Develop and realise
Why I chose this topic for my dissertation?
I have chosen this topic for my essay because I use the social network allot using programmes such as Facebook and Skype mainly. I’ve always thought of social networking sites as a modern day super power because of how helpful they are when it comes to keeping in contact with friends and family. Only until recently have I had my doubts that the social network isn’t so great after all. I started having my doubts when I saw the riots on the TV news channel which took place throughout England from the 6thto 10th of 2011.
At first I didn’t link the riots linked with the social network until a week after the riots when news channels revealed that the social network (namely Twitter and Facebook) had been used as a tool to gather people to together to continue with the riots. The police then arrested and trialled a number of people who were accused of making groups on Facebook and tweeting on twitter that were designed to encourage the riots to continue and for more people.
This was what first made me to start having mixed opinions on the social network. A few months later I was given an assignment for my extended project which was to write an essay styled argument. This is when I saw my opportunity to write an essay styled argument on the social network and if it was a modern day super power or if it was destroying us.
Develop and realise
I will explain how I started and gradually developed my essay extended project right up to finishing it. I will do this in a timeline format.
28th October 2011: This was the day we were told given the proposal form for our extended project and told to decide what we wanted to do for our extended project by the next lesson in a weeks’ time. I couldn’t decide straight away because I kept having second thought whenever I thought about choosing a topic. In the end I decided I would do a dissertation because that suited me best for doing my extended project on.
4th November 2011: Now that I had decided that I wanted to do a dissertation for my extended project I needed to choose what I would do my dissertation on. I chose to do it on “Is the Social Network a modern day superpower or is it destroying us”. The main reason behind this is because I had taken an interest in the riots that took place back in August 2011 which the media said was started and fuelled by the social network.
11th November 2011: Now that I had chosen my topic for my extended project I needed to start planning out what kind of sub topics and information I wanted to include in the dissertation. I was mainly concentrating on what information I wanted to include and how I would balance it out. In the end I made up my own codenames to help keep me organised while writing the dissertation. I decided I wanted to keep the essay as balanced as possible so I would start off with a paragraph or two of positive information for the social network and then after that I would balance it out by putting a paragraph of negative information about the social network and I would repeat this to until I reached the summary of my dissertation. To help me keep organised on where I put positive and negative information I used codenames. POS was my code name for positive information and NEG was my codename for negative information.
18th November 2011: Now that I had chosen how I wanted to balance out and display the main body of my dissertation I needed to plan out how I wanted the whole dissertation layout to look like. I decided to start with an introduction where I would briefly explain what my argument was about and explain what had inspired me to choose this topic. I would then give a brief introduction on what the Social Network was and what some of the reasons are for why so many people use it.
After the introduction I would then have the main body of my dissertation which as I explained earlier would be a positive paragraph of research and information about the social network followed by a negative paragraph or two of research or information about the social network. This would keep repeating until I reached my summery. Lastly in my layout would be my brief summary on what side of the argument I was supporting, I wanted to keep the summary as brief as possible so as not too seem biased.
25th November 2011- 20th January 2012: Now that the planning, layout and organisation was completed for my dissertation I needed to do allot research. During the dates mentioned above I was researching information and story’s to include in my dissertation. I started off at first just researching on the internet, although I found some useful information that I did include in my dissertation I found it increasingly difficult to get most of the information and answers I needed to cover my topics. In the end I did get around this problem by finding a solution which was when I was looking through some old newspapers at home which were going to be used for fire paper. I was very surprised by how much information that I was In need of was in these papers.
The August 2011 riots was going to be a sub topic in my dissertation so I needed lots of information and story’s on that which related to the social network. I found allot of the information that I required from articles in the old newspapers which was very helpful.
27th January 2012- 9th March 2012: Now that I had finished doing my research for my extended project it was now time to start writing up my dissertation. I decided it would be easiest to do it in the way my layout said. So I started with the introduction where I introduced my dissertation and what had inspired me to choose the topic, I also then gave a brief introduction on what the Social Network was and listed a few reasons why it was so popular among people.
I then started writing up the body of my dissertation starting with POS1( Positive information one) which was talking about how Twitter saved a boy’s life when he was trapped under the debris of a destroyed house that had crumbled to bits during the earthquake that took place in Easter Turkey in October 2011. After this was written I then balanced it out by writing NEG1 (Negative information one). This was about a Dutch website designer who had been telling the BBC that it was dangerous for people to display too much personal information out in the open for the public to see.
After this came POS2 which talked about a man whose life was saved when an organ donator saw the man’s plea for a transplant donation on the Social network which then lead to the man being given the donated organ and having his life saved. NEG2 was talking about cyber bullying and also adding some articles found in newspapers, one being about a man from Kent University who was bullied and another about a 14 year old girl who hung herself because of a received message on MySpace.
POS3 was information about how the social network was used in a very positive and strong way to raise money for charities such as children in need. NEG3 talks in a negative way about the social network saying how people who use the social network on a daily basis are becoming more and more reliant on it. The information also said people who use the social network on a daily basis aren’t developing their speech and communicating skills as fast as an average person would.
POS 4 talks about YouTube and how useful it is because of the way it’s connected with the major social network sites which allows people to view videos with ease. NEG4 talks about the internet chat rooms and the dangerous consequences people may have to suffer when using them.
When I started writing up POS5 I was talking about how companies used the Social network to advertise events and products. I went into some detail in particular about gigs and music events having Facebook pages put up usually way in advance of the event so people could book in advance. I then wrote NEG5 which was my largest subtopic inside my dissertation which talks about how the riots in August 2011 were influenced majorly by the social network. I also talked about the consequences of the people who were using the social network for the wrong reasons during the riots.
After this I had completed the main body of my work, as you can see I have used my own technique of using positive information about the social network and then countering it by putting negative information about the social network after that. I kept repeating this right up to the end of writing the body of my dissertation.
I finished by writing up a very brief summary which quickly explained what side of the argument I was supporting and then my dissertation was finished.
My Finished Dissertation
Is the social network becoming a modern day superpower or is it destroying us?
Introduction:
I have chosen this topic for my essay because I use the social network allot using programmes such as Facebook and Skype mainly. I’ve always thought of social networking sites as a modern day super power because of how helpful they are when it comes to keeping in contact with friends and family. Only until recently have I had my doubts that the social network isn’t so great after all. I started having my doubts when I saw the riots on the TV news channel which took place throughout England from the 6thto 10th of 2011.
At first I didn’t link the riots linked with the social network until a week after the riots when news channels revealed that the social network (namely Twitter and Facebook) had been used as a tool to gather people to together to continue with the riots. The police then arrested and trialled a number of people who were accused of making groups on Facebook and tweeting on twitter that were designed to encourage the riots to continue and for more people.
This was what first made me to start having mixed opinions on the social network. A few months later I was given an assignment for my extended project which was to write an essay styled argument. This is when I saw my opportunity to write an essay styled argument on the social network and if it was a modern day super power or if it was destroying us. Because I chose this I needed more research so I have used the internet and news media to find as much research as I can about my chosen topic.
Without giving too much away, my research has given me a lot of information and facts to inform you about, some of it being positive information for the Social network and some of it also being negative information. For the layout of this essay styles argument I shall layer out my research in a unbiased way which will be writing up positive research, news articles and information which will be for the argument. Then after this I will write up negative research, news articles or information which will go against the argument. I will repeat this until I reach my conclusion where I will sum up all of what has been discussed in this essay but without giving my opinion because that would seem biased.
Research:
The social network (namely being Facebook, Twitter and Myspace) is a very popular tool for the general public with websites such as Facebook which had 80 million users in April 2008 and since then has doubled. Some sites are focused on letting friends stay in touch (MySpace, Facebook) while others, such as LinkedIn and Plaxo serve to network the business community.
Social network sites have been picked up by the public so quickly and become so popular because of how much a powerful tool they are. If I had to describe sites such as Facebook and Myspace I’d say it was a human database. A large per cent of people who use Social network sites are teenagers, although a great amount of 19-40 year olds use social networking sites too.
From research via the internet I have learned that the majority of people who sign up to these social network sites sign up for the following reasons. Firstly because most social network sites (Facebook) are much simpler to use these days than the older generation social network sites (Myspace),the majority of people prefer simple social network sites which don’t require amounts effort to maintain their profile page.
Secondly most people join up with social network sites to connect/ add friends to make contact with each other easier. It is very useful if you use advanced search on these social network sites and for example find friends from your old school who you haven’t seen in a few years because then you can add them and get back in contact with them. This is why Facebook is so popular, because a large scale of the European population use Facebook it’s very likely that anyone you haven’t seen or been in contact with lately will be using Facebook.
Thirdly people mainly use social networking sites to communicate with friends or family. These days’ people preferably write on their friend’s wall or send them a social network message rather than text or call that friend. For example from personal experience when it’s someone’s birthday, instead of receiving texts or phone calls the majority of birthday wishes are sent to that person via Facebook or whatever other social networking site that person is using.
A lot of businesses and celebrity’s are fond of using social networking sites to advertise themselves or their business. Businesses can often pay social network sites to be allowed to advertise themselves within that website. For example with Facebook you often see Facebook banners at the top of your profile page advertising products or musical concerts ect.
Celebrities are more interested in using the social network to get more fans and gain more attention from people using the social network. They often make fan pages inside the social network sites to gain more fans. You will find that the majority of celebrity’s use Twitter which is what Twitter is most commonly known for. Millions of people sign up to twitter and with then one click of a mouse can start following which ether person or more specifically celebrity they want to see.
Now that I have explained what the social network is and the reasons people like it so much I will start my essay styled argument where I will be using positive and negative information that I have found out about the social network through research.
POS1:
The social network isn’t just a tool for communicating with friends, advertising or helping to develop businesses, it can also save lives.
In October 2011 a devastating earthquake took place in Eastern Turkey. The earthquake killed almost 500 people and flattened whole neighbourhoods of Ercis, Van and other eastern settlements. Trapped under the rubble after an earthquake in eastern Turkey, two teenagers called for help in a way that reflects how modernity has transformed even the furthest reaches of this country: they tweeted.
A television reporter saw the online message soon after the 7.2-magnitude temblor on Sunday and informed the AKUT Search and Rescue Association. Twitter has a location feature that allows users to pinpoint their exact co-ordinates. Within two hours, a search team had extracted the young men from a collapsed building.
NEG1:
A website called “PleaseRobMe” claimed to reveal the location of empty homes based on what people post online.
The Dutch developers told BBC News the site was designed to prove a point about the dangers of sharing precise location information on the internet.
The site scrutinises players of online game Foursquare, which is based on a person's location in the real world. PleaseRobMe extracts information from players who have chosen to post their whereabouts automatically onto Twitter.
"It started with me and a friend looking at our Twitter feeds and seeing more and more Foursquare posts," said Boy Van Amstel, one of PleaseRobMe's developers.
"People were checking in at their house, or their girlfriend's or friend's house, and sharing the address - I don't think they were aware of how much they were sharing."
The website developers realised that not only were people sharing detailed location information about themselves and their friends, they were also by default broadcasting when they were away from their own home.
I can vouch for what the developers are saying because when I am using Social network sites I often see posts by people saying “going on holiday with family to so and so” or “going out for the night with so and so”. This isn’t necessarily the social networks fault but more the people who are writing these posts. They should be more careful about what they write on the social networking sites.
POS2:
Social media can take credit for changing many people’s lives, but for Huw Williams, were it not for Facebook, he might not be alive today.
Williams was diagnosed with leukemia in 2008 and desperately needed a bone marrow transplant in order to survive. His initial drug treatment failed and no one in his family was a match, so his chances of getting a transplant looked grim. But one click from a random person on Facebook changed Williams’ life forever.
The social networking site, known more for photo-sharing and “poking” than helping cancer patients, became his lifeline when Mike Hogman, a university student from Nanaimo, British Columbia found a Facebook post about OneMatch Stem Cell and Marrow Network, and became Williams’ perfect match.
OneMatch is part of the Canadian Blood Services and a member of an international network of registries that match donors to patients needing transplants. Hogman says that had he never seen that posting, he wouldn’t have been in the OneMatch registry which matched his bone marrow with Williams, thereby saving the man’s life.
NEG2:
Cyber bullying is a massive negative for the social network which as caused much upset with people have been the victim of cyber bullying. This can be caused by posting horrid images on the victim’s wall or writing posts and worse of all creating a group which is dedicated to the victim in taking the mick out of him.
One example of this is where a university student called Graham Mallaghan, 36, who also works as a library assistant at the University of Kent was bullied and cyber bullied by over 350 individuals most of whom were at the same university as him. It started with one individual who created a facebook group which was called "for those who hate the little fat library man". Within two weeks 350 individuals had joined the Facebook group.
Some of the individuals even took photos of Graham in the library and posted it be used as a picture on the Facebook group. When Graham found out, he informed the University who in turn reported the bullying to Facebook. Facebook immediately took down the group page and and banned the creator of the group from using Facebook. After this a large number of the university students who were involved messaged graham to apologised too him for their behaviour
The results of cyber bullying however can be much more devastating than above.
Megan Meier was, in many ways, a typical teenager. She had weight and self-esteem issues, occasionally fell out with her peers, and was preoccupied with boys. The 13-year-old also liked 'social networking' websites such as MySpace. It was an innocent pursuit which was to end up costing her life.
While feeling low one day last year, she logged on to MySpace and was thrilled to be chatted up online by a good-looking, 16-year-old boy called Josh Evans. Over the next few weeks, they gossiped, flirted and exchanged Then, out of the blue, Josh wrote: 'I don't know if I want to be friends with you any more because I've heard that you are not very nice to your friends.'
A devastated Megan then learned that Josh had forwarded all the secrets and confessions she had confided in him to her circle of friends. The final blow was delivered in this vicious final posting: 'Everybody knows how you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a sh***y rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you. Megan hanged herself twenty minutes after reading that last message.
POS3:
The social network is very useful when it comes to charities. For small independent charities it is very useful because they can make groups or make twitter accounts for people to follow advertising the charity they created or are with. From my research these charities have become very well known by people using the social network and have raised a fair amount of money.
The reason these charities are so successful is because they are advertising their charities in the right place (social network) because a large percent of the world population is linked to at least one kind of social network site they are bound to come across the charity at some point while they are on the social networking site.
Charities such as BBC children in need which are already extremely well know charities also make use of the social network in particular Facebook where they made a BBC children in need group which was designed to get people to donate money towards the charity. Facebook also helped out by making a Facebook credit point currency where you can buy virtual money paying with real money which you can use to buy games, applications or song on Facebook itself.
Recently though Facebook has made it possible to donate however many credits you wanted to any charity that had an official web page on Facebook.
Another brilliant example of people using the social network to make money for charity was in September 2011 where Celebrities were auctioning to the public that the highest bidder for their name would allow that person to be followed by the specific celebrity. Of course all of the profit made by the celebrity’s would go to charity. Over 30 million Twitter users visited the TwitChange website to attempt to be the highest bidder for their favorite celebrity. $500,000 was raised for charities by the celebrity’s. This event will also be taking place again in September 2012.
NEG3:
It’s all very well having the social network around to easily help us communicate and share information with friends and ect but more and more people are starting to become dependent on being able to use social networking sites on a daily basis. Some doctors are classing it as an addiction.
Most people I know have blackberry’s, IPhones and other smart phones that have all the social network sites built into them such as twitter and Facebook. It’s like receiving a text message, as soon as someone tweets you or messages you on your wall your phone will alert you with a tone or vibration.
This all proves my research to be true that more and more people are relying on the social network to communicate with people rather than to actually talk to those in people in real which brings me to my next point. My research is saying that it is very likely that the people who are relying on the social network to get them through life on a daily basis are damaging their social skills by doing this. The social network is taking away the reason for talking to someone person to person and replacing it with keyboard to keyboard.
POS4:
A great website that is connected to the social network is YouTube that allows people to browse and watch videos which have been uploaded by the public. I myself as a social networker find this website very fun and useful for example if you need a tutorial video on how to do something then you can more than likely find the tutorial you want on YouTube.
YouTube is connected to all the other big social network sites such as Facebook or MySpace so that when you find a video you like you can share it with your friends by one click of a button that posts the video link onto your Facebook or MySpace page. On YouTube as well as just watching videos you can make your own YouTube channel using your Google account which allows you to upload videos into your channel for the public to view. It is very fun and competitive to see how many views, likes or subscribers you get when using YouTube. For example there was a YouTube user named “Fred” who made a series of comedy videos and uploaded them onto YouTube. One of the videos from his series got 27 million views!
When Fred hit 27 million views he ended up all over the news (mainly American news channels) where he was made famous by his video, he’s even been contracted to make a film for cinemas called “Fred the movie”. Allot of people who make videos on YouTube now use the social network which YouTube is connected too to advertise their videos and persuade more people to view, like or subscribe to their videos.
Another brilliant example of how YouTube was used for good is where Russian peaceful protestors have been making anti-government videos talking about how corrupt their government is when it comes to ruling and elections. YouTube has in a sense given these protestors a freedom of speech allowing themselves to make themselves heard by people all over the world who are connected to YouTube.
Another craze that has hit the social network is people (averagely teen boys) who play a game called “call of duty” which is first person shooter game have been recording footage of themselves playing the game so that when they do something which is very hard to achieve in the game for example killing 30 people in the game and dying at all throughout this. They can than put this footage on YouTube which then allows them to post it on friend’s walls on social network sites such as Facebook or MySpace. I can back this up with the fact that when I am on Facebook I often see these kinds of videos being posted on peoples walls. The common tag for these kinds of videos used by the people who upload these videos is “quick scoping”.
NEG4
One of the biggest dangers to the social network is connecting or chatting with strangers. Although Facebook, MySpace and BEBO allow you to add strangers, yes there is still a risk of dangerous consequences but Facebook, MySpace, BEBO and other large social network sites monitor their websites very carefully so that dangers like this are avoided. It’s the smaller and less well known chat servers that are dangerous. Some of these blacklisted social chat websites include www.chatroulette.com, www.justchat.co.uk/ and www.worldofchat.co.uk/. In general I would keep away from any unknown or uncommon chat sites and stick to the big social network sites that you know plenty of friends who use.
The main reason chat rooms are so dangerous is because many like Chatroulette don’t require you to signup, all you have to do is just make a nick name and start pressing a button that connects your webcam to others. Because you don’t have to sign up to join the large majority of these chat rooms this makes it very easy for internet abusers and impostures to connect and chat with unsuspecting people from all over the world. Most innocent people are drawn into these scams because they take for granted everything that the social website tells them about the person they are talking to.
For example if there was a 16 year old boy using Facebook and he suddenly gets an friend request from another Facebook user. He would most likely check the profile to check the person out before he adds them. He would see a girl’s name and an attractive picture of a 16 year old girl in the profile picture. The descriptions beneath would tell him that the girl lives in the same country and had the same age as him. Because he sees an attractive person of the opposite sex he will most likely add her.
They would exchange messages after he adds her and possibly flirt with each other for a while. A few days later the boy himself or someone in his family would use the laptop the boy used to add the girl to buy some groceries online via credit card. A couple of days after this the parents would find out the credit card they used online for buying the groceries has had all its money emptied out of the card.
What has happened is the girl was never actually a girl but a 40 year old hacker who found a picture of an attractive girl online used as his profile picture, lied about his age and all the other required details. He has made this false account to lure people into adding him. After he exchanges comments all he has to do is add a hack such as a key logging hack that will go through to the other user’s computer and record every key that is pressed on the keyboard of that computer. After this all he has to do is wait until he sees something that looks familiar enough to be credit card details and then he can note them down and just like that he can take all the money from your credit card.
I may have been extreme for my example, but everything that I stated in my example could happen to you if you are not careful about whom you add online when using the social network. It has been discovered that on average 33% of people who use social network sites give false information about who they are. There are only three big possibilities for why people would do this, the first is that the person who made the account is underage, the second is that the person doesn’t want to share all their personal information with people over the internet (which is a very smart idea) and lastly because the person is abusing the social network. 33% is still a very worrying figure which proves even more that you have to be careful when using these sites. I will now list some of the key reasons why you must be careful when using the social network or in this particular case, chat rooms.
Cyber criminals, drug dealers and other unsocial elements prowl around in chat rooms and lure unsuspecting as well as willing chat room participants into a web of undesirable activities, leaving these participants vulnerable to police enquiries and even possible arrests.
One of the biggest threats on chat rooms is the presence of pedophiles, online stalkers and other predators always looking to exploit the vulnerabilities of pre-teens and young teens.
Chat rooms can be addictive and can cause users to spend hours on different chat forums online at the cost of other activities. Clinical psychologists and human behavioral scientists have considered chat room addiction almost as harmful as alcohol or drug addiction on the human psyche and health.
Social disengagement, aloofness or the wariness of interacting with persons in the real world is one of the consequences of spending hours online on chat rooms with online-only friends, buddies and acquaintances.
One of the pervasive threats of spending hours in chat rooms is the possibility of your computer being hacked by semi-automatic spyware, adware, other human-released viruses and even receiving spam emails via chat room accounts.
POS5:
One of the biggest threats on chat rooms is the presence of pedophiles, online stalkers and other predators always looking to exploit the vulnerabilities of pre-teens and young teens.
Chat rooms can be addictive and can cause users to spend hours on different chat forums online at the cost of other activities. Clinical psychologists and human behavioral scientists have considered chat room addiction almost as harmful as alcohol or drug addiction on the human psyche and health.
Social disengagement, aloofness or the wariness of interacting with persons in the real world is one of the consequences of spending hours online on chat rooms with online-only friends, buddies and acquaintances.
One of the pervasive threats of spending hours in chat rooms is the possibility of your computer being hacked by semi-automatic spyware, adware, other human-released viruses and even receiving spam emails via chat room accounts.
POS5:
The social network isn’t just good for using to socialise it also has an extremely large power in promoting stuff such as festivals, music, TV, film’s and much more. Because the social network is such a huge worldwide network it makes it a very powerful tool for advertising and promoting for companies that are situated outside the social network. It’s a fact that Social network sites which are free such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter make all their profit from being paid by companies to put up advertisements and banners on their websites.
A good example would be music festivals, the large and much awaited festivals such as Reading festival, Glastonbury festivals and Cream fields festival. When the time was drawing near for these events to take place (3 months before the festivals were scheduled to take place) massive amounts of advertisements would start showing up all over the social network (Facebook and MySpace in particular).
NEG5:
In the early August of 2011 riots broke out in Tottenham which caused 36 police officer injuries who hadn’t expected a violent riot. The riots then spread throughout the whole country all the way to London where the worst damage was done where rioters burned buildings down to the ground and burned cars and police vans. There were allot of injuries caused by the rioting but allot of the injuries were fortunately minor injuries.
The rioters used petrol bombs, fireworks and anything else they could throw that would cause damage around them and do damage to the police force. The main problem of the riots was that the rioters were beating up and mugging people and looting large number of stores. The rioting stopped a few days after it had started. At first the police were blaming the riots on the death of a man that had been shot dead in his car by the police.
However a few days after this statement has been made by the police they issue out another statement saying the possible cause of the riots but defiantly the fuel of the riots was the social networks, they blacklisted Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and BBM (a social messaging site called BlackBerry Messenger that can only be used on a blackberry). They also said that they had thousands of CCTV footage that were going to sit through and use to take anyone noticed to court for being involved in the riots.
The riots just go to show how dangerous a tool the social network can be when abused with. The way they were involved was people on face Book making Facebook group pages about the riots and trying to gather people together to join the riots. On Twitter people who already had loads of followers were tweeting to everyone who was following them saying that they should also join the riots and help. BBM was the most commonly used social network site during the riots where rioters broadcasted a message saying to people who were on their BBM friend list that they should join in with the riots and should broadcast this message to all their friends. You could call this chain mail.
When the police and media picked up on the fact that the social network was to blame for a large amount of the rioting the Government and police had a series of meetings with high ranking officials for each of the social network sites involved where they discussed ways of preventing these kind of events from happening in the future but more importantly they asked the social network officials to get members of their team to try and investigate who was involved in the riots by looking through the social networks.
Now that I have explained the timescale of what took place during the riots I will now go into detail about how the social network including BBM (Blackberry messenger) played a large role in starting the riots and helping to keep the riots continue for the next couple of days. I will also talk about the consequences that the social network sites involved had to pay and what happened to the people who were involved in the riots from behind the screens of their social network pages.
The spark of the riots is where Mark Duggan was shot dead in his car. After this all kind of groups and pages were setup on the social network relating to him in some way. But a Facebook page stood out the most which within hours had over 7500 people in the group. At first the group was mourning the death of Mark but then about an hour after the page had gone up the status in the group changed saying that Mark Duggan’s death needed to be avenged. Five hours after the death of Mark Duggan protestors were all gathering round the Tottenham police station on High road at 10:30 pm on Saturday.
At 10: 45 pm rioters in Tottenham set fire to a double decker bus. The Facebook page I mentioned earlier said “Please upload any pictures or videos you may have from tonight in Tottenham. Share it with people to send the message out as to why this has blown into a riot”. This caused a mass of images and videos of not just the double decker bus burning but also other area of the riot which were all uploaded onto the Facebook page.
However after this Facebook’s role in the riots didn’t escalate any further than what I mentioned above although that doesn’t mean it isn’t partially to blame for the riots. Twitter was just as much to blame for the riots, if not more. However twitter did work with police to help avoid more rioting for example there were tweets found on Twitter about attempting to target Hackney Carnival, luckily these tweets were spotted by the police and Hackney Carnival was abruptly cancelled.
Scotland Yard warned that anyone using Twitter for inciting violence towards the riots will not go unpunished by the police. They also confirmed that they were looking into Twitter, Facebook and other social network sites to investigate the looting and rioting and hopefully find some culprits.
However the most powerful and up-to-the-minute rallying for the riots was taking place on a more convert social network called BlackBerry Messenger (BBM). Using Blackberry handsets which research has said is the smartphone choice for the majority (37%) of British teens. BBM allows users one-to-many messages to their network of contacts, which are connected by “BBM PIN’s”. For many teens armed with a Blackberry, BBM has replaced text messaging because it is free, instant and more part of a much larger community than regular SMS.
Unlike Twitter or Facebook, many BBM messages are untraceable by the authorities. One BBM broadcast message that was broadcasted around BBM was calling on everyone from all sides of London to vandalise shops on Oxford Street. It said: “Everyone from all sides of London meet up at the heart of London (central) OXFORD CIRCUS!!, bare SHOPS are gonna get smashed up so come get some (free stuff!!!) fuck the feds we will send them back with our OUR riot! >:O Dead the ends and colour war from now so if you see a brother… SALUT! If you see a fed… SHOOT!
Jenny Jones, the former deputy mayor of London, blamed an under-resourced force for missing the tweets and the status updates. "It's quite possible if they had more resources they could have picked up on this," she said.
Since the riots ended, police have been arresting and sentencing some of the people who were involved in the riots. The majority of people who were arrested were the ones that were looting stores during the riots. Most of them were caught on CCTV footage, but a few were caught about by the social network.
The way this happened was that some of the looters posted on their wall saying what they had stolen to show off to their mates and some were even more stupid enough to put up pictures of them with stolen items and themselves in the picture. This made it incredibly easy for the police to find the looters by using the social network.
This proves another point, not only can the social network be used to stir and cause trouble such as the riots but it can also be used to prevent crime. However it wasn’t just looters who were punished for their taking part in the riots, it was also the people behind the screens of the social network who were fueling the riots that were also punished. Some were punished more severely than necessary in my opinion.
Two men who posted messages on Facebook inciting other people to riot in their home towns were both sentenced to four years in prison by a judge at Chester crown court. The first person was Jordan Blackshaw aged 20 who set up an event on Facebook called “Smash down in Northwich Town” which was arranged for a date on the 8th August.
However no one apart from the police who had been monitoring the Facebook event page turned up to the meeting place at the arranged time where Blackshaw was immediately arrested on sight.
When Blackshaw was taken to court the judge sentenced Blackshaw to four years in a young offender’s institution, Judge Elgan Edwards QC said he had committed an "evil act". He said: "This happened at a time when collective insanity gripped the nation. Your conduct was quite disgraceful and the title of the message you posted on Facebook chills the blood.
Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, of Latchford, Warrington, used his Facebook account in the early hours of 9 August to design a web page entitled The Warrington Riots. The court was told it caused a wave of panic in the town. When he woke up the following morning with a hangover, he removed the page and apologized, saying it had been a joke. His message was distributed to 400 Facebook contacts, but no rioting broke out as a result.
Now we have reached the end of my essay I shall conclude, to be perfectly honest im half and half with this argument. However if I had to choose I would choose that the Social network is a superpower (for) because the Social network is a very helpful tool in life for all the reasons listed above. Besides nothing bad can go wrong when using the social network as long as you stay safe and secure when using the Social Network and don’t misuse it.
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