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London Riots. Citizen Journalism and Freedom of Speech. Overview. When: between 6 th and 10 th August 2011. Where: London (later spread out to other places such as Birmingham and Manchester).
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London Riots Citizen Journalism and Freedom of Speech
Overview When: between 6th and 10th August 2011. Where: London (later spread out to other places such as Birmingham and Manchester). What: following a peaceful protest in retaliation to the shooting of Mark Duggan by the Metropolitan Police riots broke out in Tottenham. The incidents included looting and arson attacks which destroyed many buildings and businesses. Deaths: 5 Injuries: 16+ members of public, 186 police officers, 5 police dogs Total arrests: 2,987 Riots cost: approx £100m @riotcleanup followers: 85,615 Statistics http://www.guardian.co.uk– Friday 19th August 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_England_riots#Deaths_and_injuries
Citizen Journalism Citizen journalism is when a member of the public (someone who isn’t a journalist) collects, reports and broadcasts events. The advantages to this are that they are independent, reliable and a lot of the time more accurate. Picture of a bus going up in flames taken by a citizen journalist and put on their Twitter (@HeardinLondon). Criticisms • Journalism is a skill and therefore, not everybody can be a journalist. • Overboard (too many of them). • Narrow (not as many are taken into consideration. • Journalists are also citizens and therefore, citizen journalism doesn’t exist.
Impact The media could have reported on this event without the inclusion of citizen journalism by using real, qualified journalists. Twenty years ago we didn’t have citizen journalism so you wouldn’t be able to go on the internet, on social media websites yourself to find out about events such as these, you would only be able to watch the news or read a newspaper. This can be seen as a negative because the news being broadcasted could have been influenced by the organisation or government but with citizen journalism there are no outside influences.
Footage Live footage taken by citizens on the streets of London. http://www.celebdelacream.com/blog/?p=7778 https://cheesemud.com/images/aglxzq.php?u=Oi8vd3d3LnlvdXR1YmUuY29tL3dhdGNoP3Y9dWNNMWNaSVhsOFE%3D&b=5 https://cheesemud.com/images/aglxzq.php?u=Oi8vd3d3LnlvdXR1YmUuY29tL3dhdGNoP3Y9NG5lX3cycnZCdlUmZmVhdHVyZT1mdnN0&b=5 Image of rioting and looting outside of shops in London. Video footage of the police being overrun by rioters in Woolwich on 8th August 2011.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2023554/Tottenham-riot-2011-London-lockdown-David-Cameron-flies-home.htmlhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2023554/Tottenham-riot-2011-London-lockdown-David-Cameron-flies-home.html Conflicts Both of my footages were taken by citizen journalists and they both show the rioters in a negative way and therefore does not contradict how the media presented the situation. However, most of the footage in the media did highlight that the rioters were mainly youths and from ethnic minorities, putting more of a negative light on those two groups. The media seemed to forget why these riots really started off in the first place.
Conflicts Continued... Another journalist (Toby Young) in The Telegraph heard that on the radio show Radio5Live a youth worker said the “vicious Conservative Government” were responsible for these riots. Young believes that this comment is wrong and that the only ones to blame are the “youths” who were actually involved in the riots. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100099808/the-disturbances-in-tottenham-tonight-are-profoundly-depressing/ However, an article in The Guardian newspaper disagrees, claimed that where as media footage suggests that the rioters are mainly “young men from poor areas”, in fact they were from all social backgrounds, ages, ethnicities and gender. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/09/london-riots-who-took-part A journalist in The Telegraph claimed that people didn’t address the fact that the riots were about race. She considers the public’s reasons for why the riots happened- because the public are “angry” at the shooting of Mark Duggan who was a black man. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/katharinebirbalsingh/100099830/these-riots-were-about-race-why-ignore-the-fact/
Social Media During the London riots people used Twitter (@londonriots and @riotcleanup) to help promote the idea of cleaning up the streets. People also used this Twitter page to keep updated as well as to update others. This is another form of citizen journalism. Other social media sites such as Facebook were also used for this.
Social Media Continued… The social media has also played an important role in organising the riots. Blackberry Messenger (BBM) acted as a private communication service for the rioters to organise attacks. Twitter and Facebook were also used. http://cheesemud.com/nppxjoj.php?R4ZybzhrtdtUtbXwVLDJVQ=urYPUSSnqzX0k5hI7PZuOhqLmPQ4fTxcOljv1THKIPL2O7icfq99qRecx2ATlYtGPdyJ8m8%2F6tMyuziFGgtj9Gtbgu03YEBASQWlVdF4aLep8qQJklkuvIgXoahNXDc0 The UK’s intellectual property minister David Lammy suspended the BBM service to prevent the rioters from organising these events. However, BBM were helping to identify the rioters. The Tumblr site ‘Catch A Looter’ was also used to identify looters as pictures were uploaded of the rioters looting. Priminister David Cameron considered blocking these messenger services and social media websites to prevent all the violence encouraged on them. However, New York university professor Ramesh Srinivasan disagreed, claiming that shutting down these sites fails to address the root of the violence.
Theorists Clyde Bentley claims to be “very comfortable with both the citizen journalism concept and the phrase itself.” He believes it to be “no more a replacement for professional journalism than teabags are a replacement for water. Both can stand comfortably alone, but when combined they produce something quite wonderful.” He understands that journalists disapprove of the term ‘citizen’ in citizen journalism as they feel it excludes them from citizenship. Instead he refers to the term ‘citizen’ as if it were to be a National Guard that servers the country part-time as they “help shoulder the responsibility of defending the nation – they just don’t want make careers of it.” This relates to citizen journalism as they also don’t want to make a career out of journalism, “they just have something to say.” http://www.ciberdemocracia.net/recursos/textosrelevantes/citizen.pdf Steve Outing also believes citizen journalism to be a good thing as it allows “opening up to public comment” meaning the public can have their say on certain issues and events. He also believes that citizen journalists and professional journalists working together is a good thing as it brings in more “voices and perspectives.” This way news organisations can also make sure that they are covering everything that people are interested in by involving the people who would actually read these articles. http://www.poynter.org/uncategorized/69328/the-11-layers-of-citizen-journalism/
Conclusion To conclude, I believe that citizen journalism is necessary as it is more reliable than news from professional journalists as these citizens are actually living amongst us and are ‘normal’ people just like us so they can get a greater insight into what is actually happening and how people are actually feeling. There is also little to no outside influence from media organisations and the government which makes for more accurate news. Citizen journalism also helps news that the public are actually interested to be broadcasted, as these citizens are ‘normal’ people like us, they understand what we want see.
