Interesting piece. There are a couple other psychological phenomena that can be applied to these types of events.

Protest is a widespread “learned behavior” of people which has propelled “crowd psychology” (essentially a recipe for disaster).

Also there’s been a great deal of “transference” between the public affairs of the state and the consumers of popular media, similar to what occurs between a therapist and client in a clinical session. An unhealthy emotional transference to say the least. I cannot remember if it was Friedrich Nietzsche or Carl Jung who stressed this awareness about an unhealthy personal development when the individual identifies themselves with affairs of the state.

When this is occurs the individual develops distress and emptiness because the state does not represent the individual. Lot’s of concern for the public consumers of media these days.