DIGITAL TOOLS AND THE SHADOW JUSTICE OF DIGILANTISM AND JUNGLE JUUSTICE.
“Digilantism”, also known as digital vigilantism, is the process of using digital tools (digital devices, social media, and crowdsourcing) by digitally vigilant individuals, known as digilantes or ‘digital vigilantes’, to point out and expose suspected wrongdoers with the aim of shaming or punishing them. This process weaponizes the power of a user’s online visibility or digital influence, often bypassing the formal legal system. It is a type of ‘cancel culture’ that can spill from the online space into the physical space, where it can cause real-life consequences like job loss, harassment, distress, violence, or even suicide.
On the other hand, jungle justice, mob justice, or traditional vigilantism is an extrajudicial process that involves violence and punishment administered by a physically present crowd, completely ignoring the formal legal justice process. This form of justice is prevalent in systems with a weak rule of law and high distrust in their justice and police systems. Shockingly, Nigeria is regarded as the country with the highest rate of regional and global forms of mob violence, ahead of Cameroon, South Africa, Uganda, and Ghana.
Jungle justice in the era of digital tools and digital mobs is not only driven by the urge to deliver ‘quick justice,’ but like digilantism, it is also fueled by the same dark impulse: the drive to create and share digital content for awareness, online impressions, and engagements, or other forms of gain or motive.
If you have ever watched clips from a mob justice scene, almost every individual present is a self-appointed “reporter,” driven by the urge to cover a ‘live’ crime scene of torture and dehumanizing treatments against the alleged suspect. The blind fury of the physical mob is a stark, visible reality of the human story about how the people live. It exposes and highlights the distrust and the frustrations of reoccurrences faced by the community.
Corporate giants like Tesla have not faced a physical mob action but have faced a coordinated digital onslaught highlighting every perceived ‘crime’—flaw in their products, workplace culture, ethics, and CEO’s actions. This organized digital vigilance fuels propaganda, cyberbullying, and manufactured public perception. While digilantism encourages retaliation and discrediting perceived wrongdoers, jungle justice encourages a synchronized, copy-and-paste behavior synthesized by a headless mob.
In countries of the EU, digilantism has strongly manifested in themes such as anti-migrant campaigns, the hunt for paedophiles, and political or ideological cases, where digital platforms amplify vigilant activities targeting the perceived wrongdoer. In the USA, digilantism has hijacked the meaning of “wokeness,” transforming it from being a positive call for social alertness on discrimination into a political insult targeted at the perceived extreme political correctness of hypersensitive ideologies. Thus, digilantism is a strong culture in countries of the EU and in the USA, used to expose corruption, misconduct, or as a coordinated retaliation against perceived wrongdoers. However, jungle justice is not a feature of either EU countries, the USA, or any developed country due to their robust legal systems and strong policing.
Both digilantism and jungle justice share common features, as both are driven by extrajudicial punishments powered by deep distrust in formal institutions.
Perhaps one of the oldest scenes of jungle justice was the biblical adulterous woman who was to receive mob justice before Jesus intervened and educated the mobs. Our modern society needs more effective intervention and education that suits the people and their culture in order to checkmate the acts of the physical and digital mobs to avoid miscarriages of justice. We need hopes and not chains!
Written by Byke Freeborn; X/Twitter: @Bykefreeborn