Social media and mobile technology has become one of permanent daily component in daily lives. As we go through our Twitter timeline everyday, tweet funny things and update our Facebook status can be difficult for some to understand the power that these social platforms seize as it being blamed for causing the riots in the United Kingdom and other flash mod in other parts of the world, including United States.
It is known that chain messages on Twitter, Blackberry messaging and Facebook are the fastest way to spread the information. It immediately gather people together and it appears to have been widely used to organize and motivate interest group of rioters firstly in London and then further spread to other cities in UK.
Source from Bloomberg says that the U.K’s intellectual property minister had declared for a temporary end to BlackBerry services a day after the riot as to prevent rioters from messaging for planning and organizing riot events. Thereupon, should the government somehow revoke the access to these services to avoid similar thing happened again in the future?
Even before the birth of social media and Blackberry chat people have been throwing stones and rioting. Hence prove revolutions don’t require social media to arise in any parts of the world. For example in countries like Egypt, only 5% of the people are on Facebook and less than 1% on Twitter out of 85 millions of it population for coup d’état to occur.
In the 1800's and in the 1970's United Kingdom had faced with massive riots, American Revolution and the French Revolution happened without any form of social media help such as Twitter, Facebook or BlackBerry messaging. Thus, taking into account for censorship and attempting to control communication is not an advisable action for the authority to act upon.
Taken from Washington Post article stated by a new technologies researcher and UCLA associates, describe on what happened in Egypt or Tunisia doesn’t start from Social Media, but from people’s rage. What is happening in London is not coming from Social Media, but from people’s rage.
Although that Twitter and BlackBerry Messenger are said use as the medium to cause riots, it is undeniable that Social Media are an awesome step forward for mankind. They are not enough to tell millions of people to start a revolution. Overall, was social media's role in the riots is a positive or a negative one?
Source: http://www.youngdigitallab.net/social-media/dear-social-media-its-your-fault/
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/08/10/london-police-struggle-to-master-social-media-in-clamping-down-on-riots/
http://technology.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474979951273
http://millionsofnerds.com/featured/how-social-media-broke-and-then-fixed-london/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/mar/28/uk-riots-twitter-facebook
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