UK Riots: Moral Extremes Reflected in Social Media Use

By Ruth Skilbeck

'Barbarians' at each end of the social scale were blamed for the riots that swept Britain last week; media commentators and religious leaders linked the predominantly socially disadvantaged young rioters behaviour in looting hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of fashion, sports wear and electronic goods across the land to an ethical disconnection, a breakdown in civic identity, deficiency in education, and lack of moral role models and leadership in contemporary consumer society that has been hi-jacked by market values.

Whereas the uprisings in the Arab world this year have been fuelled by a drive for democracy; the rioters in Britain focused on breaking into shops and looting the kinds of consumer items they wanted for themselves. The riots were triggered by the murder of Mark Duggan, a Tottenham man shot dead by the police. The uprisings that swept the land for the next four night may have seemed disproportionate, and dissociated from that event, yet the responses of some commentators and moral leaders, suggest they may be understood as a spontaneous outburst of unlawful acting out that reflects the climate of greed and moral decay of the wider consumer society, at high levels; as Britain prepares for austerity measures. 

The Telegraph pointed out that the riots occurred in England shortly after a series of exposures of corruption, greed and ‘looting’ by the upper classes - through tax evasion, the excessive imbalances of wealth in the GFC and the immoral conduct of the News of the World hacking scandal which saw politicians glossing over the unlawful behavior of media magnates, in a blog article, by Peter Oborne, the Daily Telegraph’s chief political commentator: 'The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom' (11/8/11). Amongst several  examples he gave of of high level corruption and greed he included the recent attendance of Prime Minister David Cameron at the News International summer party, “even though the media group was at the time subject to not one but two police investigations” related to the phone hacking scandal. 

Oborne condemned the award to former News of the World editor Andy Coulson of a position in Downing Street “although he knew at the time that Coulson had resigned after criminal acts were committed under his editorship.” 

Oborne pointed out that in order to ever face the problems that have emerged this week in the riots across the land, the problems must be located far more widely than in inner city housing estates. 

He wrote: “The culture of greed and impunity... stretches right up into corporate boardrooms and the Cabinet. It embraces the political and large parts of our media. It is not just its damaged youth, but Britain itself that needs a moral reformation.” 

Meanwhile, the Guardian UK Riots blog, and the Telegraph (12/8/11) reported that in an emergency sitting of the House of Lords, the Archbishop of Canterbury said the riots reflected a “breakdown not of society as such but a sense of civic identity, shared identity, shared responsibility.” He advocated education as part of the solution to revive a sense of moral agency and identity. He said. "Can we once again build a society which takes seriously the task of educating citizens, not consumers, not cogs in an economic system, but citizens.”

The same blog article in the Telegraph quoted the Bishop of London, the Rt Rev. Richard Chartres saying  a lack of “good role models”  for many children in disadvantaged areas was a contributing factor in the looting and disorder of the past week.

Social media was blamed in parliament for aiding the uprisings as rioters contacted each other through BlackBerry Messenger a closed network system where one message can be send out to multiple receivers. There were calls for more regulation. Blackberry agreed to work with the authorities in their investigations.  However social media in the form of twitter was also the means by which people came together in communities in local clean-ups after the riots; showing once again that what is important is not the technological tools of communication but how they are used by people.


© Ruth Skilbeck, 2011