From LA to London: Riots and the role of social media

REVOLUTIONARY TECHNOLOGY OR RIOTOUS DANGER?

BY SORCHA BERRY

IT’S 1992 in Los Angeles, April to be precise, and a jury has just acquitted three white and one Hispanic Los Angeles Police officers of charges related to beating up a black motorist called Rodney King.
Despite video footage of the four men violently assaulting King, the prosecution’s case fell through, sparking riots and looting in South Central LA. Years of racial tensions, rising unemployment and high rates of poverty among African-Americans have since been attributed to the causes of the riots and looting. Fifty-three people died with thousands injured over the six days.
Fast-forward to 2011 in Tottenham, north London – August, to be precise — and a 29-year-old black man called Mark Duggan has just been killed by police officers.
Following what began as peaceful demonstrations calling for an inquiry into Duggan’s death, thousands of people began rioting and looting throughout London, in predominantly working-class areas. Outside of London - in places like Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool and Manchester - young, angry residents took to the streets too, with five people killed as a result. Thousands of people were arrested, and one particular conviction seems to have gained the attention of the media due to the extremity of the sentence handed down.
Jordan Blackshaw (20) and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan (22)  were both given four-year jail terms for using social networking sites to “organise and orchestrate” public disorder.
Blackshaw’s crime was setting up an event on Facebook calling for “massive Norwich lootin’” and Sutcliffe created a page called “Warrington riots” calling for something similar. Unlike Los Angeles in 1992, some people in England had the ability to organise riots and looting with ease, using the social networks available to them.  British Prime Minister David Cameron has since threatened to ban those who are convicted of riot-related offences from social networks and restrictions on its use amid social unrest. However, following protests from leading human rights groups, including Amnesty International, it’s been suggested in some quarters that British Home Secretary Theresa May and Security Minister James Brokenshire will explore how law enforcement could better use Twitter and Facebook rather than restrict its use in emergencies.
With conflicting stories, if the Government do decide to restrict access or ban those convicted from the sites, what good can come of it? The riots were organised spontaneously. Groups were set up within hours of the first break-out of looting in Tottenham. Word spread quickly on Facebook, faster on Twitter. Does this mean that social networking is a negative thing if it can lead to such mayhem? No, it doesn’t.
There are a variety of reasons suggested as to why the riots happened. A growing gulf between youth and the police or an underclass in society, perhaps? Rising unemployment? A widening gap between rich and poor? Lack of investment in working-class communities? A culture of crime? Social and family breakdown? Many theories have been thrown around and debated in the public sphere but none can rightly claim that social networking is at fault.
Social networks simply act to provide us with instant communication and, as Jared Cohen of Google said, while social network tools are not the trigger for such events, they can act as an “accelerant”. Police and politicians were quick to point the finger of blame to Twitter (in particular) because its role in organising mass action has become expected and well-documented. Twitter offers its users the opportunity to organise mass action with little effort. During the riots Twitter set a record for the highest ‘UK visits’ to the site, proving that it did play a role in the events — but what role exactly? It alerted people about areas where trouble or looting was breaking out or clashes between rioters and police. It helped organise a community clean-up after rioting and it provided journalists with an instantaneous and consistent flow of new information.
The first widespread use of Twitter is said to have been to organise a protest after the April 2009 election in Moldova, which emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and sits between Romania and Ukraine. The winning Communist Party was accused of rigging the outcome of the election and Twitter was used to organise protests, which eventually descended into chaos. There was widespread rioting, property damage and looting. Blogs and other sites were used to spread the world of the demonstrations and it soon became known as ‘The Twitter Revolution’.
Following that, were the Iranian election protests in 2009/2010 and the Egyptian protests in 2011, in both of which Twitter played a pivotal role in spreading the word and organising large numbers of people.
The Establishment can continue to blame social networking for the ease with which the masses were informed about the rioting in England but the social and economic issues behind the civil unrest cannot be addressed by simply banning its use. We are becoming an increasingly more technologically savvy society and that needs to be embraced rather than shied away from.
The Establishment can learn to utilise social networking in a positive manner and stay away from the Luddite attitude they were so quick to display. In 1992, the people in Los Angeles managed to convene quickly without the use of social networks. Anger can be a great motivator and, had they the chance to use Twitter, I do wonder if the outcome would have been much different than it was? The opportunity to blame an open, fast and easily accessible platform of communication arose for the political elite in England and elsewhere, and in the process, glossed over the more substantive issues that lead to mass civil unrest.