Everyone watching these horrific actions will be struck by how they were organised via social media. Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill.
And when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them. So we are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.
So went PM David Cameron’s statement to the House of Commons this afternoon in the wake of the intense rioting and looting that has spread across London and other English cities this week.
This is not the first time technology has been blamed for chaos, disorder or social unrest. Christian Fuchs cites Stanley Cohen’s 1972 publication, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, which details how popular culture and media — from comic books to films, music to computer games — have long been deemed triggers of violence. Social media is the twenty-first century addition to that list.
But blaming the riots on the powers of social media is both incorrect and a convenient way out of addressing the deeper, hugely convoluted issues that contributed to this week’s destructive events. Let’s be clear: social media were not a cause but a facilitator. Riots were organised before people were BBM’ing. And while social media platforms were indeed used to organise rioting and looting, they were just as easily adopted to co-ordinate the widespread clean-ups that occurred across the country in the days following the chaos.
I’m in complete agreement with Jeff Jarvis: a social media crackdown is the wrong response to these riots.
Enforcing social media restrictions would do nothing to separate the UK from the authoritarian regimes it so often pinpoints for infringing freedom of expression. The very reason the Chinese government blocked access to Twitter and Facebook — and in so doing deemed the Internet a national security threat — was the deadly ethnic riots that took place in Xinjiang in 2009. So precisely what would the difference be were Cameron to use the UK riots as a justification for banning certain individuals from using social media?
In addition, targeting “suspected rioters”, the content they upload and which communications technologies they use evidently raises questions. Suspected on what basis? What sort of content will be deemed offensive, or could result in disorder? Who will decide the parameters of who is free to express, and using which platform?
There are complex and deep-set tensions this week’s violence has brought to the surface; from race-related issues to youth disenfranchisement, from police tactics to the relationship between leaders and communities. One would hope Cameron would take a deeper look at these before setting out plans to clamp down on communication tools, plans that risk restricting our fundamental right to freedom of expression.
As I mentioned some weeks ago, I will soon be leaving Shanghai after almost two years of living, studying and working here.
My reasons for leaving are mainly personal. As Adam Minter so poignantly alludes to, embracing life abroad while sacrificing loved ones from home is a difficult trade-off. I am incredibly fortunate to come from a family who pushed me to follow my curious mind and throw myself into the unknown. But being someone who needs a steady support system, my father’s simple words rung ever more true as I spent time alone grappling with a language that constantly beat me down: “nothing is more important than family.”
Yet, my homecoming will be a bittersweet one. Earlier this month my paternal grandmother, the all-seeing matriarch of my family, passed away. Being absent for the death of a woman who has always been present in my life has been jarring, making me only too aware of the disconnect one goes through when they live away from home. While distance can help with grief – you don’t have to deal with daily reminders of your loss, and you face no alternative but to carry on with your daily life abroad – knowing that the home I will go back to won’t be the home I remember…well, for that there are no words.
While she was quietly supportive, my grandmother was never completely sold on the idea of my living in the Middle Kingdom. The distance was “too far”, stories of filthy restaurants horrified her (I spared her tales of swill oil and melamine-infused milk) and, a product of her put-up-and-shut-up generation, she simply didn’t see the appeal of continuing my studies in a metropolis that couldn’t sit still when I could (or should) “find a job” in London.
But while she showed little interest in China, what never failed to strike me about living here was how often I felt Nana – southern Italian to her bones, ferocious, righteous and vivacious (her surname translated to ‘full of vigour’) – in the elderly Chinese women I’d see. In the faces that showed struggle, strength, stories; in the limitless persistence you could almost taste; in the loving ways they kissed the round cheeks of their grandchildren. I was so often taken back to the late summer evening when this woman taught me how to tie my shoelaces, the countless hours she spent teaching me how to cook, and a balmy night in Sardinia when she told my sisters and me about my father’s ex-girlfriends (prefaced with a “don’t tell your Mum, for heaven’s sake”).
In my two years here I’ve continually been reminded that, in several ways, China and Italy are far more similar than Italy and the UK. Professionally, it is next to impossible difficult to get anywhere in China without guanxi (connections), as it is in Italy. The family unit is central. Food is central. In southern Italy, face (or honour, more specifically) carries similar importance as in China. These reminders helped to shoulder some of the culture shock that crept in unannounced, and made my second (or perhaps third) home feel more natural.
Having to say goodbye to a place that has been home for two years, and say a strange sort of hello to the home I come from, is not going to be easy. Without wanting to spill a river of cliches, there are obvious things about China I will miss. The speed and direction of change (“dizzying and churning”, as Evan Osnos puts it) never failed to amaze me, and I would always miss it whenever I returned to a steady, static London. I savoured that no two days would be the same, that no matter how used you got to daily life, something always jump out and surprise me. As a journalist friend of mine once put it, “I can never quite figure this place out.” At times of course, this feeling of the rug constantly pulled from beneath me took its toll, and I wanted nothing more than a simple day with no wild surprises; but from a reporter’s point of view, China is an amazing story.
Food scandals notwithstanding, I’ll also miss living on one of the most bustling roads of the French Concession, with its baozi stands, pastry stalls, the morning pancake vendor, the endless stream of fresh markets (and, for those moments when only pasta con pesto will do, the amazing Avocado Lady). Shanghai is home to some incredible and inexpensive regional Chinese restaurants, and I plan on working my way through as many provincial cuisines as possible before 10th July.
Of course, there are the simple daily pleasures I’ll cherish back home. Not having to open the curtains in the morning and assess how damaged my lungs would be by the end of the day if I were to walk rather than take the bus. Not having to wear a down jacket indoors during winter and have locals tell me I’m still wearing far too few layers. No longer thinking I’ve built up some semblance of a bond with my local fruit seller only for her to continue shafting me for a kilo of oranges. And if there’s one thing that keeps me up at night, it’s Chinese rules and regulations about gift-giving; I look forward to simpler days of M&S plants and Bendicks mints.
But that’s enough ruminating. A goodbye would not be a goodbye without a few final thank-yous. I am deeply grateful to all the China hands and reporters I have met in Shanghai and Beijing for their advice and insight, as well as the friends from LSE who stayed in Shanghai and offered words of encouragement over coffee. I’ve been lucky to spend my two years here in the company of the brilliant and talented Christine H. Tan of Shanghai Shiok!. From listening to my concerns from the daily to the long-term – usually over substantial portions of hong shao rou – she has been nothing short of a sister. Thanks are due to Adam Minter for his consistent encouragement and discussions of Prince versus Michael Jackson; to Malcolm Moore for listening to my career concerns. Much gratitude also to Rebecca MacKinnon, Oiwan Lam and many others at Global Voices for their support over the past few years.
I’ll be joining Index on Censorship as an editorial intern at the end of July. The next blog entry will be from EC1. Hope you’ll continue to read on the other side.
Apologies for the erratic posting – with an soon-approaching HSK exam, there’s not been much time left to devote to the blog.
In other news: my China chapter will soon be reaching an end. In July I will move back to the UK, where I’ll be joining Index on Censorship as an editorial intern. A ‘farewell China’ post is in the pipeline. Until then…
