There’s a riot going on - David Buckingham from Loughborough University (MediaMagazine 38, December 2011)

There’s a riot going on

by David Buckingham (first published in MediaMagazine 38, December 2011)

https://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/media-magazine/articles/16831

• To talk about 'riots' rather than, for example, 'civil disturbances' or 'unrest' - or even 'uprisings' or 'protests' - immediately defines the meaning of the events in particular ways. 

• we were told, were simply an 'orgy of brutality', in which people appeared to lose all rational control.

• In most of the tabloid media coverage, the rioters were consistently and repeatedly identified as young people. These were the 'feral youth', the 'hoodies' and 'yobs' who apparently rampage uncontrolled in our cities, bent simply on destruction for its own sake.

• This was reinforced by the selection of images - and perhaps especially by the iconic image of one black, hooded young man which appeared on at least five front pages following the first day of the disturbances, 

• The newspapers consistently featured large, dramatic images of what the Daily Mirror called 'young thugs with fire in their eyes and nothing but destruction on their mind', or the Daily Express called simply 'flaming morons'.

• These young people, we were told, had not been sufficiently socialised: they were led simply by a kind of 'childish destructiveness'.

• In fact, many of the people ultimately convicted for crimes during the rioting were by no means young. Youth offending, youth detention and reoffending have declined in recent years. Meanwhile, just a few weeks later, young people achieved record passes in their GCSE and A Level exams. Those involved in the disturbances were obviously a small minority. Yet in much of the media coverage, they came to stand for Young People - or particular categories of young people - in general.

• There is obviously a class dimension to these representations. The 'feral youth' imagined by the politicians and the tabloid headline writers are implicitly working-class. 

• The working class, he argues, has become an object of fear and ridicule, not just in this kind of media coverage but also in popular figures such as Little Britain's Vicky Pollard and Catherine Tate's 'Am I bovvered?' character. ... despite the fact that many of those ultimately convicted after the rioting were in respectable middle-class jobs, or from wealthy backgrounds. 

• while many of those involved were black, a great many were not. 

• These kinds of images of young people are unfortunately typical of much news media coverage. A 2005 IPSOS/MORI survey found that 40% of newspaper articles featuring young people focused on violence, crime or anti-social behaviour; and that 71% could be described as having a negative tone. 

• Research from Brunel University during 2006 found that television news reports of young people focused overwhelmingly either on celebrities such as footballers or (most frequently) on violent crime; while young people accounted for only 1% of the sources for interviews and opinions across the whole sample.

• a study by the organisation Women in Journalism analysed 7,000+ stories involving teenage boys, published in online, national and regional newspapers during 2008. 72% were negative 

• Over 75% were about crime, drugs, or police: the great majority of these were negative (81.5%)

• Even for the minority of stories on other topics such as education, sport and entertainment, there were many more negative than positive stories (42% versus 13%).

• Many of the stories about teenage boys described them using disparaging words such as yobs, thugs, sick, feral, hoodies, louts, heartless, evil, frightening and scum.

• A few stories described individual teenage boys in glowing terms - model student, angel, or 'every mother's perfect son' - but, without exception, these were all about boys who had met an untimely death.

• Cohen argues that the media talked up the disturbances into a bigger 'moral panic'. In a moral panic, he writes:
•      "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."
• Cohen also argues that the media play a role in 'deviance amplification': in reporting the phenomenon, and in expressing the fear and outrage of 'respectable society', they make it more attractive to those who might not otherwise have thought about becoming involved.

• The media did not simply misrepresent what happened, and 'moral panics' are not just irrational responses. Media stereotypes are never simply inaccurate: they always contain a 'grain of truth'. 

• Yet in this case, the media coverage can be seen to reflect a much more general fear of young people (and especially of working-class young people) that is very common among many adults: the media speak to anxieties that many people already have.

• The Women in Journalism study also interviewed 1000 teenage boys, and found that 29% of them often or always felt wary when they saw other teenage boys they did not know. Media stories about teenagers were identified as the single biggest reason for this wariness (51%) 

• In the tabloid press, much of the initial blame for the violence was put on popular culture: it was rap music, violent computer games or reality TV that was somehow provoking young people to go out and start rioting.

• The Daily Mirror, for example, blamed
•      "the pernicious culture of hatred around rap music, which glorifies violence and loathing of authority (especially the police but including parents), exalts trashy materialism and raves about drugs."

• Others suggested that the looting of sportswear shops had been inflamed by advertising - it was like Supermarket Sweep, said the Daily Mail; while images of looters posing for the cameras and displaying their pickings were seen as evidence of the narcissism and consumerism of the 'Big Brother and X Factor generation'.

• Despite being depicted by tabloids as mindless thugs and morons, the rioters were also seen as somehow skilful enough to co-ordinate their actions by using Facebook, Blackberry and Twitter. The Sun, for example, reported that 'THUGS used social network Twitter to orchestrate the Tottenham violence and incite others to join in as they sent messages urging: 'Roll up and loot'.
• According to The Telegraph:
•      "technology fuelled Britain's first 21st century riot. The Tottenham riots were orchestrated by teenage gang members, who used the latest mobile phone technology to incite and film the looting and violence. Gang members used Blackberry smartphones designed as a communications tool for high-flying executives to organise the mayhem."

• A very similar argument was used in media debates about the 'Arab spring' earlier this year: there was much discussion about the use of social networking in the revolutions that took place in countries such as Tunisia, Egypt and Syria - although in those instances, this was generally interpreted by the Western media as a positive thing.

• Here again, the media were identified as a primary cause of what took place - as though riots and revolutions were simply created by the use of technology. But of course there have been riots and revolutions long before the electronic media came along.