A little bird told me

Twitter and contested discourses in the 2011 London riots.

Ian R Lamond: leedsmet.academia.edu/IanLamond i.lamond@leedsbeckett.ac.ukICRETH: International Centre for Research in Tourism, Events and HospitalityUKCEM: UK Centre for Events Management

Context of presentation• Origins of dataset• Limitations of dataset• Refinement of scope of

dataset• Cleaning data• Selection of media sources• Observations

• Very early stages of an unfunded project

• Lots on process• Lot on approach and

observations• Light on findings and

conclusions

Images in this PowerPoint presentation were sourced through Google: attribution, where known, is listed at the end of the presentation.

Dataset

• Full set from 1st August to 21st August 2011

• 429,884 tweets• Approximately

6,663,200 words• Mark Duggan shot

4th August • Tottenham riots

“began” 6th August• Riots “ended” 14th

August

Thanks to Dr E Guest (Leeds Metropolitan University) who gathered the data as part of experiment in twitter data scraping

Refining dataset

6th August18:00 – 00:00 (BST)

• 5316 tweets before cleaning

• 3196 after cleaningo Only tweets with a clear

link to the riots of 6th August retained.

o Where possible, links to webpages also reviewed for connection.

o Where any doubt remained the tweet was not included.

• Approximately 52,225 words

Tweets posted at 10 minute intervals

18:5519:1019:2519:4019:5520:1020:2520:4020:5521:1021:2521:4021:5522:1022:2522:4022:5423:0923:2423:3923:54

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200

GMT

6th August 2011

Selection of media

Text based media

(Web and paper print)The Telegraph: 7th and 8th AugustThe Guardian: 7th and 8th August(Source: LexisNexis)

Timelines

The Telegraph:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8691578/London-riots-timeline-of-violence.html

The Guardian:http://www.theguardian.com/uk/interactive/2011/sep/05/england-riots-timeline-interactive

BBC:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14436499

Observations: Text based media

Indications of intra-media textual consistency

Guardian connections: 7/10

Telegraph connections: 5/10

Indications of inter-media textual convergence

Interesting shifts between the 7th and 8th:

• In the Guardian “riot” moves from the 25th most frequently used word to the 6th.

• In the Telegraph “black” moves from the most frequently used word to the 24th

The first tweet

“There is a riot in tottenham boy police shouldn't of shot the boy http://lockerz.com/s/127183649” [Posted: 18:51 (GMT) ~ 19:51 (BST)]

NB: There are many hundred of tweets in the long list before this – however this is the first tweet to explicitly mention Tottenham as a space where rioting is taking place.

Tweeting the riotsTottenham:

Riot:

Police:

Fire:

Car:

Bus:

Shop:

Other media themesShooting:

Duggan:

Looting:

Broadwater:

Alternative markersAlternatives to “police”Cop:

Pigs:

Alternatives to “riot”/”looting”Protest:

Justice:

…some exhibiting a dark humour

Weave: Pizza

“Just seen a man deliver pizza to a riot.” was the 10th most retweeted tweet of the night.

“Weave”, is used in common usage to refer to a form of hair extension; it appears in 55 tweets; approximately 1.75% of those in the analysis.

Software usedFor word frequencies other than those gathered by Dr E. Guest:Textalyser: http://textalyser.net/

Concordance Plot Tool:AntConc 3.4.2: http://www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/software.html Copyright: Prof. Laurence Anthony, Director of CELESE

Many thanks to Dr E. Guest for gathering the initial data

Image attributionSlide Source

2 http://www.listener.co.nz/commentary/the-internaut/london-riots-online-live-blogs-video/ [Originator not determined]

10 Screenshot from an original twitter page [details withheld to protect confidentiality]

11 (a): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14436499 [Originator not determined]

(b): http://www.voice-online.co.uk/article/fire-babylon [Originator not determined]

(c): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_England_riots [material created and provided by Voice of America]

(d): http://www.indymedia.ie/article/100336 [Originator not determined]

12 (a): http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2536197/Mark-Duggan-Arms-draped-two-violent-gangsters-thug-death-sparked-riots.html [Originator unknown]

(b): http://metro.co.uk/2013/10/16/mark-duggan-witness-i-saw-police-officer-take-gun-from-back-of-the-taxi-4149432/ [detail from a photograph by Tim Stewart]

(c): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Keith_Blakelock [material created by Nigel Cox: geograph.org.uk]

(d): https://publicintelligence.net/london-riots-photos-august-2011/ [material created by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images]

13 (a): http://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/nov/24/student-school-pupils-protests-walkout [material created by Simon Richardson]

(b): http://rt.com/op-edge/175320-custody-deaths-uk-police-black/ [material created by Neil Hall/Reuters]

(c): http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2035513/Mark-Duggan-funeral-Mourners-bling-man-shooting-sparked-riots-buried.html [Originator not determined]

14 (a): http://wealthyhair.com/virgin-island-curl.html [Originator not determined]

(b): Google image search – attribution not determined

15 http://www.engadget.com [material created by J L Flatley]