Connor Noland

Ms. Rogers
Writing 2010
Rioting and Social Media
Since the advent of the smart phone, mass communication has become incredibly easy.
With the touch of a screen, lightning fast, nearly real-time information becomes available in the
palm of your hand. Contacting, interacting and sharing ideas with people from around the world
becomes trivial with the use of apps such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. These new social
media platforms allow people to share information much faster than older forms of media, such
as television or newspapers. However, what role does social media play when people decide to
riot? By analyzing the 2011 England Riots and the 2014 Ferguson Riots, one can determine the
role that social media played.
Before determining how much social media affected the 2011 England Riots and the
2014 Ferguson Riots, one must define what a riot is. According to 1716 British Riot Act, a riot is
12 or more people disturbing the public peace for a common purpose.(Wilkinson) However,
one must look at the definition of a race riot which, according to Olzak & Shanahan, consists of
racial grievances against discrimination or perceived racial justice and in which 30 or more
persons engaged in violent activity that lasted several hours.(Wilkinson) According to this
definition, one can determine that the two riots could fall within the definition of race riots, as
they were both sparked by shootings of young black males by white police officers and had more
than 30 people engaged in violent activities for several hours.

Now that a riot has been defined, background on both riots is needed. In the 2011
England Riots, tensions rose when a 29-year-old unarmed black man, Mark Duggan, was shot
and killed by a police officer. This led to a protest march on August 6th that turned violent,
leading to widespread rioting and looting. After several days of rioting, arson, and other
vandalism, the riot ended on August 10th, with 2,987 arrested and 100 million pounds in
damages (Rogers & Lisa.) In the 2014 Ferguson Riots, the riots were sparked after an 18-yearold black man, Michael Brown, was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson on August
9th, 2014. Brown had recently robbed a convenience store of some cigars, and was blocked by
Officer Wilson. A scuffle broke, resulting in Wilsons gun going off. Brown began running with
Wilson in pursuit. Brown stopped and faced Wilson, with Wilson shooting him 12 times. This
began the first round of riots relating to the shooting. In November of 2014, a grand jury had
decided not to indict Officer Wilson. This led to another round of protesting and rioting.
Social media played a large role in the 2011 England Riots. Stephanie Alice Baker of the
University of Greenwich claims that Facebook and the Blackberry Messenger service were the
main mediums used to organize the English riots, while the social networking site, Twitter,
displayed regular reports and updates of the incidents of a credible and false nature. Blackberry
Messenger is an especially infamous culprit, with Britains Prime Minister David Cameron
suggesting that the service should be disconnected to prevent possible rioters from rallying. He
cites that police were facing a new circumstance where rioters were using the BlackBerry
Messenger service, a closed network, to organize riots (Baker.) Blackberry Messenger was
effective as it was a private network (that) links BlackBerry phone users but creates no public
trace on the Internet. (Bohannon) The appeal of using Blackberry Messenger by rioters is
apparent because of what happened to their peers who used a less private form of social media.

An example of such use happened when Two 20-year-olds were sentenced to four years
imprisonment for creating a Facebook riot event in Northwich (which did not occur and so no
one attended). (Bell et al.)
However, social media also played a more benevolent role in the England riots. After the
rioting had ended a citizen army armed with brooms organized itself with the help of Twitter
(#riotcleanup) and Facebook in order to reclaim and clean the streets of London. (Fuchs) The
#riotcleanup was mentioned by more than 29,000 tweets on August 8th (Davies et al), and has a
showed that social media could also be used to unite volunteers to help clean up the destruction
left in the wake of the rioters.
Social media also played a large part in the 2014 Ferguson riots. Apps like Twitter
provided information for protestors, either encouraging them to join the riots or dissuading them
from joining. Joshua Tucker claimed that social media could provide several key pieces of
information. Social media allowed protestors to know the location and timing of the riots, the
safety of participating in the riots and how many people were in the riots. A potential rioter
could determine from information gained from social media if they had enough emotional
investment to warrant the possible risk in participating. Joshua also explains that social media
could affect peoples motivation to riot, from triggering feelings of outrage and justice, to
appealing to group identities such as race. These many variables could have played a large role in
the potential rioters decisions. Social media also encouraged people, especially younger
protestors, to become more involved. Dr. Remy Cross, an assistant professor at Webster
University, says that people under 35 are moving from a passive to an active role in their
community, using social media as a catalyst.(Moffitt) Using hashtags such as #DONTSHOOT,

young people using social media can be involved in protests and have conversations about
social dynamics in St. Louis (Moffitt)
Social media also allowed the world to see the events happening in Ferguson much more
quickly and with greater interaction than traditional media could provide. By going onto Twitter
and searching for information, one could quickly find up-to-date information of what was going
on. With the advent of smartphones and other mobile devices, combined with social media with
ways to upload and share updates, pictures and videos, every rioter, pedestrian and officer
became a reporter. With this constant flow of information coming from ground zero, the entire
world could see how events were unfolding, from tear gas to arson to looting and violence
against the police. While traditional media sources could only cover one development at a time,
social media allowed potential rioters to see the whole picture. However, one has to be careful
when using social media to find information. With sources not being fact-checked in most cases,
rumors and false information also showed up on social media. An example was that Wilsons
online defenders spread a report that Brown dealt him an orbital-blowout eye socket fracture in
the confrontation, which photo evidence released from the grand jury proved false.
(Poniewozik) This misinformation can lead to injustices and feelings of anger towards innocent
people.
This is a brave new world. With the widespread use of smartphones and social media,
information has never been so accessible and widespread. People are able to add to the
worldwide conversation for any topic imaginable. When emotions run high, social media gives
people the power to quickly organize and gather the information they need to take action. It is a
tool that, like any other tool, can be used for good or for bad. From allowing rioters to gather and

blaze a path of destruction, to allowing concerned citizens to organize clean-ups, social media
has opened the door to a new way to demonstrate peoples want for change.

Works Cited
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