Is social networking to be partialy blamed for the recent london riots?

If you believe newspapers like the Sun and Daily Mail, the rioting in London over the weekend was orchestrated and organised on Twitter, with the Mail, for example, claiming the “violence was fanned by Twitter as picture of burning police car was re-tweeted more than 100 times”. Really? So what sparked the riots of three decades ago? A ZX Spectrum and a fleet of Raleigh Grifters?

Given the blame pointed at social networking for the recent round of riots, it’s amazing that the 1980s rioters managed to throw a single petrol bomb without the internet for instructions and social apps to organise their street mobs. Same with the French Revolution, the Tolpuddle Martyrs and the fall of the Soviet Union. How did they get off the ground without networked communications tools?
Social movements do not need Twitter, Facebook or BlackBerry messaging to succeed — they need any method of communication (like talking to the bloke next to you) and a sense of injustice (or futility or boredom) to motivate action.

Social movements do not need Twitter, Facebook or BlackBerry messaging to succeed

Of course, rioters do now have better technology and it would be naïve to think smartphones wouldn’t be harnessed for malevolent purposes, but to assume it is the driving force behind youth unrest is equally short-sighted. Would the police really, for example, be able to kettle so many protesters in London if the potential rioters were really all hard-wired into Twitter, with a rolling news feed of where the police were erecting barricades?
While some tweets might have tried to act as a call to arms, the majority appeared to be supplying a rolling news feed on what was happening, but written by the man on the street rather than a media that is less trusted with every phone-hacking scandal.
Restricting access
It seems the social media critics are edging closer to advocating for networking services to be restricted when there is a riot taking place, which would re-establish an advantage for the police, who could still communicate using their radios.
It’s a thought that might go down well with an establishment that has yet to come to terms with the power of the social web, but it would also be rank hypocrisy. Barely six months ago, news agencies and political thinkers were hailing the social networks as a major tool for change, for giving a voice to the people as they rose up during the Arab Spring.

Egypt was blasted for blocking internet access and disrupting mobile phone coverage in a bid to stop protesters on the streets from communicating and organising into more effective groups to target oppression. One man’s social-network pariah is another man’s freedom-fighting tool.
The events in Tottenham and elsewhere across London have little in common with Egypt, but similarities remain in terms of communication, and the UK’s authorities need to address how they deal with rioters and protesters accordingly.

The US (and, presumably, Britain will join in) recently announced a move to monitor trends on Twitter and police might be well advised to follow the odd #riot tag themselves.
If the rioters really are using social networks to organise themselves, surely the police could also use them to get a handle on upcoming flashpoints — given today’s news that the computer crime team has been expanded they might even have the resources to do so. But to blame the riots on social networks misses the point entirely — social uprisings don’t need tech to take off.