How Does Cybervigilantism Work?
According to Rainie & Wellman (2012), monumental changes have taken place, including the rise of social networking, the capacity of the Internet to empower individuals, and the always-on connectivity of mobile devices. Consequently, daily life is increasingly networked, as large, loosely knit social circles of networked individuals expand opportunities for learning and problem solving beyond households and neighborhoods.
As everyday rhythms and activities are networked, this facilitates acts of cybervigilantism which involve processes of collective intelligence and transmediation.
Collective intelligence refers to emergent information from massive human collaboration, which is facilitated by online applications to augment the pool of existing knowledge. Cognitive surplus is obtained by crowdsourcing and leveraging knowledge and social relationships among a voluntary pool of netizens in the production and sharing of data across interactive media. Thus, cyber vigilantism can enrich the depth of knowledge construction via conventional search engines and other Web applications.
Furthermore, in light of digital media convergence, cyber vigilantism involves the transmediation of information across multiple media platforms as online participants engage with media and with each other to spread information and to create new texts. Examining transmediation and the remix culture of digital content in cybervigilantism is important, since mash-ups have the potential to expedite public scrutiny, effect changes in lay perception and judgment, and constitute (re)presentations of the “truth.”