First time I read about the “broken windows” theory was in Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point. The idea that chaos and disorder in urban surroundings can have a psychological effect on people was put to test in the 80’s by the criminologist George Kelling who exemplified:

“Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it’s unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside. Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars.”

Now a group of researchers from Holland have put the theory on trial with a range of experimental tests, as The Economist reports. In one of them they created two different environments for the test: one of order and one of disorder. In the one with order, an alley’s walls were freshly painted and in the other it was decorated with graffiti. The study showed that a high number of people were much more tempted to litter in the alley with disorder, than in the nice and clean counterpart.

“There were no rubbish bins in the alley, so a cyclist had three choices. He could take the flyer with him, hang it on another bicycle (which the researchers counted as littering) or throw it to the floor. When the alley contained graffiti, 69% of the riders littered compared with 33% when the walls were clean.”

I find the experiment extremely interesting, and have no doubt that we can transfer the results to the internet sphere where “online litter” and “broken web windows” increasingly are a source of frustration. I’ve written about online conversations before and how we avoid trolls at our websites. I think we can use the “broken windows” theory as a theoretical background for the need of cleaning our communities and websites as fast as possible. Get rid of the bullying, bitching and mocking as fast as possible.

(On a personal note, I chose to put the idea into action when I read about it. We’ve had so much trouble with graffiti, tagging and stencils around our own apartment building for several years (we live in the center of Aarhus). But for the last couple of years I have painted over any graffiti as fast as I could to prevent the “broken windows” effect. Fortunately it works. The surrounding buildings get more coated in graffiti for each weekend that passes whereas my building mostly gets off.)