Virtualising violence (Image: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty)

They are being called the UK’s first networked riots. The behaviour of rioters in London and other UK cities over the past few days has been facilitated by social media such as Twitter, the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) network and Sony’s Playstation Network, but studies of previous riots suggest that deep psychological forces are also at play.

In times of social unrest, violent acts that would usually seem extreme can quickly become the norm among groups of people who identify with each other in terms of age, social status or other attributes, says Alex Haslam of the University of Exeter, UK, who studies group conflict and social identity.

When people see looting and rioting happening elsewhere, it shows them what can be realised, he says. “They feel empowered. They think they can do pretty much what they like, and they are having a good time doing it. They simply don’t think it as unacceptable as they would at other times.”


“Collective action is driven by social identity – by people who share a common social place,” says Clifford Stott at the University of Liverpool, UK. While it is too early to know what the rioters might have in common, he says he suspects that it boils down to social class and is defined by economic deprivation. “They seem to be targeting the middle class. It’s like a kind of class warfare on the streets of Britain. To them their targets are legitimate.”

Alienation

Eduardo Vasquez of the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK, who studies gang psychology, says that the agitators’ alienation from their families, the local community and mainstream society disinhibits them from caring about the harm they cause others. Combating this will require us “to decrease the influence of negative individuals and challenge [the rioters’] current perception that there are no opportunities for a better future”, he says. But he adds that budget cuts to initiatives focused on youth are likely to lead to more problems.

Meanwhile, much has been made of BBM being a secure network that is being used by looters to spread the word about which areas to target next. If the looters are counting on secrecy, they are going to be disappointed: BBM uses internet packet transmission protocols sent over the 3G mobile network, and messages are eminently traceable.