How technology started a riot - then helped clean it up

Should we blame rioting on BlackBerry's BBM?

Why the rash of rioting, looting and arson that started in London and spread viciously across the UK in the last few days took plae is still being discussed, by everyone from the national press to the government. Some say the economic climate and high unemployment rate in the affected areas has created a hotbed of tension just waiting for a spark - the alleged shooting of Mark Duggan by Police being that spark.

But what is definitely clear is that technology has had a big part to play in the events of the past week - both good and bad.

BlackBerry Messenger has been widely criticised for helping the riots to happen.

All it takes is a quick BBM pin swap - easily distributed en masse through other technologies like Twitter - and potential troublemakers are quickly in contact with one another. All BBM conversations are private, and one message can send to several users at once, for free. Perfect for starting a riot.

Another reason BBM has been chosen as the method of choice is that the looter demographic and the BlackBerry demographic align. Not that all BlackBerry users are rioting thugs - far from it. But as ABC News points out: "BlackBerry made a specific effort to market its product among black youth in London, recently sponsoring a "secret gig" in London featuring top U.K. rappers".

Indeed, as The Telegraph reports: "RIM’s BlackBerry smartphones are very popular among inner city youths on both sides of the Atlantic. The devices themselves are typically cheaper than Android models and the iPhone, particularly on pay-as-you-go packages".

MP David Lammy has even called on RIM to shut off their BBM service: "Just been on 5Live asking BB to consider suspending their messaging service this evening...", he said via Twitter.

"Technology is ruining us," agrees tweeter Jessica Kennedy.

BlackBerry have certainly got a lot of damage control to do in terms of their tarnished image. No company wants to be responsible for rioting and destruction which has seen entire streets razed to the ground, including a 150-year-old furniture store and a huge Sony distribution centre, which was torched.

But it is important that we don't over react and blame the technology for the way people have used it. After all, quick communication tools like BBM and Twitter can only be as beneficial - or as destructive - as people make them through how they use them.

What is clear is that technology in 2011 can be immensely powerful. But if that power is being used to organise riots in the streets, it is not the fault of BlackBerry, it is the fault of the people doing the looting. I see no reason to shut off a legitmate service used by millions because a band of senseless thugs can't be trusted with communication tools we could only dream of a decade ago.

Technology can and has been used for good, too. Within days of the riots, Twitter account @riotcleanup was established, helping to get hundreds of people armed with brooms and bin bags out onto the broken streets and cleaning up the mess.

Similarly, Police in South Yorkshire, through @syptweet, have helped to keep people informed by countering destructive rumours that riots had started when they hadn't - which could have ironically caused riots to form had the rumours persisted.

Technology is like anything else - it is only as good as the people who use it. Let's hope we can use CCTV face recognition technology as well as Twitter to help put away those who can't use it responsibly.

iPad: Saviour of the newspaper industry?

©Alex Evans 2011

For hundreds of years, the newspaper has been a staple component of the morning routine for millions of people around the world. From businessmen vanishing behind the vast expanse of their broadsheets on the Underground to builders sat in Transit vans trying not to drip brown sauce on page 3, newspapers have for many years, and for millions of people, been absolutely essential.

But perhaps not for much longer. The internet, for all that it’s given us – better communication, cheaper shopping, social networking, has the newspaper squarely in its crosshairs. After all, why spend £1 on a lump of messy paper, half of which you won’t read, when you can pick and choose news content on the internet, free of charge?

Print circulation is in sharp decline. Average net circulation of daily newspapers has dropped 15% in four years, down from 11.5million in May 2007 to 9.8million in May 2011, according to figures published in The Times, Friday July 15 2011.

The same research suggests print costs have risen by 20% in the last year while advertising revenues for, as an example,  The Daily Mail, are down 7% in three months. Meanwhile, the cost of newspapers has risen – The Guardian, The Independent and The Daily Telegraph have all risen from 70p to £1 in the last four years, while The Times has moved from 65p to £1, The Daily Mail has risen from 45p to 55p and The Financial Times has doubled, from £1 to £2.

It all adds up to a situation in which newspapers are trapped in a self-defeating cycle – the more circulation dwindles, the more prices rise – and the further prices rise, the quicker circulation drops. 

According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, The Daily Telegraph has dropped from 911,454 to 651,184 daily circulation between 2007 and 2011. The Times has dropped from 670,054 to 457,250, while The Guardian has dropped from 384,070 to 279,308. Of these four, only The Daily Mail has seen a small decline (in terms of percentage of overall readership) – from 2,354,028 to 2,136,568. 

The one factor pointed out by analysts most often as the cause of this plunge in readership is the free online news movement.

Newspapers have reacted very differently to this new environment where news is quick, simple and free. The Daily Mail’s website is incredibly successful, pulling in millions of unique users every day, offsetting declining print circulation. But others have fought against it – The Times have locked their content behind a paywall, pushing readers to identify the newspaper’s web output as something worth paying for – with mixed results.

There is, though, one last saviour for traditional print publications: tablet computers, like the iPad. Apple’s hefty slab of screen is the first device which can actually mimic a newspaper exactly. The huge, bright screen lends itself perfectly to presenting full versions of newspaper pages identical to those sitting on newsstands. Indeed, The Times’ iPad app does exactly this – repacking the newspaper every day into a digital edition, complete with turnable pages and, unlike print, added interactivity.

The iPad offers newspapers and magazines a lifeline. A chance to sell their newspaper as a whole, as it was meant to be, complete with rich analysis, opinion and photographs. Never mind web pages with short stories written to gain immediate traffic, the iPad can deliver the deeper newspaper experience in digital format. Crucially – people are willing to pay.

How many people? And will this news revolution turn the whole industry to tablet computers overnight?

Certainly, from talking to newspaper and magazine editors and senior journalists from across the country, there seems to be hope. Hope that the same generation who buy iPods to listen to music, not CDs, the same generation who rent films over the internet rather than buy DVDs, the same generation who want everything with them, everywhere they go, in one device might want to buy newspapers for those devices.

iPad might not kill the newspaper industry – it might just save it.

__________________________________________________________________________

This is the introduction to my University dissertation; for confidentiality reasons I cannot publish any further excerpts, but any feedback is appreciated. This is an update of an earlier article from April, fleshed out after interviews with three major newspapers. All writing ©Alex Evans 2011.