The weekend long riots which have been taking place in Tottenham, London, have been made worse by the use of social media by the locals, reports, police and even Members of Parliament have said. A very brief back story for those of you who may be less aware, Thursday 4th August, a man, Mark Duggan, was shot dead by police in a raid. What started off as a peaceful and law abiding vigil for him turned into mass hysteria, riots and looting with hundreds of arrests and mass amounts of damage inflicted over London.
The argument is, that social media was used intentionally, and unintentionally, to spread inaccurate or completely fabricated tales to the online community. People were Tweeting and Facebooking stories and events "as they happened" whether they were known to be true or not. They were even Tweeting just to cause a stir and make things seem worse than they were. Or to make others believe that the riots were a good thing. They were even looking to recruit new rioters and chaos.
The problem with social media, is that it is freely and easily available to the public, and people reading these updates may have been taking them at face value and being inspired to join the riots. Whether they agreed with the cause or not. Or, at the very least, these networks offered a portal for gossip, lies and rumours to be spread and cause problems.
What's worse, is that people were using these social networks not only to encourage riots, but even to belittle and laugh at the events. A quick look over the profiles and hashtag searches revelaled some worrying tweets of people using Twitter and social media to add fuel to the already raging flames. For example, one tweet read:
"Heading to Tottenham to join the riot! who's with me? #ANARCHY".
This tweet was then followed by:
Hang on, that last tweet should've read 'Curling up on the sofa with an Avengers DVD and my missus, who's with me?' What a klutz I am!"
This sort of tweeting is arguably harmless, but it can be seen as a childish, rude and inappropriate use of social media when it's seen to be playing a prominent role in a volatile situation. Belittling a situation where thousands of people have taken to the streets, burnt down public buildings and even family homes, is completely unhelpful and disgusting behavior. Don't forget, this whole event started because of a death by shooting. A little respect for the people who have been innocent victims and families of those involved in these events would not go a miss.
QUOTES:
'People were Tweeting and Facebooking stories and events "as they happened" whether they were known to be true or not '
> This quote shows the media knew that social networking was not always encouraging people to go out and perform these actions, it shows the audience using social networking has been helpful to those not apart of the riots, allowing them to get easy information to what has happened. However as it says "whether they were known to be true or not" connotes the audience is also producing inaccurate information. Understandably, the social networking sites where being monitored- the audience using the social networking sites was either perceived as either being involved, passing on information or allowing the police to know what was going to be targeted next.
' Belittling a situation where thousands of people have taken to the streets, burnt down public buildings and even family homes, is completely unhelpful and disgusting behavior'
> The police, who monitored social networking is shown as being frustrated by the description of the people mocking the riots by saying "unhelpful and disgusting behavior". By the police advertising the fact of mocking the riots is "unhelpful" encouraged the audience to increase the mockery to wind the police up in a discrete way. I believe the police wanted the situation to be seen as very serious but not understanding that people who 'belittled' the situation could have been giving a message to those participating to notice how pathetic and useless there doings are to the community.
The argument is, that social media was used intentionally, and unintentionally, to spread inaccurate or completely fabricated tales to the online community
> The police seem to want to be believe that social networking helped spread 'fabricated tales' but do not wish to believe it could be the truth, they wish to hide from. However, they
recognise both sides by mentioning 'argument' and 'unintentionally'. which connotes the social networking is not fully to blame for the riots. They believe that it also informed people and keeping them safe. On the other hand, they do not show fully they believe the benefits because by saying 'unintentionally' it showed that people who was advertising the riots as a good thing where also asserting people to stay away from those areas, yet without realising.
