riots

Reading the Riot Acts

David BuckinghamInstitute of Education, London University

Medao

Media – RepresentationsUses and effectsPublic knowledge

Representing riots

Representing youth

IPSOS MORI Survey 2005:

40% of articles focus on violence, crime, anti-social behaviour; 71% are negative

Brunel University 2007:

TV news: violent crime or celebrities; young people are only 1% of sources

Women in Journalism 2008:

72% of articles were negative; 3.4% positive

75% about crime, drugs, police

Boys: yobs, thugs, sick, feral, hoodies, louts, scum

Only positive stories are about boys who died young

Folk devils and misrepresentations?

[In a moral panic] a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and other right-thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or (more often) resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and becomes more visible.

Are moral panics just irrational?

Do the media simply misrepresent young people?

Do the media make people more fearful?

Blaming the media

Blaming new media

Facebook riots and revolutions?

Rioting 2.0?

Turning off the internet!

Do media cause riots or revolutions?

Technology and surveillance: mobile phones, CCTV, 24-hour news….

Opinions and explanations

How are issues ‘framed’?

Who claims ‘ownership’ of an issue?

Who’s an expert?

Is this democratic media – or just instant opinions?

Broken Britain

Max Hastings: Daily Mail

Years of liberal dogma have spawned a generation of amoral, uneducated, unparented, welfare dependent, brutalised youngsters.

They are essentially wild beasts. I use that phrase advisedly, because it seems appropriate to young people bereft of the discipline that might make them employable; of the conscience that distinguishes between right and wrong. They respond only to instinctive animal impulses — to eat and drink, have sex, seize or destroy the accessible property of others…

The depressing truth is that at the bottom of our society is a layer of young people with no skills, education, values or aspirations. They do not have what most of us would call ‘lives’: they simply exist. They are products of a culture which gives them so much unconditionally that they are let off learning how to become human beings… My dogs are better behaved and subscribe to a higher code of values than the young rioters of Tottenham, Hackney, Clapham and Birmingham.

Unequal Britain

Cuts, youth unemployment, EMA, youth service…

Bankers, politicians expenses, Cameron and Boris

Peter Oborne: Daily Telegraph:The rioting cannot be dissociated from the moral disintegration in the highest ranks of modern British society… It has become acceptable for our politicians to lie and to cheat… the sad young men and women, without hope or aspiration, who have caused such mayhem and chaos over the past few days… have this defence: they are just following the example set by senior and respected figures in society.

Expert opinion?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVq2bs8M9HM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4GaKCBMNs4





Explaining riots

Why Media Studies?

RepresentationsUses and effectsPublic knowledgeSpeaking back