In Iran and Egypt, Twitter has played a key role in allowing freedom fighters—unable to use state controlled media to get their message out—to quickly respond to changing events and organize themselves to exert powerful influence for democracy over dictatorship.
But now in Britain we are seeing the flip side. Rioters are using social media to broadcast and agitate, gaining and accelerating momentum in ways that authorities, this time in already-democratic countries facing economic hardship, cannot control.
According to the Associated Press:
“If you’re down for making money, we’re about to go hard in east London,” one looter tweeted.
One man who identified himself only as “Zed” said the riots were “just an excuse for everyone to smash up the place” and that stuff “tastes better when it’s free.”
With financial markets in free fall, domestic budgets facing austerity measures, unemployment at historic highs, and the inequity of wealth continuing to expand here in America, the question is whether the large-scale riots in England will repeat here in the United States.
And if they do, will our technology be used, not to create freedom, but as a key tool in asserting mass rule?
—Photo via the Guardian
Why blame Twitter when the demographic involved is most likely to have a Blackberry?
Blackberry Messanger is generally being seen as what is being used to organise some rioters but by very definition, a riot isn’t an organised event.
With the advent of communication are we going to continually blame the platforms rather than the tool?
As Basil asked, there’s already been clean up campaigns organised via Twitter such as after Vancouver’s riots. There is also “Operation Cup of Tea” on Facebook.
I agree that like most other things social media has the potential to yield both positive and negative outcomes, however I don’t think the positive ones are exclusive to the developing world and the negative ones to developed countries. Remember that looting was also rampant in Egypt early on in their protest movement: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/egypt/8291526/Egypt-crisis-Looters-destroy-mummies-in-Cairo-museum.html.
Similarly, I am sure (or at least I hope) that social media is being used in the UK for purposes other than unleashing chaos. I too will be watching to see how these events play out.
I’m not sure I see different roles here. In both cases social media has a hand in organising groups of people whose aims differ from those of the government of the day. Whether the government is democratic or not does not have any bearing on the role social media is playing. I am quite sure that, however abhorrent the looting is, social media has served to articulate very well the anger of a class of Londoners who feel themselves every bit the victim of the system as a middle class Egyptian might have.
For sure, agreed Jackie. Just think it’s interesting that it works both ways in terms of the power of social media. I think there is a misconception that is only and always for good.
One man’s tool is another man’s weapon. Technology isn’t at fault–people are.
JFB