The age of online news has made it easy to watch the chaos unfold, most moving to me was hearing the Reeves family speak about seeing their family furniture business of five generations go up in flames in Croydon. This has apparently been the worst rioting the country has seen since the 1980’s.
It seems clear that the riots have had little or nothing to do with the death of Mark Duggan, who was shot by police after attempting to arrest him in Tottenham. What started out as a peaceful demonstration against the shooting quickly turned into something quite different – unprovoked violence, destruction and looting without a cause. Whether these scenes are the repercussion of a breakdown in society and youth’s lack of respect for authority is another issue – what’s surprising is the amount of blame that is being placed on social media, with Twitter being the main target.
Apparently today’s angry mobs are organised and efficient, plotting plans of attack via Twitter and Blackberry messenger. There is now a noted rise in debate as to whether social media has been instrumental to the riots – this seems to be where both the media and government have been pointing the finger. The Daily Mail last week went as far as to caption one of its pictures, “Twitter riot: a red London double decker bus burns.”
British Prime Minister David Cameron also made this statement following the riots, “Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them. So we are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.”
The young people involved are from an age which spends their lives online. So it should come as no surprise when these easy communication channels are used. However, Twitter cannot moderate every piece of content that’s uploaded in real time. I simply don’t think this social media network is to blame. The government should embrace social media and try to see it for the good, rather than using it as a scapegoat to mask the wider problems within today’s young society.
On the flipside, the amazing cleanup efforts amongst communities have attracted tens of thousands of followers via the @riotcleanup Twitter profile, which encourages and helps to organise the task of clearing up the terrible mess these riots have left behind.
The good side of social media also emerging is that authorities have been using these channels to catch the stupid youths who have been sharing photo’s of themselves to the “social world” posing with their new HD TV’s and trainers.
In addition to this, Blackberry has also announced that it will be releasing details of relevant conversations to the authorities, a move that should hopefully see social networks being used to help convict the ring leaders of the riots.
I hope everyone affected by the riots, including friends in London can quickly recover from these events and Social Media will continue to be used a positive communications tool.
