‘Race’, Space and Social Action: The UK Riots 2011
Abstract
The issues of ‘race’, place and its connections to traditional and social media have never been so significant. The riots that occurred in the UK in 2011 signalled a watershed moment in locating virtual networks of communication to heterogeneous groups which resulted in homogeneous social action.
The purpose of this paper is to make intelligible the UK riots and the complexities involved in binding together disparate groups of people together during a key period of anomie. It seeks to uncover these connections further to elucidate the ways in which old and new technologies help to create virtual enclaves which transcend the confines of ‘race’, class and gender.
The methods that will be used to uncover the multifaceted responses to the riots will be multidisciplinary; it will involve a discourse analysis of the UK press at the height of the riots, secondary analysis of public sentiment and social media archives. These methods will result in a thematic analysis which posits the riots firmly within the context of web 2.0’s hegemonic forces. Underlying these methods will be an interwoven theoretical framework which supports the arguments presented.
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