Crowd manipulation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowd_manipulation

Crowd manipulation is the intentional or unwitting use of techniques based on the principles of crowd psychology to engage, control, or influence the desires of a crowd in order to direct its behavior toward a specific action. This practice is common to religion, politics and business and can facilitate the approval or disapproval or indifference to a person, policy, or product. The ethicality of crowd manipulation is commonly questioned.

Crowd manipulation differs from propaganda—although they may reinforce one another to produce a desired result. If propaganda is "the consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea or group", crowd manipulation is the relatively brief call to action once the seeds of propaganda (i.e. more specifically "pre-propaganda") are sown and the public is organized into a crowd. The propagandist appeals to the masses, even if compartmentalized, whereas the crowd-manipulator appeals to a segment of the masses assembled into a crowd (such as a political demonstration or a congregation or a camp meeting) in real time. In situations such as a national emergency, however, a crowd manipulator may leverage mass media to address the masses in real time as if speaking to a crowd.

Crowd manipulation differs from crowd control, which serves a security function. Local authorities use crowd-control methods to contain and disperse crowds and to prevent and respond to unruly and unlawful acts such as rioting and looting.

Function and morality

A sensationalized portrayal of the Boston Massacre (March 5, 1770): Such images were used to breed discontent and foster unity among the American colonists against the British crown prior to the American War of Independence.

The crowd manipulator engages, controls, or influences crowds without the use of physical force, although his goal may be to instigate the use of force by the crowd or by local authorities. Prior to the American War of Independence, Samuel Adams provided Bostonians with "elaborate costumes, props, and musical instruments to lead protest songs in harborside demonstrations and parades through Boston's streets." If such crowds provoked British authorities to violence, as they did during the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770, Adams would write, produce, and disperse sensationalized accounts of the incidents to stir discontent and create unity among the American colonies. The American way of manipulation may be classified as a tool of soft power, which is "the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments". Harvard professor Joseph Nye coined the term in the 1980s, although he did not create the concept. The techniques used to win the minds of crowds were examined and developed notably by Quintilian in his training book, Institutio oratoria and by Aristotle in Rhetoric. Known origins of crowd manipulation go as far back as the 5th century BC, where litigants in Syracuse sought to improve their persuasiveness in court.

The verb "manipulate" can convey negativity, but it does not have to do so. According to Merriam Webster's Dictionary, for example, to "manipulate" means "to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one's own advantage." This definition allows, then, for the artful and honest use of control for one's advantage. Moreover, the actions of a crowd need not be criminal in nature. Nineteenth-century social scientist Gustave Le Bon wrote:

It is crowds rather than isolated individuals that may be induced to run the risk of death to secure the triumph of a creed or an idea, that may be fired with enthusiasm for glory and honour, that are led on—almost without bread and without arms, as in the age of the Crusades—to deliver the tomb of Christ from the infidel, or, as in [1793], to defend the fatherland. Such heroism is without doubt somewhat unconscious, but it is of such heroism that history is made. Were peoples only to be credited with the great actions performed in cold blood, the annals of the world would register but few of them.

Edward Bernays, the so-called "Father of Public Relations", believed that public manipulation was not only moral, but a necessity. He argued that "a small, invisible government who understands the mental processes and social patterns of the masses, rules public opinion by consent." This is necessary for the division of labor and to prevent chaos and confusion. "The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion", wrote Bernays. He also wrote, "We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized."

Others argue that some techniques are not inherently evil, but instead are philosophically neutral vehicles. Lifelong political activist and former Ronald Reagan White House staffer Morton C. Blackwell explained in a speech titled, "People, Parties, and Power":

Being right in the sense of being correct is not sufficient to win. Political technology determines political success. Learn how to organize and how to communicate. Most political technology is philosophically neutral. You owe it to your philosophy to study how to win.

In the social sciences, evolutionary psychologist David M. Buss and his colleagues use the "manipulation" more or less as a synonym for "influence" on how humans effect the behavior of other humans.

In brief, manipulators with different ideologies can employ successfully the same techniques to achieve ends that may be good or bad. Crowd manipulation techniques offers individuals and groups a philosophically neutral means to maximize the effect of their messages.

In order to manipulate a crowd, one should first understand what is needed by a crowd, as well as the principles that govern its behavior.

Crowds and their behavior

The word "crowd", according to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, refers to both "a large number of persons especially when collected together" (as in a crowded shopping mall) and "a group of people having something in common [as in a habit, interest, or occupation]." Philosopher G.A. Tawny defined a crowd as "a numerous collection of people who face a concrete situation together and are more or less aware of their bodily existence as a group. Their facing the situation together is due to common interests and the existence of common circumstances which give a single direction to their thoughts and actions." Tawney discussed in his work "The Nature of Crowds" two main types of crowds:

Crowds may be classified according to the degree of definiteness and constancy of this consciousness. When it is very definite and constant the crowd may be called homogeneous, and when not so definite and constant, heterogeneous. All mobs belong to the homogeneous class, but not all homogeneous crowds are mobs. ... Whether a given crowd belong to the one group or the other may be a debatable question, and the same crowd may imperceptibly pass from one to the other.

In a 2001 study, the Institute for Non-Lethal Defense Studies at Pennsylvania State University defined a crowd more specifically as "a gathering of a multitude of individuals and small groups that have temporarily assembled. These small groups are usually comprised of friends, family members, or acquaintances."

A crowd may display behavior that differs from the individuals who compose it. Several theories have emerged in the 19th century and early 20th century to explain this phenomenon. These collective works contribute to the "classic theory" of crowd psychology. In 1968, however, social scientist Dr. Carl Couch of the University of Liverpool refuted many of the stereotypes associated with crowd behavior as described by classic theory. His criticisms are supported widely in the psychology community but are still being incorporated as a "modern theory" into psychological texts. A modern model, based on the "individualistic" concept of crowd behavior developed by Floyd Allport in 1924, is the Elaborated Social Identity Model (ESIM).

The Riots Organized by the Paris Commune (French Revolution) on May 31 and June 2, 1793.

Classic theory

French philosopher and historian Hippolyte Taine provided in the wake of the Franco Prussian War of 1871 the first modern account of crowd psychology. Gustave Le Bon developed this framework in his 1895 book, Psychologie des Foules. He proposed that French crowds during the 19th century were essentially excitable, irrational mobs easily influenced by wrongdoers. He postulated that the heterogeneous elements which make up this type of crowd essentially form a new being, a chemical reaction of sorts in which the crowd's properties change. He wrote:

Under certain given circumstances, and only under those circumstances, an agglomeration of men presents new characteristics very different from those of the individuals composing it. The sentiments and ideas of all the persons in the gathering take one and the same direction, and their conscious personality vanishes. A collective mind is formed, doubtless transitory, but presenting very clearly defined characteristics.

He also wrote:

In the collective mind the intellectual aptitudes of the individuals, and in consequence their individuality are weakened. The heterogeneous is swamped by the homogeneous, and the unconscious qualities obtain the upper hand.

— Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, 17

Le Bon observed several characteristics of what he called the "organized" or "psychological" crowd, including:

1. submergence or the disappearance of a conscious personality and the appearance of an unconscious personality (aka "mental unity"). This process is aided by sentiments of invincible power and anonymity which allow one to yield to instincts which he would have kept under restraint (i.e. Individuality is weakened and the unconscious "gains the upper hand");
2. contagion ("In a crowd every sentiment and act is contagious, and contagious to such a degree that an individual readily sacrifices his personal interest to the collective interest."); and
3. suggestibility as the result of a hypnotic state. "All feelings and thoughts are bent in the direction determined by the hypnotizer" and the crowd tends to turn these thoughts into acts.

In sum, the classic theory contends that:

• "[Crowds] are unified masses whose behaviors can be categorized as active, expressive, acquisitive or hostile."
• "[Crowd] participants [are] given to spontaneity, irrationality, loss of self-control, and a sense of anonymity."

Part of the crowd at the G20 Meltdown protest in London on 1 April 2009.

Modern theory

Critics of the classic theory contend that it is seriously flawed in that it decontextualises crowd behavior, lacks sustainable empirical support, is biased, and ignores the influence of policing measures on the behavior of the crowd.

In 1968, Dr. Carl J. Couch examined and refuted many classic-theory stereotypes in his article, "Collective Behavior: An Examination of Some Stereotypes." Since then, other social scientists have validated much of his critique. Knowledge from these studies of crowd psychology indicate that:

• "Crowds are not homogeneous entities" but are composed "of a minority of individuals and a majority of small groups of people who are acquainted with one another."
• "Crowd participants are [neither] unanimous in their motivation" nor to one another. Participants "seldom act in unison, and if they do, that action does not last long."
• "Crowds do not cripple individual cognition" and "are not uniquely distinguished by violence or disorderly actions."
• "Individual attitudes and personality characteristics", as well as "socioeconomic, demographic and political variables are poor predictors of riot intensity and individual participation."

According to the aforementioned 2001 study conducted by Penn State University's Institute for Non-Lethal Defense Technologies, crowds undergo a process that has a "beginning, middle, and ending phase." Specifically:

• The assembling process
  • This phase includes the temporary assembly of individuals for a specific amount of time. Evidence suggests that assembly occurs most frequently by means of an "organized mobilization method" but can also occur by "impromptu process" such as word of mouth by non-official organizers.
• The temporary gathering
  • In this phase, individuals are assembled and participate in both individual and "collective actions." Rarely do all individuals in a crowd participate, and those who do participate do so by choice. Participation furthermore appears to vary based on the type and purpose of the gathering, with religious services experiencing "greater participation" (i.e. 80–90%).
• The dispersing process
  • In the final phase, the crowd's participants disperse from a "common location" to "one or more alternate locations."

A "riot" occurs when "one or more individuals within a gathering engage in violence against person or property." According to U.S. and European research data from 1830 to 1930 and from the 1960 to the present, "less than 10 percent of protest demonstrations have involved violence against person or property", with the "celebration riot" as the most frequent type of riot in the United States.

Elaborated social identity model (ESIM)

A modern model has also been developed by Steve Reicher, John Drury, and Clifford Stott which contrasts significantly from the "classic theory" of crowd behavior. According to Clifford Stott of the University of Leeds:

The ESIM has at its basis the proposition that a component part of the self concept determining human social behaviour derives from psychological membership of particular social categories (i.e., an identity of a unique individual), crowd participants also have a range of social identities which can become salient within the psychological system referred to as the 'self.' Collective action becomes possible when a particular social identity is simultaneously salient and therefore shared among crowd participants.

Stott's final point differs from the "submergence" quality of crowds proposed by Le Bon, in which the individual's consciousness gives way to the unconsciousness of the crowd. ESIM also considers the effect of policing on the behavior of the crowd. It warns that "the indiscriminate use of force would create a redefined sense of unity in the crowd in terms of the illegitimacy of and opposition to the actions of the police." This could essentially draw the crowd into conflict despite the initial hesitancy of the individuals in the crowd.

Planning and technique

Crowd manipulation involves several elements, including: context analysis, site selection, propaganda, authority, and delivery.

Context analysis

Soldiers of the California National Guard patrol the streets of Los Angeles in response to street rioting.

History suggests that the socioeconomic and political context and location influence dramatically the potential for crowd manipulation. Such time periods in America included:

• Prelude to the American Revolution (1763–1775), when Britain imposed heavy taxes and various restrictions upon its thirteen North American colonies;
• Roaring Twenties (1920–1929), when the advent of mass production made it possible for everyday citizens to purchase previously considered luxury items at affordable prices. Businesses that utilized assembly-line manufacturing were challenged to sell large numbers of identical products;
• The Great Depression (1929–1939), when a devastating stock market crash disrupted the American economy, caused widespread unemployment; and
• The Cold War (1945–1989), when Americans faced the threat of nuclear war and participated in the Korean War, the greatly unpopular Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Internationally, time periods conducive to crowd manipulation included the Interwar Period (i.e. following the collapse of the Austria-Hungarian, Russian, Ottoman, and German empires) and Post-World War II (i.e. decolonization and collapse of the British, German, French, and Japanese empires). The prelude to the collapse of the Soviet Union provided ample opportunity for messages of encouragement. The Solidarity Movement began in the 1970s thanks in part to leaders like Lech Walesa and U.S. Information Agency programming. In 1987, U.S. President Ronald Reagan capitalized on the sentiments of the West Berliners as well as the freedom-starved East Berliners to demand that General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev "tear down" the Berlin Wall. During the 2008 presidential elections, candidate Barack Obama capitalized on the sentiments of many American voters frustrated predominantly by the recent economic downturn and the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His simple messages of "Hope", "Change", and "Yes We Can" were adopted quickly and chanted by his supporters during his political rallies.

Historical context and events may also encourage unruly behavior. Such examples include the:

• 1968 Columbia, SC Civil Rights Protest;
• 1992 London Poll Tax Protest; and
• 1992 L.A. Riots (sparked by the acquittal of police officers involved in the assault of Rodney King).

In order to capitalize fully upon historical context, it is essential to conduct a thorough audience analysis to understand the desires, fears, concerns, and biases of the target crowd. This may be done through scientific studies, focus groups, and polls.

It is also imperative to differentiate between a crowd and a mob to gauge the magnitude crowd manipulation should be used to. A United Nations training guide on crowd control states that "a crowd is a lawful gathering of people, who are organized disciplined and have an objective. A mob is a crowd who have gone out of control because of various and powerful influences, such as racial tension or revenge."

Site selection

U.S. President Ronald Reagan giving a speech at the Berlin Wall, Brandenburg Gate, Federal Republic of Germany. June 12, 1987.

Where a crowd assembles also provides opportunities to manipulate thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Location, weather, lighting, sound, and even the shape of an arena all influence a crowd's willingness to participate.

Symbolic and tangible backdrops like the Brandenburg Gate, used by Presidents John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton in 1963, 1987, and 1994, respectively, can evoke emotions before the crowd manipulator opens his or her mouth to speak. George W. Bush's "Bullhorn Address" at Ground Zero following the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center is another example of how venue can amplify a message. In response to a rescue worker's shout, "I can't hear you", President Bush shouted back, "I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people—and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!" The crowd erupted in cheers and patriotic chants.

Propaganda

Main articles: Media manipulation and Propaganda

The crowd manipulator and the propagandist may work together to achieve greater results than they would individually. According to Edward Bernays, the propagandist must prepare his target group to think about and anticipate a message before it is delivered. Messages themselves must be tested in advance since a message that is ineffective is worse than no message at all. Social scientist Jacques Ellul called this sort of activity "pre-propaganda", and it is essential if the main message is to be effective. Ellul wrote in Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes:

Direct propaganda, aimed at modifying opinions and attitudes, must be preceded by propaganda that is sociological in character, slow, general, seeking to create a climate, an atmosphere of favorable preliminary attitudes. No direct propaganda can be effective without pre-propaganda, which, without direct or noticeable aggression, is limited to creating ambiguities, reducing prejudices, and spreading images, apparently without purpose. …

In Jacques Ellul's book, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes, it states that sociological propaganda can be compared to plowing, direct propaganda to sowing; you cannot do the one without doing the other first. Sociological propaganda is a phenomenon where a society seeks to integrate the maximum number of individuals into itself by unifying its members' behavior according to a pattern, spreading its style of life abroad, and thus imposing itself on other groups. Essentially sociological propaganda aims to increase conformity with the environment that is of a collective nature by developing compliance with or defense of the established order through long term penetration and progressive adaptation by using all social currents. The propaganda element is the way of life with which the individual is permeated and then the individual begins to express it in film, writing, or art without realizing it. This involuntary behavior creates an expansion of society through advertising, the movies, education, and magazines. "The entire group, consciously or not, expresses itself in this fashion; and to indicate, secondly that its influence aims much more at an entire style of life." This type of propaganda is not deliberate but springs up spontaneously or unwittingly within a culture or nation. This propaganda reinforces the individual's way of life and represents this way of life as best. Sociological propaganda creates an indisputable criterion for the individual to make judgments of good and evil according to the order of the individual's way of life. Sociological propaganda does not result in action, however, it can prepare the ground for direct propaganda. From then on, the individual in the clutches of such sociological propaganda believes that those who live this way are on the side of the angels, and those who don't are bad.

Bernays expedited this process by identifying and contracting those who most influence public opinion (key experts, celebrities, existing supporters, interlacing groups, etc.).

After the mind of the crowd is plowed and the seeds of propaganda are sown, a crowd manipulator may prepare to harvest his crop.

Authority

The manipulator may be an orator, a group, a musician, an athlete, or some other person who moves a crowd to the point of agreement before he makes a specific call to action. Aristotle believed that the ethos, or credibility, of the manipulator contributes to his persuasiveness.

Prestige is a form of "domination exercised on our mind by an individual, a work, or an idea." The manipulator with great prestige paralyses the critical faculty of his crowd and commands respect and awe. Authority flows from prestige, which can be generated by "acquired prestige" (e.g. job title, uniform, judge's robe) and "personal prestige" (i.e. inner strength). Personal prestige is like that of the "tamer of a wild beast" who could easily devour him. Success is the most important factor affecting personal prestige. Le Bon wrote, "From the minute prestige is called into question, it ceases to be prestige." Thus, it would behoove the manipulator to prevent this discussion and to maintain a distance from the crowd lest his faults undermine his prestige.

Delivery

Winston Churchill in Durban in the British Cape Colony in 1899. Delivering a speech after escaping from a South African prisoners' of war camp.

The manipulator's ability to sway a crowd depends especially on his or her visual, vocal, and verbal delivery. Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler made personal commitments to become master rhetoricians.

Churchill

At 22, Winston Churchill documented his conclusions about speaking to crowds. He titled it "The Scaffolding of Rhetoric" and it outlined what he believed to be the essentials of any effective speech. Among these essentials are:

• "Correctness of diction", or proper word choice to convey the exact meaning of the orator;
• "Rhythm", or a speech's sound appeal through "long, rolling and sonorous" sentences;
• "Accumulation of argument", or the orator's "rapid succession of waves of sound and vivid pictures" to bring the crowd to a thundering ascent;
• "Analogy", or the linking of the unknown to the familiar; and
• "Wild extravagance", or the use of expressions, however extreme, which embody the feelings of the orator and his audience.

Hitler

Still frames of Adolf Hitler during a speech show his use of emotion and body language to convey his message.

Adolf Hitler believed he could apply the lessons of propaganda he learned painfully from the Allies during World War I and apply those lessons to benefit Germany thereafter. The following points offer helpful insight into his thinking behind his on-stage performances:

• Appeal to the masses: "[Propaganda] must be addressed always and exclusively to the masses", rather than the "scientifically trained intelligentsia."
• Target the emotions: "[Propaganda] must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the so-called intellect."
• Keep your message simple: "It is a mistake to make propaganda many-sided…The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous."
• Prepare your audience for the worst-case scenario: "[Prepare] the individual soldier for the terrors of war, and thus [help] to preserve him from disappointments. After this, the most terrible weapon that was used against him seemed only to confirm what his propagandists had told him; it likewise reinforced his faith in the truth of his government's assertions, while on the other hand it increased his rage and hatred against the vile enemy."
• Make no half statements: "…emphasize the one right which it has set out to argue for. Its task is not to make an objective study of the truth, in so far as it favors the enemy, and then set it before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly."
• Repeat your message constantly: "[Propagandist technique] must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success." (Gustave Le Bon believed that messages that are affirmed and repeated are often perceived as truth and spread by means of contagion. "Man, like animals, has a natural tendency to imitation. Imitation is a necessity for him, provided always that the imitation is quite easy", wrote Le Bon. In his 1881 essay "L'Homme et Societes", he wrote "It is by examples not by arguments that crowds are guided." He stressed that in order to influence, one must not be too far removed his audience nor his example unattainable by them. If it is, his influence will be nil.)

The Nazi Party in Germany used propaganda to develop a cult of personality around Hitler. Historians such as Ian Kershaw emphasise the psychological impact of Hitler's skill as an orator. Neil Kressel reports, "Overwhelmingly ... Germans speak with mystification of Hitler's 'hypnotic' appeal". Roger Gill states: "His moving speeches captured the minds and hearts of a vast number of the German people: he virtually hypnotized his audiences". Hitler was especially effective when he could absorb the feedback from a live audience, and listeners would also be caught up in the mounting enthusiasm. He looked for signs of fanatic devotion, stating that his ideas would then remain "like words received under an hypnotic influence."

Applications

Politics

Barack Obama accepts the Democratic nomination for president

The political process provides ample opportunity to utilize crowd-manipulation techniques to foster support for candidates and policy. From campaign rallies to town-hall debates to declarations of war, statesmen have historically used crowd manipulation to convey their messages. Public opinion polls, such as those conducted by the Pew Research Center and www.RealClearPolitics.com provide statesmen and aspiring statesmen with approval ratings, and wedge issues.

Business

WWF superstar Hulk Hogan works a crowd during a televised wrestling match.

The Penn State Nittany Lion warming up a crowd of 100,000+ college football fans.

Ever since the advent of mass production, businesses and corporations have used crowd manipulation to sell their products. Advertising serves as propaganda to prepare a future crowd to absorb and accept a particular message. Edward Bernays believed that particular advertisements are more effective if they create an environment which encourages the purchase of certain products. Instead of marketing the features of a piano, sell prospective customers the idea of a music room.

The entertainment industry makes exceptional use of crowd manipulation to excite fans and boost ticket sales. Not only does it promote assembly through the mass media, it also uses rhetorical techniques to engage crowds, thereby enhancing their experience. At Penn State University–University Park, for example, PSU Athletics uses the Nittany Lion mascot to ignite crowds of more than 100,000 students, alumni, and other visitors to Beaver Stadium. Among the techniques used are cues for one side of the stadium to chant "We are..." while the other side responds, "Penn State!" These and other chants make Beaver Stadium a formidable venue for visiting teams who struggle to call their plays because of the noise. World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), formerly the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) employs crowd manipulation techniques to excite its crowds as well. It makes particular use of the polarizing personalities and prestige of its wrestlers to draw out the emotions of its audiences. The practice is similar to that of the ancient Roman gladiators, whose lives depended upon their ability to not only fight but also to win crowds. High levels of enthusiasm are maintained using lights, sounds, images, and crowd participation. According to Hulk Hogan in his autobiography, My Life Outside the Ring, "You didn't have to be a great wrestler, you just had to draw the crowd into the match. You had to be totally aware, and really in the moment, and paying attention to the mood of the crowd."

Flash mobs

Main article: Flash mobs

A flash mob is a gathering of individuals, usually organized in advance through electronic means, that performs a specific, usually peculiar action and then disperses. These actions are often bizarre or comical—as in a massive pillow fight, ad-hoc musical, or synchronized dance. Bystanders are usually left in awe and/or shock.

The concept of a flash mob is relatively new when compared to traditional forms of crowd manipulation. Bill Wasik, senior editor of Harper's Magazine, is credited with the concept. He organized his first flash mob in a Macy's department store in 2003. The use of flash mobs as a tool of political warfare may take the form of a massive walkout during a political speech, the disruption of political rally, or even as a means to reorganize a crowd after it has been dispersed by crowd control. A first glance, a flash mob may appear to be the spontaneous undoing of crowd manipulation (i.e. the turning of a crowd against its manipulator). On September 8, 2009, for example, choreographer Michael Gracey organized—with the help of cell phones and approximately twenty instructors—a 20,000+-person flash mob to surprise Oprah Winfrey during her 24th Season Kick-Off event. Following Oprah's introduction, The Black Eyed Peas performed their musical hit "I Gotta Feeling". As the song progressed, the synchronized dance began with a single, female dancer up front and spread from person to person until the entire crowd became involved. A surprised and elated Oprah found that there was another crowd manipulator besides her and her musical guests at work. Gracey and others have been able to organize and manipulate such large crowds with the help of electronic devices and social networks. But one does not need to be a professional choreographer to conduct such an operation. On February 13, 2009, for example, a 22-year-old Facebook user organized a flash mob which temporarily shut down London's Liverpool Street station.

Alfred Wegener

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wegener 

 

Alfred Wegener
Wegener, c. 1924–1930
Born	Alfred Lothar Wegener 1 November 1880 Berlin, German Empire
Died	November 1930 (aged 50) Greenland
Nationality	German
Citizenship	German
Alma mater	University of Berlin (PhD)
Known for	Continental drift theory
Scientific career
Fields	Climatology, geology, geophysics, meteorology
Doctoral advisor	Julius Bauschinger
Influenced	Johannes Letzmann
Signature

Alfred Lothar Wegener (/ˈveɪɡənər/; German: [ˈʔalfʁeːt ˈveːɡənɐ]; 1 November 1880 – November 1930) was a German climatologist, geologist, geophysicist, meteorologist, and polar researcher.

During his lifetime he was primarily known for his achievements in meteorology and as a pioneer of polar research, but today he is most remembered as the originator of continental drift hypothesis by suggesting in 1912 that the continents are slowly drifting around the Earth (German: Kontinentalverschiebung). His hypothesis was controversial and widely rejected by mainstream geology until the 1950s, when numerous discoveries such as palaeomagnetism provided strong support for continental drift, and thereby a substantial basis for today's model of plate tectonics. Wegener was involved in several expeditions to Greenland to study polar air circulation before the existence of the jet stream was accepted. Expedition participants made many meteorological observations and were the first to overwinter on the inland Greenland ice sheet and the first to bore ice cores on a moving Arctic glacier.

Biography

Early life and education

Alfred Wegener was born in Berlin on 1 November 1880 as the youngest of five children in a clergyman's family. His father, Richard Wegener, was a theologian and teacher of classical languages at the Berlinisches Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster. In 1886 his family purchased a former manor house near Rheinsberg, which they used as a vacation home. Today there is an Alfred Wegener Memorial site and tourist information office in a nearby building that was once the local schoolhouse. He was cousin to film pioneer Paul Wegener.

Commemorative plaque on Wegener's former school in Wallstrasse

Wegener attended school at the Köllnisches Gymnasium on Wallstrasse in Berlin (a fact which is memorialised on a plaque on this protected building, now a school of music), graduating as the best in his class.

Wegener studied physics, meteorology and astronomy in Berlin, Heidelberg and Innsbruck. His teachers in Berlin included Wilhelm Foerster for astronomy, and Max Planck for thermodynamics.

Wegener took away from Planck's teaching a strong commitment to brevity in the service of clarity. He adopted a caution, bordering on aloofness, in offering mechanical models and causal explanations, especially of the sort that only confirmed what one knew from experience without adding anything to the facts. [...] Most importantly, he heeded Planck's injunction never to consider any form of a theory as final, and to think of "good theory" simply as that mode of treating phenomena that corresponded to the actual state of a science at that moment—and never to one's aspirations for it.

From 1902 to 1903 during his studies he was an assistant at the Urania astronomical observatory. He obtained a doctorate in astronomy in 1905 based on a dissertation written under the supervision of Julius Bauschinger at Friedrich Wilhelms University (today Humboldt University), Berlin. Wegener had always maintained a strong interest in the developing fields of meteorology and climatology and his studies afterwards focused on these disciplines.

In 1905 Wegener became an assistant at the Aeronautisches Observatorium Lindenberg near Beeskow. He worked there with his brother Kurt, two years his senior, who was likewise a scientist with an interest in meteorology and polar research. The two pioneered the use of weather balloons to track air masses. On a balloon ascent undertaken to carry out meteorological investigations and to test a celestial navigation method using a particular type of quadrant ("Libellenquadrant"), the Wegener brothers set a new record for a continuous balloon flight, remaining aloft 52.5 hours from 5–7 April 1906.

First Greenland expedition and years in Marburg

In that same year 1906, Wegener participated in the first of his four Greenland expeditions, later regarding this experience as marking a decisive turning point in his life. The Denmark expedition was led by the Dane Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen and charged with studying the last unknown portion of the northeastern coast of Greenland. During the expedition Wegener constructed the first meteorological station in Greenland near Danmarkshavn, where he launched kites and tethered balloons to make meteorological measurements in an Arctic climatic zone. Here Wegener also made his first acquaintance with death in a wilderness of ice when the expedition leader and two of his colleagues died on an exploratory trip undertaken with sled dogs.

After his return in 1908 and until World War I, Wegener was a lecturer in meteorology, applied astronomy and cosmic physics at the University of Marburg. His students and colleagues in Marburg particularly valued his ability to clearly and understandably explain even complex topics and current research findings without sacrificing precision. His lectures formed the basis of what was to become a standard textbook in meteorology, first written In 1909/1910: Thermodynamik der Atmosphäre (Thermodynamics of the Atmosphere), in which he incorporated many of the results of the Greenland expedition.

On 6 January 1912 he presented his first proposal of continental drift in a lecture to the Geologischen Vereinigung at the Senckenberg Museum, Frankfurt am Main. Later in 1912 he made the case for the theory in a long, three-part article and a shorter summary.

Second Greenland expedition

Plans for a new Greenland expedition grew out of Wegener and Johan Peter Koch's frustration with the disorganisation and meager scientific results of the Danmark expedition. The new expedition would involve only four men, take place in 1912-1913, and have Koch for leader.

After a stopover in Iceland to purchase and test ponies as pack animals, the expedition arrived in Danmarkshavn. Even before the trip to the inland ice began the expedition was almost annihilated by a calving glacier. Koch broke his leg when he fell into a glacier crevasse and spent months recovering in a sickbed. Wegener and Koch were the first to winter on the inland ice in northeast Greenland. Inside their hut they drilled to a depth of 25 m with an auger. In summer 1913 the team crossed the inland ice, the four expedition participants covering a distance twice as long as Fridtjof Nansen's southern Greenland crossing in 1888. Only a few kilometres from the western Greenland settlement of Kangersuatsiaq the small team ran out of food while struggling to find their way through difficult glacial break-up terrain. But at the last moment, after the last pony and dog had been eaten, they were picked up at a fjord by the clergyman of Upernavik, who just happened to be visiting a remote congregation at the time.

Family

Later in 1913, after his return Wegener married Else Köppen, the daughter of his former teacher and mentor, the meteorologist Wladimir Köppen. The young pair lived in Marburg, where Wegener resumed his university lectureship. There his two older daughters were born, Hilde (1914–1936) and Sophie ("Käte", 1918–2012). Their third daughter Hanna Charlotte ("Lotte", 1920–1989) was born in Hamburg. Lotte would in 1938 marry the famous Austrian mountaineer and adventurer Heinrich Harrer, while in 1939, Käte married Siegfried Uiberreither, Austrian Nazi Gauleiter of Styria.

World War I

As an infantry reserve officer Wegener was immediately called up when the First World War began in 1914. On the war front in Belgium he experienced fierce fighting but his term lasted only a few months: after being wounded twice he was declared unfit for active service and assigned to the army weather service. This activity required him to travel constantly between various weather stations in Germany, on the Balkans, on the Western Front and in the Baltic region.

Nevertheless, he was able in 1915 to complete the first version of his major work, Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane ("The Origin of Continents and Oceans"). His brother Kurt remarked that Alfred Wegener's motivation was to "reestablish the connection between geophysics on the one hand and geography and geology on the other, which had become completely ruptured because of the specialized development of these branches of science."

Interest in this small publication was however low, also because of wartime chaos. By the end of the war Wegener had published almost 20 additional meteorological and geophysical papers in which he repeatedly embarked for new scientific frontiers. In 1917 he undertook a scientific investigation of the Treysa meteorite.

Postwar period

In 1919, Wegener replaced Köppen as head of the Meteorological Department at the German Naval Observatory (Deutsche Seewarte) and moved to Hamburg with his wife and their two daughters. In 1921 he was moreover appointed senior lecturer at the new University of Hamburg. From 1919 to 1923 Wegener did pioneering work on reconstructing the climate of past eras (now known as "paleoclimatology"), closely in collaboration with Milutin Milanković, publishing Die Klimate der geologischen Vorzeit ("The Climates of the Geological Past") together with his father-in-law, Wladimir Köppen, in 1924. In 1922 the third, fully revised edition of "The Origin of Continents and Oceans" appeared, and discussion began on his theory of continental drift, first in the German language area and later internationally. Withering criticism was the response of most experts.

In 1924 Wegener was appointed to a professorship in meteorology and geophysics in Graz, a position that was both secure and free of administrative duties. He concentrated on physics and the optics of the atmosphere as well as the study of tornadoes. He had studied tornadoes for several years by this point, publishing the first thorough European tornado climatology in 1917. He also posited tornado vortex structures and formative processes. Scientific assessment of his second Greenland expedition (ice measurements, atmospheric optics, etc.) continued to the end of the 1920s.

In November 1926 Wegener presented his continental drift theory at a symposium of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in New York City, again earning rejection from everyone but the chairman. Three years later the fourth and final expanded edition of "The Origin of Continents and Oceans" appeared.

Third and fourth Greenland expeditions

Wegener (left) and Villumsen (right) in Greenland; 1 November 1930.

In April-October 1929, Wegener embarked on his third expedition to Greenland, which laid the groundwork for the main expedition which he was planning to lead in 1930-1931.

Wegener's last Greenland expedition was in 1930. The 14 participants under his leadership were to establish three permanent stations from which the thickness of the Greenland ice sheet could be measured and year-round Arctic weather observations made. They would travel on the ice cap using two innovative, propeller-driven snowmobiles, in addition to ponies and dog sleds. Wegener felt personally responsible for the expedition's success, as the German government had contributed $120,000 ($1.5 million in 2007 dollars). Success depended on enough provisions being transferred from West camp to Eismitte ("mid-ice") for two men to winter there, and this was a factor in the decision that led to his death. Owing to a late thaw, the expedition was six weeks behind schedule and, as summer ended, the men at Eismitte sent a message that they had insufficient fuel and so would return on 20 October.

Snowmobiles used by the 1930 expedition (stored).

On 24 September, although the route markers were by now largely buried under snow, Wegener set out with thirteen Greenlanders and his meteorologist Fritz Loewe to supply the camp by dog sled. During the journey, the temperature reached −60 °C (−76 °F) and Loewe's toes became so frostbitten they had to be amputated with a penknife without anaesthetic. Twelve of the Greenlanders returned to West camp. On 19 October the remaining three members of the expedition reached Eismitte.

Expedition member Johannes Georgi estimated that there were only enough supplies for three at Eismitte, so Wegener and Rasmus Villumsen took two dog sleds and made for West camp. (Georgi later found that he had underestimated the supplies, and that Wegener and Villumsen could have overwintered at Eismitte.) They took no food for the dogs and killed them one by one to feed the rest until they could run only one sled. While Villumsen rode the sled, Wegener had to use skis, but they never reached the camp: Wegener died and Villumsen was never seen again. After Wegener was declared missing in May 1931, and his body found shortly thereafter, Kurt Wegener took over the expedition's leadership in July, according to the prearranged plan for such an eventuality.

This expedition inspired the Greenland expedition episode of Adam Melfort in John Buchan's 1933 novel A Prince of the Captivity.

Death

Wegener died in Greenland in around the middle of November 1930 while returning from an expedition to bring food to a group of researchers camped in the middle of an icecap. He supplied the camp successfully, but there was not enough food at the camp for him to stay there. He and a colleague, Rasmus Villumsen, took dog sleds to travel to another camp – which they never reached. Villumsen buried Wegener's body with great care, a pair of skis marking the grave site. After burying Wegener, Villumsen resumed his journey to West camp, but he was never seen again. Six months later, on 12 May 1931, the grave was discovered halfway between Eismitte and West camp. Expedition members built a pyramid-shaped mausoleum in the ice and snow, and Alfred Wegener's body was laid to rest in it. Wegener had been 50 years of age and a heavy smoker, and it was believed that he had died of heart failure brought on by overexertion. Villumsen was 23 when he died, and it is estimated that his body, and Wegener's diary, now lie under more than 100 metres (330 ft) of accumulated ice and snow.

Continental drift theory

Original world maps created by Alfred Wegener showing Pangaea and the continents drifting apart. Its spatial and temporal classification corresponds to his conception at that time, not to the later proven positions and geological epochs.

Alfred Wegener first thought of this idea by noticing that the different large landmasses of the Earth almost fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. The continental shelf of the Americas fits closely to Africa and Europe. Antarctica, Australia, India and Madagascar fit next to the tip of Southern Africa. But Wegener only published his idea after reading a paper in 1911 which criticised the prevalent hypothesis, that a bridge of land once connected Europe and America, on the grounds that this contradicts isostasy. Wegener's main interest was meteorology, and he wanted to join the Denmark-Greenland expedition scheduled for mid-1912. He presented his Continental Drift hypothesis on 6 January 1912. He analysed both sides of the Atlantic Ocean for rock type, geological structures and fossils. He noticed that there was a significant similarity between matching sides of the continents, especially in fossil plants.

Fossil patterns across continents (Gondwana).

From 1912, Wegener publicly advocated the existence of "continental drift", arguing that all the continents were once joined together in a single landmass and had since drifted apart. He supposed that the mechanisms causing the drift might be the centrifugal force of the Earth's rotation ("Polflucht") or the astronomical precession. Wegener also speculated about sea-floor spreading and the role of the mid-ocean ridges, stating that "the Mid-Atlantic Ridge ... zone in which the floor of the Atlantic, as it keeps spreading, is continuously tearing open and making space for fresh, relatively fluid and hot sima [rising] from depth." However, he did not pursue these ideas in his later works.

In 1915, in the first edition of his book, Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane, written in German, Wegener drew together evidence from various fields to advance the theory that there had once been a giant continent, which he named "Urkontinent" (German for "primal continent", analogous to the Greek "Pangaea", meaning "All-Lands" or "All-Earth"). Expanded editions during the 1920s presented further evidence. (The first English edition was published in 1924 as The Origin of Continents and Oceans, a translation of the 1922 third German edition.) The last German edition, published in 1929, revealed the significant observation that shallower oceans were geologically younger. It was, however, not translated into English until 1962.

Wegener during J.P. Koch's Expedition 1912–1913 in the winter base "Borg".

Reaction

In his work, Wegener presented a large amount of observational evidence in support of continental drift, but the mechanism remained a problem, partly because Wegener's estimate of the velocity of continental motion, 250 cm/year, was too high. (The currently accepted rate for the separation of the Americas from Europe and Africa is about 2.5 cm/year.)

While his ideas attracted a few early supporters such as Alexander Du Toit from South Africa, Arthur Holmes in England  and Milutin Milanković in Serbia, for whom continental drift theory was the premise for investigating polar wandering, the hypothesis was initially met with scepticism from geologists, who viewed Wegener as an outsider and were resistant to change. Nevertheless, the eminent Swiss geologist Émile Argand advocated Wegener's theory in his inaugural address to the 1922 International Geological Congress.

The one American edition of Wegener's work, published in 1925, was written in "a dogmatic style that often results from German translations". In 1926, at the initiative of Willem van der Gracht, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists organised a symposium on the continental drift hypothesis. The opponents argued, as did the Leipziger geologist Franz Kossmat, that the oceanic crust was too firm for the continents to "simply plough through".

From at least 1910, Wegener imagined the continents once fitting together not at the current shore line, but 200 m below this, at the level of the continental shelves, where they match well. Part of the reason Wegener's ideas were not initially accepted was the misapprehension that he was suggesting the continents had fit along the current coastline. Charles Schuchert commented:

During this vast time [of the split of Pangea] the sea waves have been continuously pounding against Africa and Brazil and in many places rivers have been bringing into the ocean great amounts of eroded material, yet everywhere the geographic shore lines are said to have remained practically unchanged! It apparently makes no difference to Wegener how hard or how soft are the rocks of these shore lines, what are their geological structures that might aid or retard land or marine erosion, how often the strand lines have been elevated or depressed, and how far peneplanation has gone on during each period of continental stability. Furthermore, sea-level in itself has not been constant, especially during the Pleistocene, when the lands were covered by millions of square miles of ice made from water subtracted out of the oceans. In the equatorial regions, this level fluctuated three times during the Pleistocene, and during each period of ice accumulation the sea-level sank about 250 feet [75 m].

Wegener was in the audience for this lecture, but made no attempt to defend his work, possibly because of an inadequate command of the English language.

In 1943, George Gaylord Simpson wrote a strong critique of the theory (as well as the rival theory of sunken land bridges) and gave evidence for the idea that similarities of flora and fauna between the continents could best be explained by these being fixed land masses which over time were connected and disconnected by periodic flooding, a theory known as permanentism. Alexander du Toit wrote a rejoinder to this the following year.

Alfred Wegener has been mischaracterised as a lone genius whose theory of continental drift met widespread rejection until well after his death. In fact, the main tenets of the theory gained widespread acceptance by European researchers already in the 1920s, and the debates were mostly about specific details. However, the theory took longer to be accepted in North America.

Modern developments

The tectonic plates of the world were mapped in the second half of the 20th century.

In the early 1950s, the new science of paleomagnetism pioneered at the University of Cambridge by S. K. Runcorn and at Imperial College by P.M.S. Blackett was soon producing data in favour of Wegener's theory. By early 1953 samples taken from India showed that the country had previously been in the Southern hemisphere as predicted by Wegener. By 1959, the theory had enough supporting data that minds were starting to change, particularly in the United Kingdom where, in 1964, the Royal Society held a symposium on the subject.

The 1960s saw several relevant developments in geology, notably the discoveries of seafloor spreading and Wadati–Benioff zones, and this led to the rapid resurrection of the continental drift hypothesis in the form of its direct descendant, the theory of plate tectonics. Maps of the geomorphology of the ocean floors created by Marie Tharp in cooperation with Bruce Heezen were an important contribution to the paradigm shift that was starting. Wegener was then recognised as the founding father of one of the major scientific revolutions of the 20th century.

With the advent of the Global Positioning System (GPS) in 1993, it became possible to measure continental drift directly.

Awards and honours

The Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, was established in 1980 on Wegener's centenary. It awards the Wegener Medal in his name. The crater Wegener on the Moon and the crater Wegener on Mars, as well as the asteroid 29227 Wegener and the peninsula where he died in Greenland (Wegener Peninsula near Ummannaq, 71°12′N 51°50′W), are named after him.

The European Geosciences Union sponsors an Alfred Wegener Medal & Honorary Membership "for scientists who have achieved exceptional international standing in atmospheric, hydrological or ocean sciences, defined in their widest senses, for their merit and their scientific achievements."

Selected works

• Wegener, Alfred (1911). Thermodynamik der Atmosphäre [Thermodynamics of the Atmosphere] (in German). Leipzig: Verlag Von Johann Ambrosius Barth.
• Wegener, Alfred (1912). "Die Herausbildung der Grossformen der Erdrinde (Kontinente und Ozeane), auf geophysikalischer Grundlage". Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen (in German). 63: 185–195, 253–256, 305–309. (Presented at the annual meeting of the German Geological Society, Frankfurt am Main, 6 January 1912).
• Wegener, Alfred (July 1912). "Die Entstehung der Kontinente". Geologische Rundschau (in German). 3 (4): 276–292. Bibcode:1912GeoRu...3..276W. doi:10.1007/BF02202896. S2CID 129316588.
• Wegener, Alfred (1922). Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane [The Origin of Continents and Oceans] (in German). ISBN 3-443-01056-3. LCCN unk83068007.
• Wegener, Alfred (1929). Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane [The Origin of Continents and Oceans] (in German) (4th ed.). Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn Akt. Ges. ISBN 3-443-01056-3.
  • English language edition: Wegener, Alfred (1966). The Origin of Continents and Oceans. Translated by John Biram, from the fourth revised German edition. New York: Dover. ISBN 0-486-61708-4.  British edition: Methuen, London (1968).
• Köppen, W. & Wegener, A. (1924): Die Klimate der geologischen Vorzeit, Borntraeger Science Publishers. English language edition: The Climates of the Geological Past 2015.
• Wegener, Elsie; Loewe, Fritz, eds. (1939). Greenland Journey, The Story of Wegener's German Expedition to Greenland in 1930–31 as told by Members of the Expedition and the Leader's Diary. Translated by Winifred M. Deans, from the seventh German edition. London: Blackie & Son Ltd.