London Riots Case Study Write Up

Overview of Contemporary Case Study
1. The context of the riots is that it started with a protest against the shooting of a man named Mark Duggan. During the protest, a few police cars other vehicles such as busses, were set alight. As the days progressed, people seemed to take advantage of the lack of law enforcement, and proceeded to invade various areas of London. From then onwards the situation seemed to spiral out of control, with more and more people descending on the city, and eventually what was once a protest, descended into a pure anarchical riot.

2.

One of the youths present in the riots claimed that he was only there to do what he wanted, he called it a 'Freedom Act' claiming that you can do whatever you want, and the police wont be able to stop you. He also claims that the only reason he is out is to drink, and get money. Although this was only one rioters claims, others tend to all have similar views, with the majority of them claiming that they are doing this so that they can anger the police. However other people seem to claim that the reasons that youths were in the riots was because they were being greedy, and were looking for an excuse to steal various items of great expense.

3. In my opinion I would say that the youths were not given a fair representation via the media. All the headlines reported on the bad things, such as the stealing, abusiveness of the youths. They also didn't differentiate between the obvious groups of youths, such as the ones who were rioting, and the ones who were, thus adding fuel to the stereotype of 'all youths are evil'. However in contrast to my previous points, the youths sometimes created this image for themselves during interviews with news crews. Some openly made it clear that they were only here to steal and riot. Interestingly in the background of the video I posted for question 2, you can see a youth behind the main speaker seeming to disagree with his reasons. I would say that this shows some of the other youths that weren't as bad as the others, although many of the viewers would only be interested in what the main speaker was saying.


Applying Theory