číslo 1/2013 - Paneurópska vysoká škola

16
Global Media Journal
Precisely what counts as political activism varies considerably across these mini-generations, of course,
but several researchers have sought to highlight the ways in which social networking is recasting familiar assumptions
about civic participation. ‘Since state power and capital power is based on disconnecting people,
workers, and citizens, so to make their common interests more opaque and their fighting chances less coordinated’,
Manuel Castells (2009) contends, ‘anything that helps connection helps social change.’ Still, when
‘self-defined communities of resistance’ become associated with violent confrontation, the institutionalised
power of the state is almost certain to be invoked, and with considerable force. In the next section, our attention
turns to consider the ways in which protestors called upon social media to shape the articulation – and
co-ordination – of their dissent during the riots in Britain in the summer of 2011. It will be shown that their
contributions to real-time reportage of violence on the streets helped to recast the priorities of mainstream
journalism, in part by proffering an alternative ethos of digital citizenship.
The new politics of protest
Time and again, news media framing of a crisis will privilege a decisive incident for purposes of narrativisation,
one that can be identified as the unexpected spark that abruptly ignites simmering anger, grievances,
suspicions or resentment into open defiance. Such was the case with the ‘London Riots’ of summer
2011. In the early evening of 4 August in Tottenham, North London, police officers pulled over a minicab
carrying Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old black man, intent on arresting him on suspicion of involvement in
a developing ‘crime in action’, to use police parlance. In the ensuing altercation, two shots were fired, one
of which left Duggan fatally wounded in the chest; the other shot penetrated a radio worn by one of the
officers. Typical of the initial news reports was the Telegraph’s account, headlined ‘Man Killed in Shooting
Incident Involving Police Officer’, which began:
A policeman’s life was saved by his radio last night after gunman Mark Duggan opened fire on him and
the bullet hit the device.
Armed police immediately returned fire and Mark Duggan, 29, who was under surveillance, was shot
dead in the street in north London. (Telegraph, 4 August 2011)
Evidence to support the contention that Duggan had shot first was attributed in the article to a spokesperson
for the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), called in to investigate. It would later be
revealed by a Guardian investigation, however, that ballistics tests indicated that the police had fired both
shots, prompting the IPCC to issue an apology for accidently misinforming journalists.
In Tottenham at the time of the incident, many of those living in the local community considered it to be
yet another tragic example of the police using excessive force when individuals from ethnic minority groups
were concerned. Two days later, several of Duggan’s relatives joined fellow residents in a peaceful protest
to demand justice at Tottenham Police Station. Shortly thereafter the tenor amongst the crowd, now
numbering about 300 people, began to change. Police on horseback, intent on dispersing the gathering,
came under attack as objects, including rocks, bottles and fireworks, were thrown (youths from a nearby
housing estate being blamed by some eyewitnesses). As tensions rose, two police cars were set alight,
engendering a series of clashes with officers that would escalate into a fully fledged riot. Social networking
GMJ Book.indb 16 21.1.2013 9:44