A BBC report from 9th August 2011, 5 days after the initial shooting, had scenes of destruction. Buildings were on fire, conveying the damage that the "lads" had done. Essentially, this represents the riots as violent and malicious due to the mass damage that they caused. I have noticed that the time of the news report (right) was 2:35am, meaning the audience for this would be people, probably older, who are closely following the stories. The audience could be drawn into the moral panic as they are following the story closely to keep updated. Notably, this is a BBC report, so we would expect it to be reliable as the BBC is well-known for it's accurate representation of different news stories. However, the people actually reporting were the victims of the crimes, therefore exaggerations are likely to have been made. The victims were all males who would be middle-aged or older (as they are businessmen), conveying that the authority figures are males creating a mediated view on the situation. In light of this it could be suggested that this is a biased news report as there are no positive representations of teenagers in the same area. The youths aren't given a fair voice as all the people being interviewed are assumed to be older as they owned businesses or worked at businesses that were attacked - therefore the people attacking aren't justifying their reasons for doing so.
"The police are seemingly ineffective, they've done nothing. They've been cordoning the place off, they've been warning me to get out the way whilst I'm doing nothing whilst people are burning the place to the ground". It has to be said that this represents the police in a negative way as well as the youths who set the flat on fire due to the fact that "they've done nothing". It's appropriate to mention that there could be a fire engine or ambulance cropped out of the shot which would make the stationary police men seem more useless.
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Twitter Account
A twitter account - @LondonRiots2011 - gave updates on the news to do with the riots. They frequently retweeted people to share new information which could apply to their followers. On the 8th August 2011 they tweeted:
"Please note. We are retweeting any possible leads on information. These may or may not be true. We will try to confirm all reports". This shows that, although they were reporting things that they had read off the news, not all tweets could be reliable or serious. It's important to note that this account is portraying the negative side to the riot also (seen in the first tweet). The immediacy of social network sites allows anyone to report what's going on whenever, changing the role of the performer. There is one main person who frequently retweets the account and after searching on his account, it seems that he regularly tweets about global moral panics - despite being American.
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News Article
Similarly, The Guardian article describes a project created to collect over 1.3 million first-person accounts of what happened during the London Riots. Many complex reasons to riot were explained but analysts found that the main forces causing them to revolt was the "distrust and antipathy toward police as a key driving force". The article mentions that over 2.5 million tweets were written about the riots. It's said that many people decided to steal things due to the usual rules being suspended giving them the ability to acquire luxury items. David Cameron said gangs were "at the heart" but research has found that they played a "marginal role in the riots". Interestingly, it was found that social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter weren't used in a significant way to begin riots but BBM for Blackberry was used to communicate and plan riots in advance. Ultimately, the article states policing was "the most significant cause of the riots, and anger over the police shooting of Mark Duggan, which triggered initial disturbances in Tottenham".
The article in itself answers one of the major questions that one would have to ask regarding the validity of this information and equity in representation of all those involved: it "took evidence from riot-hit communities and victims, but did not speak to rioters". Therefore, it could be said that the findings deduced from the project wasn't entirely accurate in giving everyone involved a 'voice' to express their thoughts on the events. Crucially, The Guardian is centre-leftist or liberal which means that they believe in working within established systems to improve social justice. They support social equality and feel it can be done through equal opportunity. Essentially, this means that they are bound to be in support of the general public or the majority opinion that is indicated as they want to appear to be equal and liberal.
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