Police have 'new' containment tactic!

An article in the Evening Standard today (22nd March) reports Assistant Commissioner Lynne Owens (in charge of Public Order policing at the Met) as saying that the Met have a new containment tactic that 'has not been trialled yet' because the last 2 demos where it was in place were peaceful, but they may use it if there's trouble on the TUC demo this sat 26th March. Now I currently have no idea what this new tactic might be (maybe a 'super kettle with bells on'?!), but articles like this are not particularly encouraging as they just emphasise the classic ideological position the authorities have to protests and show to me that the Police are gearing up for trouble. I worry that providing briefings like this beforehand risk any disorder becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy, but we'll see what happens this saturday. Link to story follows below;
  
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23934441-police-put-firms-on-riot-alert-for-tuc-anti-cuts-march-by-250000.do

Panic buying of iodine in response to Japanese nuclear crisis

The following article on Channel 4 News web-site illustrates the concept of panic-buying, which I have referred to in earlier blogs.

http://www.channel4.com/news/japan-iodine-supplies-dwindle-amid-radiation-fears

There was also Colin Blakemore from the Medical Research Council (MRC) on the programme talking about this concept. He spoke about how while it may not be medically necessary to take iodine if one is not in the immediate vicinity of a radiation leak, it is not necessarily irrational if one considers it in the context that there is a widespread lack of public trust in the nuclear industry. Therefore, people may not always believe messages that are put out that downplay the threat of radiation contamination (even if they're true!). This is clearly a problem, but I would argue one of the public not having any trust in the nuclear industry (and perhaps also government), rather than people displaying irrational behaviour. If I thought I was at risk of nuclear contamination, then I would go straight out and get some iodine for me and my family. Thankfully, because I am based in the UK I don't feel the need to do so at the moment (but maybe I'll eat  more seaweed for a while!)   

Japan- fragile or resilient?

I've been trawling through some of the footage of the tsunami that has just hit Japan, and found a rather interesting but also strangely idiosyncratic article by Hugh Levinson from the BBC;

'Japan: A fragile country at the mercy of nature'- 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/9422281.stm

Given the title, one would perhaps expect the story to focus on the fragility of Japan. However, while the word 'panic' is mentioned once, it is used to describe the journalist's own internal feelings, rather than any mass panic of those affected. He also mentions the term resilience in the following way;

"The city of Tokyo has shown extraordinary resilience. In March 1945, a couple of decades after the great earthquake, American B29s dropped incendiary bombs on the city of wooden houses. The resulting firestorm killed 100,000 people in the course of a single night. Waiting for the "big one" is a part of Japanese life".

Therefore, this begs the question of why does the title focus on fragility, while the body of the article focuses on resilience? It seems here that even when the coverage of emergencies rightly points out the incredible resilience that people can show in response to disasters, it is all too easy to slip back into the pervasive myth of vulnerability, even when the material presented suggests the opposite!

New Camden Journal article

An article on my work on crowds has just been published by the New Camden Journal, and is available in e-copy via;
http://www.islingtontribune.com/reviews/features/2011/mar/feature-popular-uprising-academics-take-media-portrayals-recent-protests-h

 and pdf of how it appears in print;
http://eu.vocuspr.com/ViewAttachment.aspx?EID=OP0Y29cs0ydekJivJUJbsF5/6U/cpNxEtbHXaZhF6Is=

Some thoughts on the closing statements of the 7/7 Inquests

As the 7/7 inquests come to a close, the BBC have published an article on-line about the people who helped others after the 4 explosions on London’s transport system on July 7th 2005; 'London bombings: unsung heroes of 7 July'; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12154040

There are some moving stories about the bravery of people who often risked their lives to help their fellow passengers (who were mostly complete strangers) in scenes of horrific devastation after the suicide bombers detonated their devices. However, I worry that the tone of the article risks supporting the usual misperception that co-operation and altruism is the exception rather than the rule in mass emergencies. Furthermore, reports like this imply that were it not for a few isolated individuals holding everyone together, then mass panic would undoubtedly ensue- something that almost never happens in disasters.

The article mentions the bystander effect (a psychological process whereby people can be reluctant to help others, because they don't want to get involved, or feel a sense of diffusion of responsibility in a crowd) to explain why people can ignore others in need.  However, while there is a lot of experimental evidence to show that bystander apathy can be recreated in the laboratory, studies of behaviour in real-life emergencies is much less conclusive.  Much work has been done by colleagues of mine into the bystander effect, such as Mark Levine (http://psychology.exeter.ac.uk/staff/index.php?web_id=Mark_Levine) who disputes simplistic interpretations of the bystander effect. He argues that we should instead focus on the situations in which we intervene to help others, and has produced a large body of evidence to show that if we feel a sense of shared identity and hence empathy with others, then co-operation is much more likely. Therefore, rather than bemoaning ‘human nature’ as inherently selfish, perhaps we should look instead at how we can encourage people to help others in need.

The work that I did with colleagues into crowd behaviour in mass emergencies (http://www.sussex.ac.uk/affiliates/panic/) did focus a lot on survivors’ accounts of 7/7, and we found that altruism was the norm and not the exception. We argued that this was because the emergency created a sense of shared fate amongst the survivors, which encouraged co-operative and not selfish behaviour. This is not to say that we don’t recognize that there were some incredibly heroic people who helped others in the aftermath of the explosions (I felt privileged to have met a few during my research in this area, and was moved and inspired by their accounts). However, the general mood of the situation (relative calm and/or shock amongst survivors rather than mass hysteria) meant that those brave individuals were able to step forward and encourage general co-operation through their actions. This was because they were seen as representative of this calm norm and so were effective in helping others and encouraging general co-operation amongst survivors. Had there been an atmosphere of mass panic amongst survivors, I doubt that such brave actions would have been so influential amongst others. Therefore, I would argue that when general co-operation occurs in mass emergencies (and when it is physically possible to do so, it generally happens), it is not in spite of the crowd, it is because of it. Therefore, emergency management strategies should take this into account, as survivors may be able to provide vital help in the time before the emergency services reach survivors in the aftermath of future emergencies.  

When does panic happen?

A question I often get asked is along the lines of, 'in what situations will panic happen, because surely it happens sometimes, if people are faced by extreme danger & know they're going to die etc?'

This is a tricky one to answer sometimes, and we have to accept that there may be some gaps in the evidence that we look at, especially in emergencies where there are mass fatalities. This is because those most affected by disasters are by definition those killed in them, so it's rather difficult getting accounts from them (unless you have access to a reliable medium!). However, the data that has been collected from such emergencies suggests that even in situations of extreme and/or fatal threats, social norms and organisation tend to remain and rarely break down. There is even some evidence to suggest that when people are in a situation where they expect to die and there is no prospect of escape, they tend to become apathetic and resigned to their fate, rather than descending into hysterical panic.
Nevertheless, there are at least 2 situations I can think of that could perhaps be described as a form of panic, which I will now describe (but they still do not fit stereotypical views of 'mass panic'): 'elite panic' & 'panic buying'.

Elite Panic:
This concept was first suggested Lee Clarke in 2008 and explored by Rebecca Solnit in her excellent 2009 book, 'A Paradise built in Hell: The extraordinary communities that arise in disasters', published by Viking. She argues quite compellingly that communities respond much better in disasters than they are often given credit for, but that those in authority tend to fear the breakdown of law and order in such situations, and often impose over-protective and sometimes draconian emergency response measures that could be considered as 'elite panic'. Citing a variety of different emergencies, she argues that mass mutual aid quickly emerges amongst those affected, but this is often sabaotaged by the authorities who fear the breakdown of social structures and existing hierarchical power structures in their aftermath. She presents shocking evidence of how after the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the forces of law and order and armed vigilantes were often shooting survivors on sight, believing them to be looters. So, in these situations, it seems to be those in authority that panic, rather than those most directly affected.

Panic Buying:
The problems of panic buying were aptly demonstrated in the 2000 fuel crisis in the UK, where protests by those transporting fuel supplies from oil refineries to petrol stations almost brought the country to a stand-still, as pumps ran dry, and some foodstuffs (bread, milk etc) ran out, as people rushed out to fill up their cars' petrol tanks and stock up their cupboards in the fear that supplies would run out. The irony of the situation, was that it wasn't the protests that caused the pumps to run dry. What caused the shortages was that the UK and many other developed economies operate on a 'just in time' basis to save on storage costs, and the distribution systems are not designed to cope with everyone filling up their tanks at the same time (as this almost never happens, and so it would waste resources having stocks to cope with this once in a generation eventuality). Therefore, when the media reported that 'panic-buying' was going on, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy, as people rushed out to fill up their tanks and cupboards before stocks ran out, thus creating the very shortages that had not exsited before it was reported. What may seem to an outsider as irrational 'panic-buying', may seem like a very sensible thing to do to each individual, as they may fear that if they don't stock up, they risk going without. This is a very good example of a social dilemma, in that what is in an individual's own interest may not be good for the collective. This is an area where more responsible reporting by the media could play a part, because reporting that 'panic-buying' is occurring can encourage people to act in their own short-term interest. Thefore, perhaps instead of reporting outbreaks of 'panic-buying' the media should instead report that stocks  will remain sufficient just so long as people don't try to hoard as much as they can in the misplaced fear that there will be shortgaes

Cairo protests

The situation in Egypt is currently rather confused & fluid. The BBC are reporting this morning (3rd Feb) that a retired Egyptian general with close links to the army is claiming that the army are ready to move against Mubarak if the violence from his supporters continues. However, BBC footage I've seen of the initial attack on anti-Mubarak protestors is quite interesting (link follows below). You can see how when pro-Mubarak supporters ride into the crowd on horse-back (and some on camels!) at Tahiri square, people do initially scatter, but then quickly re-group and surround the horses, and turn on them, with reports of them pulling the riders off. This results in the violent conflict in the square yesterday which saw at least 3 deaths and up to 1500 injuries and by all accouints the pro-Mubarak supporters were repulsed from the square.

I would say, that yet again, this is a very good example of how what may initially be presented as 'panic' (eg scatterring in the face of attacks), could instead be seen in terms of an ordered response to a credible threat, which is limited and governed by the social context in which crowd members find themselves   

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/12348634