crowd behavior

Cardi B stunned fans last weekend when she tomahawked a wireless microphone at an audience member who allegedly splashed a drink at her during a performance at Drai’s in Las Vegas. Now, the Las Vegas Metro Police Department has opened a battery investigation after a fan standing nearby said she was hit, at least partially, by the device.

The incident is just the latest in a recent spate of similar occurrences. Among other episodes, fans have thrown a sex toy at Lil Nas X; a teddy bear at Lady Gaga; and a cell phone at Bebe Rexha — the latter of which caused visible injuries and reportedly led the 27-year-old man who hurled it to be charged with a felony. It’s enough that some event security professionals are worried the trend could tarnish live music’s post-pandemic comeback.

“People have been talking about changes in fan behavior since the return of live events in 2021, and it’s not just in concerts but at sporting events, theater and live comedy as well,” says John Drury, a professor of social psychology at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom. Widely recognized as one of the leading experts on crowd behavior at concerts, Drury says that high-profile examples of rule-breakers experiencing the consequences of their actions can serve as an important deterrence against boundary-crossing that can go “beyond throwing things on stage…includ[ing] rudeness, aggression and dangerous behavior.”

Earlier this year, Drury and his colleagues at Sussex’s department of social psychology received funding from concert promoter Live Nation to study the causes of negative behavior at concerts and develop potential strategies for reducing instances of fans acting out. While the visual of Cardi B hurling a microphone at an unruly fan might serve as an important reminder that actions have consequences, it’s unreasonable to expect artists to physically enforce conduct rules at their shows.

It’s more reasonable to task venue personnel with identifying and deterring bad actors from engaging in bad behavior — but that, says Drury, is only slightly more effective. Most venue staff members are responsible for different elements of show production, while security staff is often tasked with defensive objectives like keeping fans out of dressing rooms, enforcing credentials and controlling access to meet and greets. But fans behaving badly in the audience is largely a blind spot.

“Fans are a venue’s most effective resource for preventing show stoppage and disruptive behavior,” says Drury, who advocates for greater resources to train venue staff. Through training and education, Drury wants to see venues develop fan communities that police themselves and deter bad behavior.

Drury’s theory that fan behavior can be externally formed and channeled in a way that encourages self-policing comes from a career spent studying crowd dynamics. Unlike traditional crowd control, which he says was initially created to understand the “madness” of the crowd, crowd dynamics looks at the beliefs and values of crowds. Even an unruly crowd like the one that took part in the Watts Uprising in 1965, Drury says, can help academics understand the dynamics drawing them together.

“While the dominant representation of [those who took part in the Watts Uprising] wasn’t positive and from the outside looked like chaos, violence and disorder, if you look closely, you can see there are limits,” says Drury. “[They] picked only on certain targets … there are limits that serve as a function of who they are, in line with their social values and identities.”

Once those similarities within the crowd are understood and limits are identified, it becomes easier to create conditions within a crowd that “allow participants to be more than just individuals,” he says.

These individuals are key to creating a self-policing culture at a venue, Drury says, and it can be as simple as identifying fans with leadership qualities, encouraging fans to connect with one another and creating events that reward and celebrate a venue or event’s values.

“Our research shows that there is generally a lower incidence of serious disruptive behavior at events with smaller, more intimate crowds in which everyone was there for the same reason,” says Drury.

That can be difficult to achieve at a large stadium show or mega-festival, but Drury says organizers can create community-driven environments that foster self-policing and social order by tapping into the “transformative power of large groups” and encouraging positive participation. That means communicating with fans in a voice that emphasizes the group experience without delineating between fans and event staff.

“Fans are more likely to act out when they feel the event itself is working against them,” he says, citing the disastrous Woodstock ’99, where fans — many loyal to bands — began acting out against the festival itself.

Drury also recommends using signage, social media and pre-event communications that celebrate the positive benefits and emotional highs of fan culture and coming together in groups.

Drury’s behavioral research has included extensive work on the causes of stampedes and mass panic, as well as the psychology of religious pilgrimages like the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudia Arabia. In a Feb. 28 study created to understand how crowds respond to public threats, Drury used virtual reality technology to analyze how participants respond to non-verbal cues during mass panic scenarios, like an explosion in a crowded market.

Drury also utilizes historical research, survivor interviews and sends researchers to observe festivals around the world to shape his models on what he calls “the power of the crowd.” That can be critical when dealing with issues like a spike in cell phone throwing that Drury says feels driven by a need for individual attention. After all, fans and bands have famously thrown things at each other for decades. Underwear was tossed at crooner Tom Jones, mixtapes and CDRs were frisbeed at mashup DJs like Girl Talk and millions of bouquets were thrown on stage for legends like the late Selena Quintanilla and Jenni Rivera. Alice Cooper once had a live chicken thrown at him on stage while performing in Toronto, leading the shock rocker to cup the chicken with both hands and throw it back into the crowd, thinking it would fly off. It didn’t.

In the past, fans threw items on stage to get an artist’s attention, Drury said. “Now, many of these fans simply want attention from everyone.” Drury partially blames an exodus of “trained and experienced employees” from the events sector during the pandemic, along with a new generation of music fans attending shows despite being “unfamiliar with the prevailing norms at events” and older fans who may be “’out of practice’ after a period without events.”

In some instances, that could require a back-to-basics approach, posting the venue rules in large letters near the stage, playing public service announcements between acts reminding fans to be courteous to one another and laying out the consequences for extreme behavior, including arrests and show cancellations. Venues should never use heavy-handed tactics or rely solely on the use of force to de-escalate tensions, Drury says.

“The most valuable people at venues right now are the those that can deescalate situations and diplomatically deal with problematic situations,” he says, noting that music fans are starting to attend concerts at a younger age: “More education is needed to bring younger fans up to speed on what it means to be a lifelong music fan.”