Reading the Riot Acts

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Reading the Riot Acts

• David Buckingham
• Institute of Education, London University

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Medao
Media Representations Uses and effects Public
knowledge
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Representing riots
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Representing riots
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Representing riots
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Representing riots
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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

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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?

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Blaming the media

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Blaming new media
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Facebook riots and revolutions?
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Rioting 2.0?

• Turning off the internet!
• Do media cause riots or revolutions?
• Technology and surveillance mobile phones, CCTV,
  24-hour news.

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Opinions and explanations

• How are issues framed?
• Who claims ownership of an issue?
• Whos an expert?
• Is this democratic media or just instant
  opinions?

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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.

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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.

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Expert opinion?

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vOVq2bs8M9HM
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vq4GaKCBMNs4

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Explaining riots
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Explaining riots
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Why Media Studies?
Representations Uses and effects Public
knowledge Speaking back
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