The rise of People Power

We live in a brave new world where the blogosphere, the Twittersphere and any number of other places ending in the word 'sphere' serve as the true barometer of what the world is really talking about.

So, in order to set the news agenda, the mainstream media increasingly have to scrutinise the 'Most Read', 'Most Watched' and 'Top Trending' topics. These are powered by the People; the Consumer; the Mob - chasing after the public mood like Benny Hill running around after half-naked nurses in a park.

And that's where 5 live comes in. On Sunday 2 January, Jon Holmes' Mob Rule returns to the airwaves to swivel a comic eye at this phenomenon, and examines just how the Mob have come to rule.

We dive into the stream of often insane consciousness that spills from the public's furious fingertips and into keyboards around the world, and sieve through the BBC's Have Your Say website, newspaper comments pages, random Facebook shouting and online campaigns to get an all-too-often disturbing insight into the mind of the Mob.

But it isn't just what people are saying about the news via social networking and the web that interests us. From Wikileaks and Robin Hood Airport Twitter-gate, to the outpouring of online hate for a woman who put a cat in a bin, it is also the fact that the Mob itself is making the headlines.

And that's where you come in. One of the phenomena we'll be looking at in the show is the inadvertent power of Tripadvisor. What began as a simple hotel review site now has the power to shut down hotels and forever tarnish reputations.

Hoteliers are alarmed at its influence and up in arms that people can post bad reviews anonymously. The knock-on effect is that some hotels now give guests incentives to write glowing reviews, and others trash the opposition with 'guests' accusing rival hotels of everything from food poisoning to racism.

We'd like to get 5 live listeners' responses to this. Have you ever posted a bad review on Tripadvisor? Have you ever been put off a hotel by reading one? Have you ever lied in a review or exaggerated the truth, or did you see it as fair payback for a less than satisfying stay? What would a hotel have to do to bribe you to upgrade your review?

You can contact us by email, and we may well get back in touch with you to find out a bit more about your story. Or, if you'd prefer to remain anonymous and hide deep inside the internet without naming names, then feel free to leave your comment below. Anything you post could be used in the programme, and it'll all be put together over the next few weeks.