Is social media-enabled collective behavior creating a crisis?

Characterizing the effects of scaled-up communication technology on societies around the world as a global phenomenon with new risks to humanity, seventeen researchers, from anthropology, biology, philosophy, psychology, and some interdisciplinary programs, penned the research note, Stewardship of Global Collective Behavior, explaining the nature of the problem and recommending solutions. The main thesis of the paper is the proposition that advances in communication technologies have accelerated social change, modified traditional social networks, and created new risks. These changes resulted in a new form of collective behavior on a global scale, making social systems even more complex and more difficult to study, understand, and explain. The paper succeeds in highlighting the fact that social media-driven collective behavior has consequential effects on all areas of life. In other words, the scaled-up collective behavior not only impacts local cultures, ecosystems, and social order, but it does so on a global scale with serious impact on natural and human resources. Although the research note has clear bias towards providing public policy recommendations, the authors did not neglect to draw attention to the need for academic disciplines (and researchers) to adapt to the fast-changing world. For instance, the authors find that the traditional peer-review process might be too slow to tackle the new challenges and that both changes to that system and the adoption of new pathways, such as “multiinstitution and interdisciplinary collaboration” might be needed. Specifically, the authors recommend that universities embrace and adopt changes through funding allocations, hiring plans, and tenure and promotion Read more