LONDON RIOTS 2011

HOW DOES THE NEWSPAPER COVARAGE CHANGE AS THE RIOTS PROGRESS?

HOW DOES THE NEWSPAPER COVERAGE CHANGE AS THE RIOTS

PROGRESSED?

Looking at the young people that had died presenting the idea that they were the only ones involved. The police are being pressured by British youth creating this idea of moral panic because they are seen to be pushing the governemnet/police into a corner.

They started of looking at it just displaying the facts of the situation and was giving a general overview. The photo was focusing on nothing but the destruction of the building, as there are no people really seen to be there making an impact.

Once they’d assessed the situation they were targeting the young working class rioters involved focusing on specific situations. Presenting the idea from the picture and headline and together that it’s British youth against London as a whole.

The Guardian have made a point of how social networking has been involved with the ignition of a rioting frenzy in the poorer areas of London, after people were left scanning the online sites in search of information about the

current events. The Guardian stated “the rise and fall of rumours on Twitter is a striking display of social forces in action” as they had accumulated a rough 2.6 million ‘tweets’ which were identified as being riot-related through the

use of ‘hashtags’. We can see the impact that this has on the British youth as they are always seen in connection with social networking in regards to media representation of them. This makes clear the point that the youth of

Britain were the ones that were associated instantaneously by The Guardian as having a big part within the rioting. We can see from this that the articles are written from the perspective of the ruling class as they are using the youth

as an empty category (Giroux) and presenting their fears about the youths through the use of Twitter because it is something so grossly associated with them. The original message they were trying to put across was that social

networking has played a big part in the rapid increase of riot partakers, but it has come across that the majority of these people are younger in age, because of the connotations of ‘social networking’ within today’s society. The

government were even looking at Twitter to “examine the roots of the unrest”.

WHO’S PERSPECTIVE IS THE IS THE PAPER WRITTEN FROM?

“Twitter itself was being blamed for the contagion, amid assumptions the networking service was – alongside Facebook

and the BlackBerry messaging service – being used to co-ordinate the unrest. Amid the panic.”

- The view has changed through the week as even though still written by the ruling class

- Looking at how it doesn’t conform to the ideology of protection – watching them cant make them conform

- Article about how the shopkeepers were having to fight off the rioters police were just watching

- The ruling class were siding with the rioters because they could see how the police weren’t listening or helping them

HOW IS THE NEWSPAPER COVERAGE BEING MEDIATED?

These photo are of the same places. Me and Emma were saying that the left hand side Google months ago. We can see though that they are focusing on the worst of situations even though further down the road there could be a shop that’s perfectly fine.

no photos that are of things slightly on fire.

In these pictures they have chosen to show pictures featuring the British youth rather than adults, and we can see clear iconography through the hoodies and he’s got a beer can. Looking at Robin Wood we can see that they are such a monster because they’re being backed by the fire with their faces covered, they were probably just walking through the street, but these pictures show them to be the instigator of it. Of all of it when they present these photographs on their front pages. British youth in general

If you look at the headline, they are focusing on the police attacks, they’re not looking at the shopkeepers that got hurt or anything are they? They’re focusing on the police because they’re the pinnacle of the ruling class and having correct norms and values, so fighting against them is really something shocking isn’t it. Something people are going to have the biggest problem with.

August 6th-7th

• A bus, a shop and two patrol cars have been set on fire in Tottenham. An estimated crowd of around 300 have gathered and there have been reports of looting and shop windows being smashed.

• Earlier in the day members of a community where a young man was shot dead by police had took to the streets to demand "justice".

• The 29-year-old, named locally as father-of-four Mark Duggan, died at the scene in Tottenham, north London, on Thursday.

• About 120 people marched from the local Broadwater Farm area to Tottenham Police Station, forcing officers to close the High Road and put traffic diversions in place.

• A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: "Missiles were thrown at them. One was set alight and one was pushed into the middle of the High Road."

• Officers were being dispatched to disperse the crowd, he said.• He could not confirm that those responsible for the trouble were connected

to the protest.

August 6th

August 7th

• Earlier, officers on horseback and others in riot gear clashed with hundreds of rioters armed with makeshift missiles I• There was still no police presence in Wood Green High Road at 4am, even after dozens of stores had been smashed and raided, setting off

multiple alarms. • Around 100 youths targeted game shops, electrical stores and clothing chains • Windows were smashed and the looters – mostly young men masking their faces – swarmed in and emerged with handfuls of stolen goods. • Three teenagers ran down the street with suitcases filled with stolen clothes. Around 10 young men stood outside a smouldering Carphone

Warehouse, the windows smashed. In suburban back streets, residential front gardens were used to sort and swap stolen goods. • A boy who looked about 14 drove a stolen minicab erratically down a side street. On an adjacent street, a man who emerged from his home to

find his car burned out remonstrated with other young men, who ran past carrying clothes. • A teenager walked past with a baseball bat, while another held a torn off section of wood in one hand. • We are looking at a group of people disaffected by historical inequality: a high level of poverty and generational unemployment. And young

black people are still more likely than white people to be stopped and searched.• The catalyst for the initial, peaceful protest reflects something much deeper in the psyche of the community – the historical sense of injustice

at deaths in custody. The police have been given increasing legal powers to use force widely. But this privilege has to be used wisely. The police can only do so with the consent of the community – such policing doesn't work otherwise. Now you have a community demanding justice for what they see as yet another unjust death in custody. The situation hasn't changed in decades, they believe: the police seem to have difficulty keeping people alive when in detention – particularly black people.

• "I haven't told my children that he is dead," Wilson said. "How can I tell them when I don't have any answers about how he died? We went to the police station for answers. Someone did come out but they said they had no answers to give us because it was out of their hands .

• David Lammy, the Labour MP for Tottenham, said the events were "an attack on Tottenham, on people, ordinary people, shopkeepers, women, children, who are now standing on the streets homeless as a consequence".

• "If a senior police officer had come to speak to us, we would have left. We arrived at 5pm, we had planned a one-hour silent protest. We were there until 9pm. Police were absolutely culpable. Had they been more responsive when we arrived at the police station, asking for a senior officer to talk with the family, we would have left the vicinity before the unrest started.

• At 9.30pm, Met police and reinforcements from Kent began turning the whole of Enfield into a sterile area . Hundreds of riot police arrived with vans and police dogs, charging at groups of teenagers, who melted into sidestreets. They smashed cars and shop windows as they ran.

• Unlike the previous night's disturbances, riot police were on the scene in large numbers. Their stance was also more aggressive, with baton charges and dogs used to disperse crowds.

• At 11pm, on a nearby road called Elizabeth Ride, a young man was stabbed under the arm. He could walk to an ambulance but his friends refused to talk to police and disappeared, shouting: "Why would we talk to feds? You're the reason this is happening."

• BBM allows users to send one-to-many messages to their network of contacts, who are connected by "BBM PINs". For many teens armed with a BlackBerry, BBM has replaced text messaging because it is free, instant and more part of a much larger community than regular SMS.

• "Years ago there would have been a lot of dialogue," said David Gilbertson, formerly a Metropolitan police division chief superintendent at Tottenham. "We would have gone out of our way to ensure that the organisers of a protest group would have been brought into a station like that even if others were stood outside."

• It took hours for police to change from regular uniforms to riot gear, and even longer for them to begin almost half-hearted attempts at preventing looting.