot of in Chicago. Social Problems, 44 , — Most of this rioting was committed by native-born whites against African Americans, Catholics, and immigrants. Feldberg, M. The turbulent era: Riot and disorder in Jacksonian America.

Rioting continued after the Civil War. Whites attacked Chinese immigrants because they feared the immigrants were taking jobs from whites and keeping wages lower than they otherwise would have been. Labor riots also became common, as workers rioted to protest inhumane working conditions and substandard pay. Race riots again occurred during the early 20th century, as whites continued to attack African Americans in major U. A major riot in East St. Louis, Illinois, in took the lives of 39 African Americans and 9 whites.

Riots begun by whites occurred in at least seven more cities in and ended with the deaths of dozens of people Waskow, Waskow, A. From race riot to sit-in: and the s. During the s, riots took place in many Northern cities as African Americans reacted violently to reports of police brutality or other unfair treatment. Estimates of the number of riots during the decade range from to , and estimates of the number of participants in the riots range from 50, to , Downes, ; Gurr, Downes, B.

The social characteristics of riot cities: A comparative study. Social Science Quarterly, 49 , —; Gurr, T.