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Tendances
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Riots20
- 2. A burned-out house and cars on the Broadwater Farm housing estate, Tottenham, London, the day after the riot of 6th October 1985. (Photo by Julian Herbert/Getty Images)
- 3. "You tell them that it’s a life for for a life from now on. This is war"
- 4. Tottenham Riots (Photo: Beacon Radio)
- 5. "Everyone in edmonton enfield wood green everywhere in north link up at enfield town station at 4 o clock sharp!"
- 6. Slavoj Zizek
- 7. "It is from the point of view of property that there are thieves and stealing"
- 10. SPREADING AWARENESS (WITHOUT BEING AWARE)
- 12. NOTHING TO “LIKE” HERE
Notes de l'éditeur
- In October 1985, on the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham where the death of Cynthia Jarrett sparked riots that culminated in the brutal murder of PC Keith Blakelock, a community leader stood on his chair at a packed open-air meeting. The man bellowed into a megaphone to the 150 residents in front of him:
- "You tell them that it's a life for a life from now on. This is war." A horde of police officers listened to him In the fateful summer of 2011 police is still listening to desperate rioters on the streets of London demanding to be heard and demanding to implement a change!
- The death of Tottenham resident Mark Duggan sparked an outrage on Facebook. It took to twitter and then to the streets. The police observed the situation as closely as they did back 1985, this time though also scraping the open channels of Social Media. And when the surveillance became too obnoxious and ubiquitous the free folk took to closed social media circuits, like BBM. Here's where the authorities got lost. Unable to exercise in vigilance it could not observe the brewing of the tipping point
- 'Everyone in edmonton enfield wood green everywhere in north link up at enfield town station at 4 o clock sharp' The two polls of political discussion took very stereotypical approach. On the right side the rioters faced assaults of being just agenda-less looters.
- Slovenian Philosopher Slavoj Zizek, paraphrased: Even if Zygmunt Bauman characterised the riots as acts of ‘ defective and disqualified consumers ’ : more than anything else, they were a manifestation of a consumerist desire violently enacted when unable to realise itself in the ‘ proper ’ way – by shopping. As such, they also contain a moment of genuine protest, in the form of an ironic response to consumerist ideology: ‘ You call on us to consume while simultaneously depriving us of the means to do it properly – so here we are doing it the only way we can! ’
- Despite the wholesomeness of Zizek's voice, it's worth to turn to Foucault "It is from the point of view of property that there are thieves and stealing". When we always see looting as nothing but thieving and refuse to grant to it the status of a conscious political act, an outburst of "popular justice" against a corrupt and corrupting capitalist system, we are assuming the point of view of the very forces we are trying to overthrow.
- The liberal approach dictated that if the government fails to represent the collectivity the way it expects it, the civil society the society has all the right to collapse it. If a government decides to be violent against a part of the society, it does not act on the behalf of the public. It sparks a riot
- Social media is still a relatively new way of communicating, which was the reason for having to find precedencies in dealing with riots orchestrated through them. Controversies arouse around suggesting what was by some journalists called (social) media blackout in times of crisis,
- what potentially could have caused more social unrest, seen as attack on freedom of communication. Immediately after David Cameron made a suggestion of temporary shutting down social media to reach the customers identified as the perpetrators, it unsurprisingly China and Iran who offered their congratulations.
- There is no doubt though that social media enabled the rioters to coordinate looting and destruction and outwit the police, especially via BBM, which because of the way it works with personalized pin makes it more difficult to track by the police than, ie FB.
- The police were asking the public to identify anyone they recognize in the pictures, which were captured by CCTV cameras. While social media may give users the ability to interact and share information quickly and simply on laptops and smartphones, it also makes them incredibly easy to monitor and track down.
- While rioters turned to the Blackberry Messenger to organize, Twitter and Faceboo k were f ull of cleanup organizers and followers in the early aftermath of the rioting.
- The use of social media in the riots was not of an advantage or disadvantage in general, simply because just as quickly as it was blamed for fuelling the London riots, social media and other technologies were being harnessed to rally people for the clean-up effort and to identify looters. Social media did not cause the riots; it was the rioters, who have been communicating as people do in modern age.