Identities and the Media: Reading the riots

- With the first two articles in this media magazine, they showed the iconic London riots photo of this teenage who had a hoodie and tracksuits on but blacked out his face. The representation that may be shown from this photo is that the majority of these looters were young black males and suggesting that they were the only trouble makers which could be very controversial as a lot would argue that there were other ethnic groups that were apart of this.

- In his books, it points to emergence of a new form of class contempt in Modern Britain. The working class, he argues, has become an object of fear and ridicule. This then shows the difference between the classes (diversion).

- A typical representation of young people, especially teenage boys is that the a lot of them would either be involved in anti-social behaviour and crime. It also states this in other different newspapers and therefore, is creating a negative representation. This is because of the fact that the public would then believe that all teenage boys are involved in crime but do not pay attention to that some people are not like that and are very generous too. The 2005 IPSOS/MORI survey found that 40% of newspaper articles featuring young people focused on violence, crime or anti-social behaviour; and that 71% could be described as having a negative tone.

- Cohen's work on Moral Panic can strongly be linked to the coverage of the riots in the sense of teenage boys. Since the newspapers have come out saying that the majority of teenage boys are 'trouble makers', the public will then make the moral panic of whenever they would see a teenage boy, they would always believe that they are going to be up to no good etc.

- Media platforms such as social media sites have had a huge impact in the riots. For example, social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter allowed the different users to make social media groups where the users can interact privately and therefore organise when they wanted to loot. What time? What day? etc... Therefore, the social media sites are being blamed because they have the power of shutting down the group chats as they have the access to day anything but they didn't and people believe that this could've helped prevent the riots massively from happening. A very similar argument was used in media debates about the ‘Arab spring’ earlier this year: there was much discussion about the use of social networking in the revolutions that took place in countries such as Tunisia, Egypt and Syria – although in those instances, this was generally interpreted by the Western media as a positive things.

- Some media scholars like Henry Jenkins tend to celebrate these kinds of ‘participatory’ media; while some even see this as evidence of a wholesale democratisation of the communications system. They argue that the age of ‘Big Media’ – of powerful, centralised corporations controlling media – is now finished: hierarchical, top-down communications have been replaced by a more egalitarian approach. Personally, I believe that everyone is entitled to their own opinion and how they view the social media sites.

- The right wing responses to the riots was that the young children, especially the young black people, didn't have good upbringing or either weren't told properly from right and wrong and therefore, they had a huge lack of discipline, which meant that they were able to do anything freely etc.

- Such commentators point out that the UK has one of highest levels of inequality in the Western world. They argue that it was unsurprising that most of the disturbances erupted in areas with high levels of poverty and deprivation

- Throughout that period of time, the younger audience were not give what they wanted, e.g. jobs etc and therefore, they were already angry with the government. Then, when the police officers shot Mark Duggan, then it 'pulled the trigger' and therefore, the youths wants to get the government and everyone back because they believed that the youths were a joke and didn't believe in their potential of doing great things.

- I believe that the people weren't given a chance to speak in the media and when they did, no one would care or listen to what they said and therefore, led to the riots happening. Therefore, I think that the government and all the upper class people were almost asking for the trouble to happen.

- In the Guardian website's investigation into the causes of the riots, they did interview rioters themselves. Read this Guardian article from their Reading the Riots academic research project - what causes are outlined by those involved in the disturbances?

• Gang involvement
• Social media to use the group chat section to plan the riots
• Goods that weren't affordable for the public youths.
  

- In my opinion, I believe that the government were the main cause of the riots happening. Having said that, rioting and looting is, under no circumstances, a way to behave to the member of public; many business who have no links to the government were disrupted for no reason at all and therefore, they were left with to pay for the damages. So, I believe that a prison sentence is the correct approach to this considering that a few innocent people did die from this as of that cause. With the prison sentence, they can then learn and improve their actions next time.