sall - csm master's thesis
TRANSCRIPT
Citizen Vigilance and Mobilization
Examining the Use of Information Communications Technologies and Social Media After Social Disorder
Rajpreet Sall, S1590073 Master’s of Crisis and Security Management
Final Dissertation September 2014 Cohort
Supervisor: Dr. E. Bakker Advisor: John P. Sabou
Second Reader: Dr. E. Devroe
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Abstract
Information communications technologies (ICT) provide increasingly more
opportunities for citizen engagement and mobilization. These opportunities are
made possible due to enabling technologies that disregard traditional mobilization
methods. This allows citizens to engage with peers and an online community for any
purpose by facilitating discussion and mobilization without requiring formal
organizations. ICT and social media give citizens the opportunity to play an active
role in mobilizing efforts. As technologies continue to develop and allow greater
citizen involvement and mobilization in areas of life previously not available to
them, the effects of this citizen mobilization needs to be reviewed.
This thesis will look at the primary case study of the 2011 and 1994 Vancouver,
Canada riots, and a secondary case of the 2011 rioting in London, England and
surrounding areas to examine the roles ICT enabled citizen vigilance and
mobilization played during and after social disorder. Along with empowering
citizens, ICT and social media provide ample occasions for organizing, lateral
surveillance, and persecution through the work of a crowd of self-‐organized users.
This type of mobilization after social disorder can have detrimental effects on the
safety and security of citizens and needs to be approached with caution. However,
harnessing the power of citizens and recognizing the roles they can play as
resources after social disorder or crises is significant and must be taken into
consideration as the field of crisis and security management evolves.
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Acknowledgements The past ten months I have lived in The Hague while attending Universiteit Leiden and completing a Master’s in Crisis and Security Management have been a whirlwind and passed by more quickly than I could have ever imagined. Living abroad has been a trying yet incredibly insightful experience for which I will always be grateful. I could not have finished this thesis on my own and there are individuals I owe thanks to for their contributions throughout this process: Dr. Bakker, for his ability to see and get to the heart of a matter quickly and efficiently while providing guidance and feedback throughout the writing process. John, to whom my most sincere thanks and gratitude go. Endless advice, encouragement, and support characterized our interactions, along with meaningful constructive criticism, and an ability to keep me on track. Beth, for encouraging me to do more and be more when I was complacent. Finally, my family and friends for listening to me rant about my topic, explaining the technical material, providing counselling, and helping me preserve my sanity during an intensive graduate program.
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Table of Contents
Abstract .................................................................................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................................. 3 Table of Contents ................................................................................................................................... 4 Table of Figures ..................................................................................................................................... 6 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 8 Introduction of Cases ............................................................................................................................................. 11 2011 Vancouver Riot .................................................................................................................................. 12 1994 Vancouver Riot .................................................................................................................................. 17 2011 Rioting in London and Surrounding Areas ............................................................................ 19
Research Question ................................................................................................................................................... 22 Relevance of Research Question ........................................................................................................................ 23 Methodology .............................................................................................................................................................. 24 Structure of Thesis .................................................................................................................................................. 26
Use and Application of Theory ........................................................................................................ 27 Evolution of Resource Mobilization Theory ................................................................................................. 27 The State of Mobilization Today ....................................................................................................................... 28 The Role of Citizens ..................................................................................................................................... 29 The Role of Information Communications Technologies ........................................................... 30
Theoretical Framework ........................................................................................................................................ 31 Benefits and Drawbacks of Applying Resource Mobilization Theory to a Case Study .............. 35 Benefits of Using Resource Mobilization Theory ........................................................................... 35 Drawbacks of Using Resource Mobilization Theory ..................................................................... 36
The Efficacy of Resource Mobilization Theory in Contemporary Society ....................................... 37 Analysis ................................................................................................................................................... 39 Accumulation of Resources ................................................................................................................................. 39 Identification of Resources in Vancouver .......................................................................................... 41 Identification of Resources in London ................................................................................................ 43
Organization ............................................................................................................................................................. 46 Leadership of the Movement .................................................................................................................. 46 Behaviour of Citizens .................................................................................................................................. 48 Citizens as Resources ................................................................................................................................. 52 Commitment of Citizens ............................................................................................................................ 54
Involvement from Outside the Crowd ............................................................................................................. 56 Establishing an Identity ............................................................................................................................. 56 Citizen Vigilance and Defining the Situation .................................................................................... 57 Impatience of Citizens ................................................................................................................................ 60
Supply and Demand of Resources .................................................................................................................... 63 Recruitment for the Cause ........................................................................................................................ 65
Costs and Benefits of Participation .................................................................................................................. 67 Framing the Message .................................................................................................................................. 67
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Costs of Participation ................................................................................................................................. 68 Benefits of Participation ............................................................................................................................ 71
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 72 Reflection .................................................................................................................................................................... 76
Bibliography ......................................................................................................................................... 78 Blogs .............................................................................................................................................................................. 78 Books ............................................................................................................................................................................. 78 Conference Proceedings ........................................................................................................................................ 79 News Articles ............................................................................................................................................................. 79 Podcasts ....................................................................................................................................................................... 83 Reports and Legislation ........................................................................................................................................ 83 Scientific Articles ..................................................................................................................................................... 85 Social Media Sources .............................................................................................................................................. 90 Websites ....................................................................................................................................................................... 91
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Table of Figures Figure 1: Interconnectedness of Resource Mobilization Theory 32 Figure 2: Components of Citizen Vigilance 75
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“The great thing about our current state of complete social media saturation is that we no longer have to rely on that singular person keeping their respective whoever in check . . . we have the advantage of a global community. Can we, as perfect strangers, make those who deserve to feel ashamd [sic] actually feel it? Whether the regret felt is regret for their action, regret being caught, or regret fro [sic] the ensuing consequences is a moot point: If we can make people regret (in any sense of the word) what happened then it’s a job well done. All I have to say is if you are a looter and riotous criminal, social networking OWNS you!”1
1 Retrieved from ‘Criminal List: Anonymous Crime in a 2.0 World? I Don’t Think So!’
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Introduction
Information communications technologies (ICT) are being used the world over to
wage revolutions, lead campaigns against poverty and other social causes, develop
mobile applications to provide medical technologies to remote communities,
provide crowdsourced information for various reasons, and much more (Lindgren,
2013). ICT is giving citizens worldwide opportunities to exchange, filter, publish,
and share information by providing tools to allow the exchange of user generated
content (Simon, et al, 2014). ICT, its mobility, and its spatial fragmentation have
provided important resources and the unprecedented ability to coordinate the
mobilization of large masses of people to accomplish great feats that transcend
geographical limitations (Lindgren, 2013; Rutherford, et al, 2013; Eltantawy &
Wiest, 2011). In order for these types of activities to build momentum and be
successful motivation is required.
Motivation is needed for mobilization to occur; without motivation any endeavour
or social movement is unlikely to succeed (Klandermans, 1984). Motivation leads to
goals, and occasionally for these goals to be fulfilled they require citizen support.
The desired goal may vary: to mobilize citizens to clean up after a riot, or to help
police identify provocateurs and participants after the same event; the means used
to reach this goal are information communications technologies, most often through
forms of social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Blackberry Messenger (BBM).
This is due to social media’s ever-‐growing role in everyday life and social
interactions, leading to its ability to document, distribute, and respond to events
online with speed and ease (Schneider & Trottier, 2012). Thus the motivation
required to achieve these goals must be about mobilizing citizens, as they are the
resources that use social media. Mobilizing citizens for these goals can be based on
noble aspirations, yet in reality they can also have negative consequences. If ICT and
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social media are to be used and relied upon, the conditions that can affect success, or
result in failure must be understood (Rutherford, et al, 2013).
Schneider and Trottier (2012) argue that citizen involvement and vigilance online is
a direct product of both information communications technologies and the culture it
spawns. This means that as technology continues to grow and become more
pervasive, so to can we expect more instances of crowdsourced information sharing
and lateral surveillance. Crowdsourcing is a form of cooperative work involving an
indeterminate number of participants and is premised upon the belief that ICT can
be leveraged to manage information, resources, and crowds in order to respond to a
need, which can include social disorder and crises (Liu, 2014). Therefore the role
this type of behaviour has in post-‐crisis and social disorder response is becoming
greater and is gaining both popularity and appeal in its ability to increase situational
awareness and reduce response times for aid. This is especially true in an age of
technology, which has proliferated the existence, and subsequent use of devices to
record and communicate during and after crises and social disorder (Furlong &
O’Keefe, 2011). These same technological advances also make it much more difficult,
or even impossible, to hide in the anonymity of the crowd (VPD Annual Report,
2011). “We live in a culture that’s saturated with recording devices, and that
normalizes it. We’re constantly being recorded . . . we tell ourselves to keep acting
the way we usually act” (Lewis, 2013, 14 June).
Mobilization for social movements hinges on changing interests, changing
opportunities and threats to interests, and changing inclinations to act on collective
interests rather than individual interest (Zald & McCarthy, 1979). These movements
can range from radical, all-‐encompassing entities that strive to affect monumental
social change; to narrow specifically focused attempts to cause a shift in policy or
society (McCarthy & Zald, 1973). Regardless of the type of movement resources are
the key to their success, or the fault in their failures. Mobilizing resources
successfully means reaching out to people and reacting within a short period of
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time, ICT provides opportunities and mediums to make this happen (Rutherford, et
al, 2013).
Riots and social movements are not a new phenomenon yet social media is radically
changing how riots form and spread (Bohannon, 2012). Until recently it was difficult
and time consuming for a large crowd of strangers to coordinate, regardless of the
reasons for it, now with the proliferation and diffusion of information
communications technologies coordinating and communicating with enormous
numbers of people is at the tips of our fingers and keyboards (Bohannon, 2012).
There is now a pattern of social behaviour by which citizens take to their
smartphones, tablets, and computers to vent frustration, organize, communicate,
and otherwise engage with others regardless of geographic, financial, ethnic, or
religious differences (Panagiotopoulos, Bigdel & Sams, 2014). Baker (2011) calls
this a ‘mediated crowd’, which forms due to a fundamental change in public
communication practices as a result of new social media and communication
technologies. This mediated crowd refers to the collective actions that occur in the
virtual sphere rather than the physical one, which faces geographic limitations
(Baker, 2011). New technologies enable instant modes of exchange for the mediated
crowd, which differs from a standard crowd by its reliance on communication
technologies to mobilize and sustain collective action (Baker, 2011).
The term information communications technology is used for the purposes of this
thesis because the breadth of the definition is broader than that of social media. ICT
includes more than Internet based communications technology; it also encompasses
cellular technology, and other communications mediums (Goldsmith, 2015). The
emphasis of ICT is on communication, online interactivity, data mining, and
mobility; this is possible through digital communities that create a web of
interconnectedness by linking disparate entities (Fulk, 1993).
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Introduction of Cases
There are a number of interesting cases that elucidate the use of ICT and social
media by citizens to mobilize, including unrest in Ferguson, United States of
America beginning in 2014, and perhaps most notably during Arab Spring in 2010.
This thesis will use rioting in Vancouver, Canada in 1994 and 2011 as the primary
case due to the immediate and multifaceted mobilization of citizens that occurred.
The author of this thesis also resides in a city close to Vancouver and the riot and its
aftermath were an area of interest, as well as being prominent in news and general
discussion for months after the riot. The 2011 riot can be distinguished as one of the
first sports riots in North America that took place in reality and online
simultaneously (VPD Riot Review, 2011). The significance of this was important to
the ways in which the mobilization of citizens occurred and reflects the changes
caused by ICT. Ready access to ICT and social media has caused a fundamental shift
in the response to, and recovery from, crises. In the past, such technologies were
used to inform citizens, now advances have allowed participation and engagement
in ways previously not possible. The actors involved have changed, as have the
activities these actors engage in.
The rioting in London, England and its surrounding areas in 2011, were selected for
their compatibility in displaying a pattern of behaviour with the mobilization that
occurred in Vancouver. ICT and its inability to be confined by geographic space
allow mass mobilization to occur quickly and with little warning or effort. This can
be especially potent for riots and other social disorders as events that can emerge
and escalate more quickly as a result of ICT (Baudains, Johnson & Braithwaite,
2013). The 2011 riots in London and neighbouring cities stimulated great interest in
the role of ICT and social media in inciting, mobilizing, and organizing social
disorder (Tonkin, Pfeiffer & Tourte, 2012). The goals and context of the mobilizing
that took place with the use of ICT during the 2011 rioting in London differed from
the mobilization in Vancouver however it still provides an excellent opportunity to
consider the negative consequences of using ICT and social media for citizen
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mobilization during and after social disorders such as riots. This is due to the
overarching connection of how the mobilization occurred, and the ways in which
citizens in both cities used information communications technologies to do so.
2011 Vancouver Riot
On June 15, 2011, the Vancouver Canucks, a professional hockey team in the
National Hockey League, were set to play the final and deciding game in the Stanley
Cup championship against the Boston Bruins. An estimated 55,000 people crowded
into a fan zone created in downtown Vancouver to watch the game, with an
additional 100,000 flooding the rest of the downtown core (Furlong & O’Keefe,
2011). In the end the Canucks lost the game to the Bruins, with a decisive final score
of 4-‐0. Public disappointment contributed to a variety of other factors and
ultimately culminated in social disorder breaking out that night in the downtown
core of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Small instances of trouble had begun by 4:40PM, before the game had concluded,
with barricades in the fan zone being breached, fistfights breaking out, and revellers
climbing nearby structures and business awnings (Furlong & O’Keefe, 2011). As the
game began to come to a close with the Canucks having lost their chance at the
coveted Stanley Cup, the riot began to take shape. Bottles and other objects were
thrown at the large television screens in the fan zone, hockey jerseys for both teams
were set on fire, vehicles were overturned and lit on fire, portable toilets were
tipped over, windows were smashed and nearby businesses looted, individuals
fought in the streets, and general chaos was rampant (Furlong & O’Keefe, 2011).
Vancouver Police Department Chief Constable Jim Chu called those involved in the
riot “criminals, anarchists and thugs who were bent on destruction and mayhem”
(Vancouver Police Department, 2011). Chief Chu’s statements would prove
erroneous as a result of a lack of situational awareness (VPD Annual Report, 2011).
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Congestion made it difficult for emergency response teams to access the area to put
out fires, Molotov cocktails and broken glass were thrown at police, and sixty-‐eight
people were injured (Klein & Macklin, 2011). It is astounding that there were no
fatalities and that a full stampede of people did not break out. Congestion, free-‐
flowing alcohol, and individuals present only to cause trouble led to an unfortunate
event that tarnished Vancouver’s reputation worldwide (City of Vancouver Internal
Review, 2011). Spectators contributed to the atmosphere in the downtown core that
night as an audience was provided to those causing general social disorder.
Rumours of ferry cancellations to nearby Vancouver Island caused widespread
public confusion and led to thousands of people loitering in the downtown core, as
did the closure of all bridges leading in and out of downtown and public transit in
Vancouver (Furlong & O’Keefe, 2011). The majority of people in the downtown core
were not from Vancouver; therefore rumours about ferry cancellations, as well as
the actual closing of bridges had significant impact on the number of people left in
the city and unable to leave. The City of Vancouver internal review of the riot (2011)
cited an inability to get correct information out to the public and accepted that it
contributed to the confusion of the crowds present in the downtown core.
Chief Constable Chu remarked that the crowd was three times as large as the crowd
during the 1994 Stanley Cup riot but it took police half the time to shut it down, a
task that took approximately three hours (VPD Stanley Cup Riot Review, 2011). 446
police officers were initially assigned to patrol and supervise the championship
game, however this number more than doubled as an additional 482 officers were
redirected from other areas of Vancouver and called in from detachments in
surrounding cities (Furlong & O’Keefe, 2011). After the riot had ended citizens took
to social media to express frustration and anger at the events that unfolded and
those who perpetrated the violence, destruction, and chaos. The prevalence of
camera phones had significant impact in gathering evidence of the happenings that
night, along with images of individuals involved. The bystanders, who contributed to
the crowds in the streets and impacted police crowd control methods, also assisted
the police by providing photo and video footage of the events that had occurred.
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While the riot was still ongoing Facebook groups were created to post photos and
videos of the events in hopes of helping the police identify and prosecute those
involved. In the following days and weeks thousands of photos and video files were
uploaded on various ICT systems and the naming and shaming of people seen at the
riot had begun (Schneider & Trottier, 2012).
Individuals not involved in the 2011 Vancouver riot fought back, and they used
social media and various forms of information communications technology to do so
online (Vardy, 2011, 16 June). Public engagement and social mobilization have
changed due to technological advances, and this has changed the scope and nature
of activities by citizens after crises or social disorder (McNutt, 2014). This is due in
large part to a fundamental shift from the Internet and ICT functioning as a
publishing platform to operating as an interactive and engaging communication
medium (Henman, 2012; McNutt, 2014). Conversely this can also be understood as
an evolution from simply informing, to engaging, due to a shift from a one-‐to-‐many
method of communication to a many-‐to-‐many interaction that involves more
participants (Henman, 2012; McNutt, 2014). One-‐to-‐many communication refers to
one user broadcasting a message to many others, whereas a many-‐to-‐many
interaction means that multiple users contribute and communicate with each other
on any given topic (Rainer, et al, 2013).
Police services are now using social media to their advantage. The Vancouver Police
Department (VPD) Twitter account saw followers increase by the thousands during
the riot as people sought information and almost every tweet made by the VPD
during the riot was re-‐tweeted by seventy-‐five or more people (VPD Stanley Cup
Riot Review, 2011). This supports the idea that citizens look online for information
and answers in times of disorder and distress. An aware, technologically astute, and
engaged public can make a big impact if they know how, and when, to help (Furlong
& O’Keefe, 2011). The VPD server crashed and was down for several hours due to
the files being sent, all before the riot had even ended, cellphone networks were also
jammed by excessive use (Furlong & O’Keefe, 2011). The investigation that followed
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after the rioting meant the VPD would spend the rest of 2011 and half of 2012
focused on the largest criminal investigation in terms of the number of suspects in
Canadian history (VPD Annual Report, 2011). Within hours of the riot ending a
Facebook page had been created to recruit the public to help clean up the city the
following morning; at 7:00AM the next day thousands of people rallied in downtown
Vancouver to restore their city (Ryan, 2011, 17 November). “This is our tornado.
This is our tsunami. This is what we will do for our community,” said one individual
interviewed by the Vancouver Sun newspaper (Ryan, 2011, 17 November).
Photo retrieved from Vancouver Police Department www.VPD.ca
The Vancouver Police Department received hundreds of letters and notes with
messages of appreciation and compliments for their handling of the riot, as well as
the restraint and care displayed by officers (VPD Stanley Cup Riot Review, 2011).
Widespread public support of police response to riots is almost unheard of but is the
case for Vancouver. The image above shows a VPD patrol car parked in the
downtown core the morning after the riot, and within hours it was covered in post-‐
it notes with messages of support and thanks. Plywood used to board up broken
shop windows was also used as a canvas to express solidarity, support, and
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unflinching resilience. A few photos of these can be seen below and a selection is on
permanent display at the Vancouver City Hall (City of Vancouver Internal Review,
2011).
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Photos retrieved from CBC News http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-‐columbia/vancouver-‐s-‐riot-‐wall-‐to-‐come-‐down-‐1.1053281
1994 Vancouver Riot
The 2011 riot brought with it memories of the rioting that occurred in 1994 when
the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup championship to the New York Rangers.
A difference to note in the riots is that the championship game of the 2011 playoffs
was played in Vancouver, while the final game of the 1994 playoffs was played in
New York City. This may have had impacts on the number of people drawn into the
downtown core of Vancouver in 2011 when the game was actually played in the city.
Another key difference is that the 2011 riot had designated fan zones in the streets
of downtown Vancouver. In 1994 the streets were largely empty as most people
were watching the game in bars and restaurants, it was only after the conclusion of
the game that the streets flooded with approximately 70,000 people (VPD Stanley
Cup Riot Review, 2011).
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Regardless of these variations, in both instances rioting occurred with property
damage, injuries, and general social disorder (Furlong & O’Keefe, 2011). The riot in
1994 began in the evening of June 14, 1994, and continued on into the following
morning. Once the game had ended in defeat for the Vancouver Canucks people left
the bars and restaurants they had watched the game in and social disorder began.
Fist fights broke out, cars were flipped, and a spontaneous parade of vehicles drove
around downtown with young people riding on the hoods of cars, hanging out of
windows, standing up through sun roofs, and sitting on the backs of the vehicles all
the while ignoring traffic signs and signals, as well as police direction (British
Columbia Police Commission, 1994). Fireworks were set off within the crowds,
alcohol was openly consumed, police were pelted with rocks and bottles, property
was damaged, and general disorder was widespread.
News media caught some of these events on camera, as the stationary news cameras
seemed to draw rioters who appeared to put on a spectacle for them (British
Columbia Police Commission, 1994). These cameras exacerbated the 1994 riot as
they kept people in the vicinity and agitated police crowd control efforts. So too did
the crowds of people unable to leave downtown as British Columbia Transit shut
down the SkyTrain and bus service in and out of the downtown core (British
Columbia Police Commission, 1994). Media outlets were airing updates all day in
preparation for the big game, included among them were precautions police were
making in the event of any social disorder before, during, or after the game. This
resulted in rioters knowing exactly what type of situation was in the downtown
core. After the riot, police set up video kiosks in key areas of downtown Vancouver
so the public could identify the most disruptive citizens for police interrogation
(British Columbia Police Commission, 1994).
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2011 Rioting in London and Surrounding Areas
Social unrest, riots, and social disorder have all been used to describe the five days
of violence, looting, and criminality that occurred to largely unprecedented scale in
British history in London and surrounding areas from August 6 – 11, 2011
(Baudains, Braitwaite, & Johnson, 2013). Commentators agree that the beginning of
the social disorder began with the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan by police on
August 4, 2011, in Tottenham, England (Panagiotopoulos, Bigdeli & Sams, 2014).
Two days later approximately three hundred people gathered outside the police
station demanding to speak to a senior police official to get answers for what was
interpreted by the protestors as an unlawful killing (Rusbridger & Rees, 2011). The
initially peaceful crowd grew violent and began rioting when protesters were
unsatisfied with the response of police officials outside Tottenham Police Station.
A few hours before midnight a series of clashes began in the area as the post office
was burnt down, a double decker bus was set on fire, and police cars were attacked
(After the Riots, 2012). By the early hours of Monday August 7th the rioting had
spread into London, and in the following days wrought havoc in sixty-‐six areas
around England from London’s southern suburbs, to Ealing in the west, Woolwich
and Stratford in the east, Camden in the north, and a myriad of locations in between
(Milmo, 2011, 10 August). News reports and social media have been suggested as
encouraging offenders to participate in rioting and looting at particular times and in
particular locations (Baudains, Johnson, & Braitwaite, 2013).
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Photo retrieved from the Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-‐2024203/UK-‐RIOTS-‐2011-‐David-‐Cameron-‐orders-‐police-‐come-‐hard-‐looters.html
Britons woke in the mornings after the rioting to high streets covered in broken
glass, burnt out vehicles, closed roads and public transportation stations, and police
crime-‐scene tape cordoning off buildings (Lydall, 2011, 9 August). After the rioting
had ended the English government mandated the creation of a panel to investigate
the impact of the rioting on affected communities and victims. This panel reported
that 15,000 people rioted, five people were killed, thousands injured, including 300
police officers, a total of 5,175 crimes recorded by police, and a financial cost of
nearly half a billion British pounds (After the Riots, 2011; Ministry of Justice
Bulletin, 2012). Additionally, approximately 2,500 shops and businesses were
looted or set on fire during the rioting (Rusbridger & Rees, 2011)
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Photo retrieved from the Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-‐2024203/UK-‐RIOTS-‐2011-‐David-‐Cameron-‐orders-‐police-‐come-‐hard-‐looters.html
The photo above is of a note that was posted in the window of a Subway restaurant
during the rioting in the suburbs of London and speaks to the impact the rioting had.
The note reads “Due to the imminent collapse of society we regret to announce we
are closing at 6pm tonight.” The note brings a sense of levity to the situation as
society is not exactly disintegrating; yet it does so by also pointing out the fear and
effects of the rioting, resulting in the early closure of the restaurant due to fears for
the safety of patrons and employees alike.
In the initial three days of rioting the police response appeared inadequate in
resolving the increasing unrest and disorder. The fact that several senior officials,
including the Prime Minister and the Mayor of London were away on holidays is
said to have contributed to the power vacuum that existed in regards to decision
making (Panagiotopoulos, Bigdeli & Sams, 2014). When the Prime Minister returned
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from his holiday he ordered 16,000 police officers to be deployed in the streets of
London and the neighbouring areas, this helped to quell the social disorder and aid
the 3,000 officers who had been trying to contain the unrest (Baudains, Braithwaite
& Johnson, 2013). ICT and social media played a role in inciting collective social
disorder, but also in cleaning it up; the citizen mobilization in these situations
provides an opportunity to review the use of these technologies in crisis situations,
during and after social disorder, and for mobilization endeavors.
Research Question
A case study of the 1994 and 2011 riots in Vancouver will be undertaken in this
thesis to evaluate what, if any, are the consequences of using ICT and social media
for citizen mobilization after social disorder, such as riots?
Common sense dictates a shift would have occurred in how these two riots played
out based simply on modernization, however the effects of ICT on these riots cannot
be underscored enough. The mobilization that occurred due to ICT to aid police in
identifying rioters and the citizens that came out to clean up the streets of
Vancouver the morning after the riot are the primary components of the research,
while the riots in London and the surrounding areas in August 2011, serve as a
comparison.
The rioting in London differed from that of Vancouver; London was primarily about
organizing against the authorities, whereas Vancouver was centered on mobilizing
and organizing to aid the authorities. While the goals differed in the mobilization,
the mechanisms used to mobilize are similar and provide a valid source of
assessment and comparison in an age of ICT enabled mobilization and organization.
This is accomplished by looking beyond the individual components of the riots to
the mechanism as a whole. By doing so the rioting in London highlights the
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similarities in the use of ICT by citizens to mobilize for various movements and as a
result, shows a pattern of behaviour that is only increasing in depth and
universality.
Relevance of Research Question
After the 2011 riots the Vancouver Police Department faced different challenges
than did their colleagues after the 1994 riot. The most significant being that the
rioting unfolded on the streets and on social media simultaneously, leaving a
moment-‐by-‐moment timeline and map of the social disorder, however discerning
fact from fiction was difficult (Robinson, et al, 2012, 11 June). The realms of Twitter
and Facebook were inundated with updates about the situation in the downtown
core as citizens documented, posted, and shared content online. Public engagement
is a norm in virtually all aspects of management and governance. According to Liu
(2014), this participation is furthered by ICT through crowdsourcing,
decentralization, online cooperation and collaboration, and voluntary involvement
in the initiatives put forward by the online community.
ICT has created new roles for citizens in the domain of crisis management; there has
been a move from passive to active citizens (Alexander, 2014). A shift has occurred
from a sit back and be told culture, to a making and doing culture (Lindgren, 2013).
Studies have shown that social media and ICT use before, during, and after a crisis
increases; leading to the assumption that public participation is part of the new
narrative of crisis management (Jin, Liu & Austin, 2014). ICT can contribute to
situational awareness, sense making, connectivity, and crowd-‐funding initiatives in
all phases of a crisis, however it can also threaten citizens through faulty data
mining and identification. Citizen vigilance is one example of how ICT can have
negative effects on citizens. This is due to the publish then filter phenomenon
prevalent in various forms of social media and ICT compared to the filter then
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publish approach of traditional media (Watson, et al, 2014). This phenomenon can
incorrectly identify and accuse an innocent party or parties after an incident, having
a large social impact and causing irreparable reputational damage and in some cases
threats to an individual’s security (Schneider & Trottier, 2012).
Methodology
Qualitative research will be the basis for the use of information communications
technologies on the citizen vigilance and social mobilization that occurred after the
riots in Vancouver in 1994 and 2011, and in London in 2011. This type of research is
most effective in analyzing the rationale and behaviour of citizen mobilization as it
provides the tools to assess how things occurred, but also why they occurred in a
certain way. The research design for this thesis is a narrative account of the events
that unfolded following the riots in Vancouver and London, and will use appropriate
literature reviews and document analysis through the use of empirical data and
examination.
Initially this thesis was to be based solely on the riots in Vancouver in 1994 and
2011, however while applying the theoretical framework to this case, analysis and
comparison to the 2011 London riots became a good case study to supplement that
of Vancouver in the instances where it is applicable. This was especially pertinent in
regards to police prosecution and access to closed circuit television footage in
London compared to photo and video footage provided to police by citizens in
Vancouver. The similarities with these riots do not lay in common goals, but rather
in how they mobilized and the tools used to do so. Analysis of the 2011 London riots
will be a post-‐riot review; this thesis will not address questions regarding the
causes, tensions, or otherwise analyze the dimensions of the riot. The same was
done for analysis of the Vancouver riots, the purpose of this research is not to
understand the root causes of these riots, but rather to analyze and consider the
25
negative effects of using ICT and social media for citizen mobilization as a result of
citizen vigilance.
The sources used in this thesis will be both primary and secondary. Primary sources
will include blogs, Facebook groups and posts, as well as a podcast on justice in the
social media age. Secondary sources used in this thesis will include scientific and
news articles, various websites, and police, city, and independent reviews of the
riots. This thesis is limited by some of the social media groups and pages having
been taken down due to the length of time that has passed since the riots. In these
cases secondary sources that cited these pages will be used to articulate the
message. For example, the largest Facebook group that was created after the 2011
Vancouver riot to post photos of the event was ‘Vancouver Riot Pics: Post Your
Photos,’ and it has since been disbanded. However Schneider and Trottier (2012 &
2013) have analyzed all the postings made on the page and their work will be used
to determine the effects upon citizen vigilance and social mobilization. The quotes
selected for this thesis were ones that exemplified the arguments made in this
thesis. To be quite clear the quotes were not selected and then arguments made
based upon those selective quotes. A further limitation is a lack of overarching
theoretical framework for the 1994 and 2011 riots in Vancouver and the rioting in
England in 2011, due to the different contexts and triggers that led to these social
disorders. As a result, the Vancouver riots are the foundation of this thesis with the
rioting in England serving as a supplement for understanding the use of ICT and
social media for citizen mobilization and vigilance.
The author expects this thesis to address rising questions and concerns about the
effects of ICT during and after a crisis, especially in its ability to mobilize citizens for
any cause or goal. The expectation is that this thesis will add meaningful insights to
the existing body of knowledge on citizen social mobilization aided by information
communications technologies by providing analysis of the rioting in Vancouver and
London. This field will continue to expand and grow to follow the rise in
technological advances, leaving evermore space for citizens to mobilize either with,
26
alongside, or against their governments and peers. Therefore it is important to
understand the possible detrimental aspects of using ICT and social media.
Structure of Thesis
This thesis began with an introduction of the topic and a brief background of the
riots under review, after which was a brief methodology, then a theoretical chapter
will follow outlining resource mobilization theory, which is the theory applied to the
cases, and its evolution, relevance, efficacy, and the costs and benefits of using it in
this thesis. A theoretical framework that will be applied to the cases will also be
summarized in the theoretical chapter, and it will outline the five key components of
resource mobilization theory that will comprise the framework, which are
resources, organization, involvement from outside the crowd, supply and demand of
resources, and the costs and benefits of participation. Next will be the application of
this framework to the case of the 1994 and 2011 riots in Vancouver, as well as the
August 2011 rioting in London and surrounding areas where relevant. The thesis
will then go on to wrap up with concluding remarks and reflections from the author.
Use and Application of Theory
This chapter will discuss the theory used in the thesis, the evolution of that theory
and the state of citizen mobilization today. Next will be an outline of the theoretical
framework used, the costs and benefits of using such a framework, and finally
conclude with the efficacy of using the theory in contemporary society. The
theoretical lens used is resource mobilization theory and its basis is the collective
behaviour and self-‐organizing of citizens to accomplish a goal (McCarthy & Zald,
1977). This collective organization and activity ultimately occurs when actions have
occurred that the crowd, community, or relevant group, protests (Roderick, 1999). A
crowd is understood as any group of citizens coalescing for common purposes.
Roderick (1999) also asserts that this crowd must have a sense of identity that
differentiates between the crowd and the collective other and this crowd must be
able to both attribute the injustice suffered to this other and be willing to engage in
action to remedy it. McCarthy and Zald (1977) refer to this as shared grievances and
indicate that general agreement for the causes of grief must also be shared.
Evolution of Resource Mobilization Theory
In the broadest and most inclusive definition a social movement includes all those
people who in any form support the general ideas of the movement (McCarthy &
Zald, 1973). People and support mobilize for social movements to affect change and
therefore these movements are dependent upon their members. In this way the
resources of the social movement are those entities that are used as tools to achieve
the goals set by the crowd. Attachments between members to the goals, the
movement, and each other allow influence to accumulate and have substantial
effects on outcomes (Friedkin, 1998). This contributed to the change in the study of
social movements from insular, psychologically driven movements, to the ways in
28
which influences from outside the movement affected and influenced the movement
(McCarthy & Zald, 1973). Especially in regards to how actors and crowds mobilized
effectively in pursuit of desired goals (McCarthy & Zald, 1977).
Zald and McCarthy (1979) foresaw a shift in social movements from questioning
why people want social change, to analysis of how those same people organize, pool
resources, and employ them effectively to achieve the goals of their social
movement. To find answers to questions regarding how people organize and
mobilize resources, resource mobilization theory emphasizes societal support and
constraint of social movements, examination of the types of resources available to
be mobilized, links with other social groups, and dependence upon third parties
(Zald & McCarthy, 1979). These ideas are the essence of the five key components of
resource mobilization theory are: the accumulation of resources, organization,
involvement from outside the crowd, supply and demand of resources towards and
away from goals, and costs and benefits of participation (McCarthy & Zald, 1977,
Jenkins, 1983).
The State of Mobilization Today
Information communications technologies are changing how resources are
mobilized, which resources, and the speed with which this is done; as a result the
landscape of collective action has been fundamentally transformed (Eltantawy &
Wiest, 2011). Here collective action is designated as the acts committed in pursuit of
predetermined goals. Mobilization is becoming easier to facilitate through enabling
technologies that grant mobility, access, and coalition formation at unprecedented
levels (Buechler, 1993). Online communities have emerged in a form of situational
altruism in response to those in need. Recognizing the new roles citizens can play in
post-‐crisis situations is pivotal to understanding the effects these roles can have. ICT
serves as an enabler for citizen mobilization by providing multiple platforms that
29
can be exploited for any cause, goal, or movement. The earliest contemporary
iteration of citizens using ICT post-‐crisis is that of the crisis mapping and
crowdsourcing that spontaneously took place after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti
(Liu, 2014). Ordinary citizens thousands of kilometres away were able to aid in the
situational awareness of emergency responders in Haiti by mobilizing a volunteer
force to digitally map the situation in Haiti using satellite imagery and geospatial
data to determine hardest hit areas, where rescue efforts were needed, and places
that needed other forms of aid and support (Liu, 2014).
The Role of Citizens
The role of citizens as resources in mobilization efforts is the underlying research
question in this thesis. For the purposes of this thesis a citizen is understood to refer
to anyone linked to a given area through sociological or legal ties. ICT has enabled
the mobilization of large crowds of citizens for time-‐critical feats ranging from real-‐
time crisis mapping and crisis response to organizing rallies and protests
(Rutherford, et al, 2013). Simultaneously mobilization requires highly connected
and active citizens to be motivated to participate in the crowd or movement.
Motivation for mobilization is key to understanding this research and it is
understood as the justification used by citizens for any actions they collectively
undertake in the name of a particular cause (Pickard, et al, 2011; Zald & McCarthy,
1979). Citizen resilience is also an element of this thesis and is defined as the ability
to facilitate the fastest possible return to a normal state after crisis. In this way
citizen resilience can be the motivation for actions undertaken by citizens. Citizen
vigilance is a central tenant of this thesis, and is considered to encompass the
actions of citizens to involve themselves in their communities and the events and
circumstances within it with the objective of providing aid in any form and to any
entity. The help provided by citizens to the Vancouver Police Department in
identifying suspected rioters is an example of this citizen vigilance. In this way,
30
citizen vigilance can be seen to go hand in hand with citizen, and more broadly
community, resilience.
The Role of Information Communications Technologies
Intentional mobilization is occurring as ICT has provided the tools and applications
necessary for people a world away to engage and participate in problem definition,
crisis framing, and situational awareness (Rainer, et al, 2013). New technologies
have been useful in organizing and implementing activities for the crowd,
promoting community and collective identity, establishing connections with other
movements, and publicising the cause to gain support (Eltanawy, & Wiest, 2011).
This occurs due to decentralized information sharing and collaboration through a
many-‐to-‐many network. ICT and various forms of social media have introduced the
speed and interactivity that was lacking in traditional mobilization endeavours,
which relied upon person-‐to-‐person communication, then on phone trees, and then
on email to coordinate and participate (Edwards and McCarthy, 2004). Social media
provides an ideal medium for these relationships as it allows individuals with
common interests and goals to connect and form a network for their own ends that
is easily accessible (Weare, et al, 2014).
ICT is ubiquitous and its use can both aid and hamper police investigations, and
both result in harm and protection for citizens (Jin, Liu & Austin, 2014). This
dichotomy in ICT during and after crisis will be explored further. ICT can hinder
police by advertising police precautions, but it also provides various mediums, such
as social media, that police can use to convey messages to citizens. Cell broadcasting
and crisis informatics are examples of how ICT can protect citizens, while do-‐it-‐
yourself justice on social media is an example of how citizens can be harmed by ICT.
Regardless of any positive or negatives affects they may have, various forms of ICT
allow online communities to form, evolve, and participate in filtering, verifying,
synthesizing, and otherwise curating information during and after any type of
31
significant event (Dailey & Starbird, 2014). Analyzing this involvement will be at the
root of this thesis.
ICT is transforming emergency response and crisis management, changing not only
how things are done, but also what kinds of task are necessary and who does them
(Dailey & Starbird, 2014). Crisis informatics is a relatively new subfield in crisis
management and can be understood as borne from technological advances (Pipek,
et al, 2014). By taking an interdisciplinary approach to crisis management crisis
informatics considers the social, technical, information, and collaborative aspects in
the lifecycle of a crisis or disaster and seeks to use various forms of ICT to respond
quickly, efficiently, and effectively. (Pipek, et al, 2014). In this way crisis informatics
is reliant upon ICT to collaborate; crisis crowdsourcing and other emerging crisis
management tools that rely on these technologies to mobilize successfully play
significant roles in the ways in which citizens can contribute during and after crises
(Daily & Starbird, 2014).
Theoretical Framework
The accumulation of resources is instrumental to the success of any mobilization
effort and resource mobilization theory stresses how these resources are organized,
pooled, and employed for successful mobilization and goal achievement (Zald &
McCarthy, 1979). There has been a “shift from hierarchical and market-‐based forms
of organization towards more networked forms that are shaped by cultural tensions
and affinities that emerge as actors adjust to new patterns of interaction” (Weare, et
al, 2014, p 591). This interaction is based on networked modalities, which rely upon
networks of relationships that are having increasingly more impact on how
mobilization occurs (Vieweg, et al, 2010). Networks, relationships, and their depth
and breadth are significant to the mobilization of resources (Jenkins, 1983). The
accumulation of resources is affected by the organization, involvement from outside
32
the crowd, supply and demand of resources, and costs and benefits of participation.
To mobilize resources an organized and coherent demand is needed to supply it
from outside the crowd after they have weighed the costs and benefits of
participation. In this way all five components of resource mobilization theory are
interconnected and interdependent.
Figure 1: Interconnectedness of Resource Mobilization Theory
Mobilization is the process through which a crowd secures control over the
resources it needs to accomplish its goals (Jenkins, 1983). In this categorization the
main concerns are regarding the existence of resources prior to mobilization, the
ways in which the crowd pools resources for its goals, and the extent to which
people outside the crowd increase the pool of resources (Jenkins, 1983).
Distinguishing between the types of resources is important. Freeman (1979)
differentiates between tangible and intangible assets; tangible assets are resources
such as money, communications technology, and facilities, whereas an intangible
asset refers to the non-‐material resources that form the basis of the movement such
as commitment and loyalty. Mobilized movements tend to be high in intangible
Resources
Organization
Involvement from outside the crowd
Supply + Demand
Costs + Benerits of Participation
33
assets but low in tangible assets as people are the primary resources of any crowd;
understanding how these people are aggregated as resources for a crowd is a task
for social movement analysis (Freeman, 1979).
Resource mobilization theory focuses on instrumental reason and rational collective
behaviour to describe the type of organization in the crowd rather than an irrational
mob mentality (Zald & Ash, 1966). Instead of panicked disorder mobilization occurs
due to rational, organizational behaviour. This is further expounded by Zald and Ash
(1966) arguing that the ‘iron law of oligarchy,’ which maintains that social
mobilization movements will be inherently oligarchic and conservative, regardless
of how democratically and charismatically they started, is not as inevitable as some
academics argue. Rather this belief in the institutionalization and bureaucratization
of social mobilization in an iron law relies on concentration of power, hierarchy,
resources, mobilization structures, and ideological framing (Zald & Ash, 1966; Zald
& Garner, 2012). Zald and Ash (1966) dispute this proposition by arguing that
leadership, recruitment, and commitment of members have a more powerful
influence on the trajectory of a movement than do the characteristics that support
the iron law of oligarchy.
Jenkins (1983) maintains that the mobilization potential of a crowd is largely
determined by the pre-‐existing organization of the crowd and the distinctiveness
and density of the interpersonal networks of members. To this end involvement
from outside the crowed is necessary. If the interpersonal networks of members are
the same or exceedingly similar the pool of resources they are able to access will
also be similar, this is why distinct and dense networks are important to successful
mobilization. To this effect, crowds with weak identities and sparse networks will
not be as successful as crowds that have access to strong identities and dense
networks. In the case of the 2011 and 1994 riots in Vancouver, the identity is that of
law-‐abiding, conscientious citizens who rallied together against the few bad apples
that were responsible for the chaos during the riot. The interpersonal networks of
those citizens were varied, as the common denominator between them was a belief
34
in the wrongness, or criminality, of the individuals who caused the social disorder
during the riot.
The supply and demand of resources away and towards the goals of the crowd is
dependent upon the participation and recruitment of resources. Recruitment relies
on linking purposive incentives to bring about the goals of the crowd (Tilly, 1995).
Incentives are marked as a way to encourage participation in mobilizing to meet the
crowd’s goals (McCarthy & Zald, 1977). Unequal distribution of resources can also
affect the demand if the supply is not available, this can be either due to an inability
to access resources or a lack of resources altogether (Edwards & McCarthy, 2004).
However when resources are accessible they become collective resources and are
no longer controlled by individuals (Edwards & McCarthy, 2004).
Costs and benefits of participation in mobilizing to meet the goals of the crowd
describe why people choose to participate, or not to participate in the mobilization
movement. The elite in the crowd can also manipulate costs and benefits to increase
participation: framing of the message, social construction of an incident, and
labelling are ways in which this can be accomplished to reduce costs and increase
benefits (Jenkins, 1983). When ICT is involved in mobilizing citizens the elite in the
crowd would be those who create and control the forums of participation, for
example the moderators of a Facebook page who have the ability to delete
comments posted to the page to sway opinion in one direction or another.
35
Benefits and Drawbacks of Applying Resource Mobilization Theory to a Case Study
Benefits of Using Resource Mobilization Theory
Resource mobilization theory will be applied to the research question in a five-‐fold
typology using accumulation of resources, organization, involvement from outside
the crowd, supply and demand of resources towards and away from goals, and costs
and benefits of participation. This rubric is beneficial to understanding the entirety
of the mobilization that occurred after the riots in Vancouver in 1994 and 2011, and
during and after the rioting in August 2011 in London as it provides access and
insight into the narrative of the participatory revolution that was resourced and
facilitated by citizens as they sought to use ICT for their different goals. McCarthy
and Zald (1973) recognized that communication is crucial to the efforts of the
movement as it activates and organises the crowd. If communication is prompt,
detailed, and effectively conveyed, the crowd is more likely to take action to rectify
the grievances and meet the goals. The immediacy and universality of emerging
media forms provide an increased communication potential that, if leveraged
appropriately, can have powerful effects on a mobilization effort (McCarthy & Zald,
1973; Eltantawy & Wiest, 2011).
Resource mobilization theory emphasizes structural factors in the success of a
movement, such as availability of resources, and the rationality of individuals
participating in social movements who have assessed the costs and benefits of
participation (Klandermans, 1984). Edwards and McCarthy (2004) further expound
on this thought by arguing that this is successfully accomplished by making benefits
as high as possible and lowering costs as much as possible in order to encourage
participation. By doing so the incentives for participation outweigh the drawbacks,
thereby subtly manipulating the opportunities for participation (Klandermans,
1984; Eltantawy & Wiest, 2011).
36
Drawbacks of Using Resource Mobilization Theory
A frequent criticism of resource mobilization theory is that it fails to consider
unequal distribution of resources among the movement, whether this is between
individual members, across geographic regions, or during the life cycle of the
movement (Klandermans, 1984). Resources are fundamental to successful
mobilization, however resource mobilization theory assumes that the resources of a
movement are uniform and equal for the entirety of the mobilization effort. The
theory does not consider that they may vary, and thereby potentially having
detrimental effects on the movement (Edwards and McCarthy, 2004). The theory
also fails to address social movements that are successful with minimal resources.
Another critique of resource mobilization theory is that it underestimates the
significance of the grievances and ideology that lead individuals to participate in
movements (Klandermans, 1984). In this sense the theory assumes that the
movement will spontaneously disband once the grievance has been resolved or will
morph into a movement for a different grievance (Klandermans, 1984; McCarthy &
Zald, 1973). Instead it is argued that the members of the movement have a strong
commitment to it as it was initially established and will not seek to remain part of a
transformed movement that works toward resolving a different set of grievances
(McCarthy & Zald, 1973). Further critiques of the theory are that it does not address
social movements that begin with substantial resources, it overemphasises the
necessity of resources from outside the crowd, supposes rationality of actors, and it
assumes that discontent with grievances will last and not fade over time (Eltantawy
& Wiest, 2011).
37
The Efficacy of Resource Mobilization Theory in Contemporary Society
Resource mobilization theory is the most relevant theory to use for the study
conducted in this thesis because it provides an ideal typology through which to
understand the citizen and social mobilization after the riots. This is due to its
ability to recognize purposeful activity as a means to a goal and the emphasis on the
acquisition and organization of resources, rather than the resources themselves
(McCarthy & Zald, 1977). Resources are the lifeblood of crowds and social
movements, without them there is no infrastructure to meet the goals of the
movement. More important still, is the ways in which these resources are organized,
exploited, and mobilized.
The prevalence and increasing use of information communications technologies
presents an opportunity to re-‐examine the efficacy of resource mobilization theory
in modern society (Eltantawy & Wiest, 2011). This theory was developed in a time
when the Internet and all its acclaims were nonexistent, leaving substantial holes in
the modern summation of its typology. Resource mobilization theory emphasises
that centralized and formally structured social movements mobilize resources more
effectively than decentralized and informal movements. This distinction is not as
clear cut as it once was as the spatially fragmented and decentralized nature of
information communications technologies has allowed decentralized and informal
social movements to be successful (Eltantawy & Wiest, 2011; Edwards & McCarthy,
2004).
Another facet to recognize is the emphasis resource mobilization theory places upon
charismatic and clear cut leadership as a precondition for the success of social
movements, in the decentralized realm of social media in contemporary society this
is not a requirement for success. Using resource mobilization theory for social
movements in contemporary times is difficult as the types and varieties of resources
that exist now and those that existed at the time this theory was formulated have
38
changed drastically. Despite being out of touch with current technologies and the
resources they can provide, resource mobilization theory is still applicable and
relevant due to the five-‐point typology it provides, as discussed above, to assess
mobilization for social movements and collective action (Eltantawy & Wiest, 2011).
39
Analysis
This chapter will apply the theoretical framework outlined in the previous chapter
to the case of the 1994 and 2011 riots in Vancouver and partially apply it to the
rioting that occurred in London over the course of five days in August of 2011. The
partial application of the theory to the rioting in London is due to the fact that there
is not an overarching theoretical framework that is perfectly relevant and applicable
to both cities. The core of the research in this thesis is on the mobilization in
Vancouver and its consequences, thus the framework is most suited for the riots in
that city and there will only be a limited application of the relevant components of
the framework to the rioting in London. Included in this framework is application of
the case to the five main components of resource mobilization theory as discussed
in a previous chapter: accumulation of resources, organization, involvement from
outside the crowd, supply and demand of resources, and costs and benefits of
participation.
Accumulation of Resources
Social media plays a significant role in today’s society as it combines text, visuals,
sound, and video onto one medium while being portable, providing user generated
content, and opportunities for collaboration (Jin, et al, 2014). Post-‐disaster response
and crisis fallout are examples of ways in which social media can be utilized to
mobilize individuals. Situational awareness, humanitarian aid, fundraising,
psychological assistance, and quick resource mobilization are ways in which social
media can be employed to allow for a fastest possible return to a normal state of
functioning (Rainer, et al, 2013). Rapidity of communications and information
sharing, microblogging such as Twitter to link people and groups, low to little cost,
40
and a network for emotional support are all ways in which social media and ICT can
positively contribute to the aftermath of a significant event (Simon, et al, 2014).
ICT is revolutionizing the way citizens respond to crises as it removes the
dependence on governments to communicate and inform after disaster or crisis
(Alexander, 2014). ICT has allowed citizens to share news and photos, empathize
with events worldwide, and affect change in a number of ways, including socially
and politically (Kotsiopoulos, 2014). This is made possible because ICT presents
tools to engage, exchange, and interact online through user-‐generated content for
any given situation. Suddenly citizens are not helpless victims, they are resources
that can be mobilized to respond to crises (Lindgren, 2013). This is aided by the fact
that citizens are increasingly relying on social network websites to gather
information and communicate after crises (Wang, 2014; Dailey & Starbird, 2014).
No longer are the masses a body to communicate to, they are now engaged and
active participants who can have significant effects on the aftermath of a crisis.
Increasing situational awareness to come to a more complete understanding of what
is happening with the many actors and moving parts involved after a social event or
crisis is pivotal to recognizing the needs of those affected by an event (Vieweg, et al
2010; Wang, 2014). Liu (2014) argues that perceptions around public engagement
and user-‐generated content are evolving with the emergence of online cooperation
and crowdsourcing, which marks a move towards integrative and collaborative
frameworks for citizen engagement. This shows the shifting norms of considering
citizens as resources and not solely liabilities after a crisis (Alexander, 2014).
Regardless of these new norms and the potential of ICT and the use of social media
after significant social events such as riots, there are concerns about the
ramifications in the use of this type of technology. This is especially significant in the
use of ICT and social media to identify individuals, sometimes erroneously, its
ability to incite mob behaviour, and carry out vigilante justice (Rizza, et al, 2013).
Social media and other ICT have substantial impact, yet there remain apprehensions
regarding the ‘publish then filter’ nature of this technology; contrary to traditional
41
media, which filters and verifies facts before publishing, social media publishes and
then members of the crowd filter out false information (Kotsiopoulos, 2014). While
it is being verified the incorrect information is available for anyone to view online,
this can have detrimental effects on citizens, threatening their livelihood and
occasionally their security (Watson, et al, 2014). This questions the reliability and
accuracy of the information posted online. Social media should not be a substitute
for finding information as it is confronted by issues that traditional information and
communication channels are not (Ranier, et al, 2014). Included among these issues
are concerns about the exploitation of social media via information communications
technologies regarding responsible information, individual liberties, public safety,
and consequences of misuse (Kotsiopoulos, 2014). Perhaps the most detrimental
issue is in regards to situational awareness and information sharing, anyone can
open an account on social media and begin publishing information without any
regard for misinformation and inaccuracies, traditional media do not have this issue
as they are recognized as a legitimate source for information (Simon, et al, 2014).
Identification of Resources in Vancouver
Social media can be used to foster relationships and identify online communities for
citizen engagement, this was the case in the aftermath of the 2011 Vancouver riot.
The resources of the crowd varied but Facebook and Twitter were the most
dominant social media and ICT platforms utilized during and after the riot
(Schneider & Trottier, 2012). These were also resources leveraged and mobilized by
the crowd for their goals. Freeman (1979) differentiated between tangible and
intangible resources; tangible resources include things like money and technology,
while loyalty, commitment, social relationships, and cooperation are considered
intangible resources.
Facebook groups, including ‘Canucks fans against the 2011 Vancouver Riots’ and
‘Post Riot Clean-‐Up – Let’s help Vancouver’ emerged as ways to use Facebook as a
42
way to emphasize the resilience of the community. Whereas Facebook groups
including ‘Vancouver Riot 2011 Video Footage & Photos’ and ‘Lets Get These People
Locked Up – 2011 Vancouver Riot Pics’ demonstrate the ways in which the crowd
sought to mobilize for justice. Robert Gorcak created a page on Facebook titled
‘Vancouver Riot Pics: Post Your Photos’ within ten minutes of the game ending, this
is because the riot had begun to take form and subsequently be narrated online
before the game had concluded (Robinson, et al, 2012, 11 June). These online groups
are labelled ‘community’ groups by the creators, denoting and labelling these pages
as community-‐oriented and working in the best interests of that community.
While there is no substantiated proof that Twitter was used to incite rioters or to
encourage participation, the Vancouver Police Department did use Twitter and
other ICT to mobilize during and after the riot. The Twitter feed for the VPD went
from having 10,000 followers to 13,170 over the course of the riot, with an
additional 2,000 followers joining over the following week (VPD Stanley Cup
Review, 2011). The VPD had a social media presence throughout the championship
game and subsequent riot, however none of the pre-‐prepared tweets were
appropriate in the event of a major crowd disturbance or riot (VPD Stanley Cup
Review, 2011). This led to a substantial delay in messaging on social media
regarding the riot, resulting in mass public confusion. This lack of foresight by the
VPD, especially with the knowledge of the riot that occurred in 1994, the last time
the Canucks lost their bid for the Stanley Cup, contributed to the confusion in the
downtown core. Citizens were unable to secure accurate information regarding
potential closure of public transportation networks, roads, and bridges, resulting in
thousands of people remaining in the midst of the riot and serving as an audience
for the rioters (Furlong & O’Keefe, 2011).
The VPD created the website www.Riot2011.vpd.ca so that the public could identify
rioters pictured on the website, while also serving as a medium to update the public
on the status of the investigation. The most significant use of ICT by the VPD was the
use of QR codes. QR Codes, the abbreviation for Quick Response codes, are two-‐
43
dimensional barcodes that can be read by imaging devices like the cameras on
cellphones, to interpret information associated to that particular code. QR codes
were used by the VPD on the 35,000 ‘Riot Roundup’ posters distributed in
Vancouver and the surrounding metropolitan area, which displayed photos of
individuals wanted for participating in the 2011 riot.2 The phrasing on the posters
was provocative, it encouraged individuals who felt outraged or shamed due to the
riot to take action and fight back (Riot Roundup Poster, 2011). The citizens of
Vancouver took this call to action to heart.
Identification of Resources in London
Similar to the riot in Vancouver social media use during the rioting in London was
heavy, however the nature of it was different. Blackberry Messenger (BBM),
Facebook, and Twitter were all social media platforms used to discuss, plan, and
boast about rioting in London. However the most powerful and up-‐to-‐the minute
rallying and orchestrating took place on BBM (Halliday, 2011B, 8 August). Unlike
Facebook and Twitter, which occur in a public forum, BBM messages are more
covert, they are private, untraceable due to encryption, and can be sent instantly
from one-‐to-‐many BBM users (Halliday, 2011A, 8 August). The result is that the
authorities must rely on open social media sources to keep abreast of the rioting.
The Metropolitan Police were able to successfully prevent approximately sixty
youth from looting in Oxford Circus by monitoring social media, yet these new forms
of interaction and communication facilitated by ICT and the power they have are not
well understood (Rules of engagement, 2011). Police forces implemented different
approaches to monitor social media networks, including using media departments
and intelligence units, while others had officers scanning these networks from their
own personal ICT devices (Rules of engagement, 2011). These haphazard measures
attest to the lack of awareness and importance placed on social media. One police
officer recalled that there were not enough officers to monitor the overwhelming
2 https://riot2011.vpd.ca/, last consulted on April 3, 2015.
44
volume of data found on social media and even harder still to verify or correct
wrong or misleading information (Rules of engagement, 2011).
BBM usage was so high during the riots that the Economist began referring to the
disorder as ‘The Blackberry Riots’ (Panagiotopoulos, Bigdeli & Sams, 2014). One
message on BBM urged looters to go to Stratford, “if you're down for making money,
we're about to go hard in east London [sic] tonight, yes tonight!! I don't care what
ends you're from, we're personally inviting you to come and get it in. Police have
taken the piss for too long and to be honest I don't know why its [sic] taken so long
for us make this happen. We need a minimum of 200 hungry people. We're not
broke, but who says no to free stuff. Doesn't matter if the police arrive cos [sic] we'll
just chase dem [sic] out because as you've seen on the news, they are NOT ON DIS
[sic] TING [sic]. Everyone meet at 7 at stratford park and let's get rich" (Halliday,
2011B, 8 August). It is important to note that this message points out the lack of
police seen on news coverage of the rioting as a reason to join the rioters, as will be
discussed further in the thesis this perception of the suspension of societal norms
impacted the rioting. Another message said “everyone from all sides of London meet
up at the heart of London (central) OXFORD CIRCUS!!, Bare SHOPS are gonna get
smashed up so come get some (free stuff!!!) fuck the feds we will send them back
with OUR riot! >:O Dead the ends and colour war for now so if you see a brother...
SALUT! if you see a fed... SHOOT!" (Halliday, 2011B, 8 August). One individual
interviewed by a joint project reviewing the rioting in London between the
Guardian and The London School of Economics said, “I don’t know about Twitter
and Facebook, neither do I have an account with them. All I know is that the
Blackberry was enough to give me enough information, or tell me at the time, of
what was going on, where to stay wary of and what sort of things were targeted”
(Rusbridger & Rees, 2011, p 31). While BBM use by rioters was extensive, Facebook
and Twitter use was less common to incite participation in the rioting (Rusbridger &
Rees, 2011).
45
The speed and mobility of these crowds was enhanced by the mobilization of a
mediated crowd using information communications technologies to organize
virtually to incite collective disorder (Baker, 2011). The use of ICT and social media
to perpetuate the rioting led to the English government placing blame for the riots
on social media and debate shutting down or limiting social media websites
(Bohannon, 2012; England riots, 2011, 11 August). Yet there was little evidence
Twitter or Facebook played any significant role in the mobilization of rioters
(Panagiotopoulos, Bigdeli & Sams, 2014). ICT and the various social media platforms
that evolve from it are a fact of life and simply alternative forms of communication,
however they may be used (Eltantawy & Wiest, 2011). Questions about the technical
workability of implementing the idea and civil liberty implications of shutting down
social media websites were also raised in opposition to the idea, in the end these
websites were not shut down (England riots, 2011, 11 August).
Similarly to the VPD the police in London and the surrounding areas used ICT and
social media for their own ends, although arguably to a lesser extent. The London
Metropolitan Police used social media to keep local residents updated about riots,
often responding to queries and concerns to dispel rumours and hearsay
(Bohannon, 2012). The Metropolitan Police ultimately launched Operation Withern
to round up the rioters, with over 125 detectives involved (Evison, 2014). An aspect
of Operation Withern was to post closed circuit television, commonly referred to as
CCTV, images on a dedicated police Flickr account (Panagiotopoulos, Bigdeli & Sams,
2014). Flickr is a social networking website used to host and share images and
videos, and it was used by the police so that the public could identify individuals
known to them.3 CCTV use is established and widespread in London, resulting in
over 200,000 hours of CCTV footage for the police to comb through
(Panagiotopoulos, Bigdeli & Sams, 2014). A Facebook post summed up the belief
many had in England about the use of CCTV images to identify rioters and looters,
“smile your [sic] on camera!” (Supporting the Met Police against the London Rioters,
3 http://content.met.police.uk/Site/operationwithern, last consulted on April 16, 2015.
46
posted August 8, 2011, 11:17PM). More than 7.8 million hits were reported on this
Flickr account that the police established to name and shame suspected rioters and
looters (Evison, 2014). A key difference in the Vancouver 2011 and London 2011
riots was that the naming and shaming occurring in Vancouver was orchestrated
and facilitated by the public, whereas in London the police began the process. The
advantage the London Metropolitan Police had over the VPD is that their evidence
came directly from CCTV footage and thus could not be questioned based for
legitimacy or authenticity. The VPD, however, received the vast majority of their
evidence from citizens, who have the ability to tamper and edit footage before
sending it to the police, thus leaving it open to scrutiny and criticism in the courts
and potentially removed as evidence, allowing the individual in court to be set free
(UBC Dialogues, 2013, 00:26, 28).
Organization
Leadership of the Movement
Crowd organization has impact on the resources it is able to draw upon (Zald & Ash,
1966). Efforts to mobilize featuring a leadership that is focused on rationality and
reason is more likely to gain resources than is a movement that is spurred by
panicked social disorder (Zald & Garner, 2012). In the same way, the recruitment
and commitment of the members that comprise the resources of a movement go a
long way in ensuring the success of that same movement (Zald & Ash, 1966). The
leadership of the citizen vigilance that erupted after the 2011 Vancouver riot cannot
be clearly defined as there was no singular, or even a few, leaders that could be
unmistakably recognized as the decision makers of the crowd (Schneider & Trottier,
2012). However the moderators of the Facebook groups and blogs can be seen as
the de facto leaders, though their decisions and statements were not the be all, end
all. Rather, these blogs and groups served as forums to share content and discuss
47
the situation to come to a more clear definition of the situation (Boyd, 2008). On the
Facebook page ‘Canucks fans against the 2011 Vancouver Riots’ the moderator
posted “At 50,000 likes in less than 24 hours we’ve showed that the facebook [sic]
page ‘Canucks fans against the 2011 Vancouver Riots’ is a Social Networking mob of
its own that wants to let the world know that the rioters are not Canucks fans, that
we will help identifying the individuals involved and to the world that on behalf of
our team and our city we are sorry” (Canucks fans against the 2011 Vancouver
Riots, posted June 17, 2011, 5:54AM).
There may have been a lack of leadership after the 2011 Vancouver riot but there
was a clear leader after the 1994 Vancouver riot: the police. The VPD attempted to
mobilize citizens after the riot to view the footage in the video kiosks set up around
the downtown core of Vancouver and identify individuals they knew or were
familiar with (BC Police Commission, 1994). The VPD was criticised for the use of
force, chemical agents, and canine units during the 1994 riot, when these video
kiosks were set up the most damaging instances of police heavy-‐handedness had
been edited out of the footage (Furlong & O’Keefe, 2011). By monopolizing the
framing and definition of the situation the police were able to control the public’s
perception and understanding of the riot. This top-‐down approach to mobilization
was a direct contradiction to the bottom-‐up mobilization that occurred after the
2011 Vancouver riot. That riot was simultaneously primarily instigated,
documented, and posted by the digital natives generation; a generation that is
growing out loud and is disinhibited about what they post of themselves online
(Suler, 2004; Prensky, 2001). Another characteristic of this generation is to
document all aspects of their lives; when the championship game was happening,
arguably the biggest event in Canada at the time, this generation had to document
the riot and post it online as empirical evidence to prove they were there (UBC
Dialogues, 2013, 00:17:56).
48
Behaviour of Citizens
Suler (2004) refers to online behaviour that may differ from behaviour in reality as
the online disinhibition effect. There are two variations of this effect; the first is
benign disinhibition, which refers to revealing secrets or fears online (Suler, 2004).
An example would be the Post Secret website which encourages individuals to mail
a postcard in with their deepest, darkest secret as a sort of catharsis, and then the
moderator posts a weekly selection of the postcards received online. Acts of
kindness and generosity, such as crowd funding are also examples of benign
disinhibition. The second variation is toxic disinhibition and it bears witness to the
rude language, hatred, harsh criticism, and threats that are fuelled by anonymity
and a dissociation that actions online will not effect or be linked to individual reality
(Suler, 2004). Toxic disinhibition can be seen in the 2011 Vancouver riot through
individuals posting photos, tweeting, and commenting on the negative behaviour
rioters engaged in and the ways in which they believe justice should be served
(Robinson, et al, 2012, 11 June).
The premise of toxic inhibition is anonymity, yet the things posted online by these
individuals flew in the face of this and helped police and the wider social media
community identify and track them down. “We live in an age of accountability.
Everything you do, everything you say, everything you post, everything you’ve made
public you can be held responsible for” (UBC Dialogues, 2013, 01:13:53). The toxic
disinhibition of citizens involved in crowdsourced policing after the riot can be seen
in posts to the Facebook wall of ‘Vancouver Riot Pics: Post Your Photos’ with
individuals posting things like “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY” (posted June
16, 2011, 2:42AM) or “I hope all those who get charged for the riots get raped in
prison and die of rectal bleeding” (posted June 16, 2011, 11:54am), (Schneider &
Trottier, 2013, p 351). These types of comments were frequent and colourfully
stated, but there were others in the crowd who pleaded for restraint, “This is photo
and video evidence being gathered for the police to decifer [sic]. The justice system
is [sic] flawed as it is, is still better than we as individuals gathering in our outrage
49
and also gaining momentum on the mob mentality in the vigilantism and threats to
the people involved in the rioting, and their families (inderectly) [sic]. Grow up . . . .”
(posted June 20, 2011, 7:09PM), (Schneider & Trottier, 2013, p 351). There were
still others who were posting and participating online to aid the police, “All this
outing is strictly to allow justice and our legal system to proceed” (posted June 21,
2011, 12:50AM), (Schneider & Trottier, 2013, p 352).
In addition to the Facebook pages, websites and blogs were created to attempt to
identify rioters and more generally to vent frustration with the riot overall. ‘Letters
from the front lines: Vancouver Riot,’ is a tumblr site which posted letters from
individuals working on the front lines, including police officers, firefighters,
paramedics, transit staff, and many more. Tumblr is a blogging and social
networking website that allows individuals to create weblogs on any topic of their
choosing and post text, audio, video, or web links related to it.4 One letter writer
indicated “people are taking it a step too far, by posting home addresses and
telephone numbers. We don’t need any more people hurt or windows smashed,
thank you.”5 This is especially relevant due to the fact that the VPD did not
recommend the first set of charges until six months after the riot, and the
persecution taking place online had an immediate impact on the lives of the
suspected rioters (Trottier, 2014). As one commentator posted, “Yeah I think I’d
rather go to jail than be publicly shamed all over facebook [sic] and youtube [sic].
These pics will be there for a lot longer than their jail sentence (Lets Get These
People Locked Up – 2011 Vancouver Riot, posted June 17, 2011, 10:36PM). This
speaks to the enduring nature of anything posted online, which can be understood
as a massive semi-‐permanent archive of data posted by users (Goldsmith, 2015). In
the age of technology “you are tried, found guilty, and convicted all online, but once
you’ve done your time in real prison you can move on with your life, you can’t do
this with social media; things online last and reverberate” (UBC Dialogues, 2013,
00:14:27). 4 https://www.tumblr.com/, last consulted on April 2, 2015. 5 http://riot2011frontlines.tumblr.com/, last consulted on April 10, 2015.
50
The rioters in London were primarily teenagers and young people, many under the
age of twenty-‐four, lending credence to the perception that the rioting was youth-‐
oriented and mobilized (After the Riots, 2012). These digital natives are disinhibited
about what they share and do online as they disassociate their online identity from
that of their offline reality and believe the two cannot be linked (Suler, 2004;
Prensky, 2001). Jordan Blackshaw and Perry Sutcliffe-‐Keenan are two British youth
who discovered this is not the case. Both were sentenced to four years in prison for
inciting people to riot in their hometowns (Bowcott, 2011, 16 August). Blackshaw
created an event on Facebook called ‘Smash Down in Northwich Town’ for August 8,
2011, no one except the police showed up to the pre-‐arranged meeting point outside
the local McDonalds fast food restaurant where the young man was promptly
arrested (Bowcott, 2011, 16 August). In the early hours of August 9, 2011, Sutcliffe-‐
Keenan used his Facebook account to create a group titled ‘The Warrington Riots,’
causing panic throughout the town. Upon waking with a hangover Sutcliffe-‐Keenan
deleted the group and apologized for the joke (Bowcott, 2011, 16 August). In both
instances no rioting occurred as a result of the mobilization attempts on social
media yet it stands as an example of how easy it is to attempt to do so and the lack of
inhibition exhibited by both youth, as well as the consequences.
‘Criminal List: Anonymous Crime in a 2.0 World? I Don’t Think So!’ was another
tumblr site created in response to the VPD request for photos from the public.6 This
blog was clear it did not advocate vigilantism or violent retribution, instead its
purpose was to provide photos and any other helpful information to the VPD and in
the process do “something that most of us learned was a horrible thing via our
mothers: being ‘shamed.’”7 This view of social justice by means of shaming was a
popular method on social media (Schneider & Trottier, 2012). Shaming was a
common element of ‘Canucks fans against the 2011 Vancouver Riot’ as
commentators posted “Send them the pictures and I hope the cops and media print 6 http://vancityriotcriminals.tumblr.com/, last consulted on April 2, 2015. 7 https://www.tumblr.com/, last consulted on April 2, 2015.
51
them in every newspaper for a week. Shame them and their friends or family to turn
these bastards and women in. I am disgusted in the actions of my hometown people
the 3% of you that caused all those problems” (posted June 16, 2011, 7:44PM) or
“Let’s parade all the asshole rioters, handcuffed, down Granville” (posted June 16,
2011, 9:40PM). Granville Street is a major street that runs through the centre of
Vancouver and is a high traffic area for pedestrians and vehicles alike and being
marched down the busy street would be the embodiment of shame and
embarrassment.
The shaming that became popular on social media came about due to citizens
embracing lateral surveillance as an aspect of their citizen vigilance. Lateral
surveillance refers to citizens monitoring the behaviour and actions of other citizens
and reporting them to whom they deem are the necessary authorities (Lewis, 2013,
14 June). This type of surveillance has become increasingly common in a cyber
world where individuals are posting significant details of their lives; we have a
generation of digital natives who are growing out loud (UBC Dialogues, 2013,
01:00:23; Prensky, 2001). This means that this generation has grown up with
technology and the rapid advances within it; they are what they share, its how they
interact and remain connected (UBC Dialogues, 2013, 01:01:29). This lends to the
ease of lateral surveillance as everything these digital natives do, everything they
say, everything they post can be held against them. Holding individuals accountable
for their actions is becoming easier to accomplish through the aid of information
communications technologies (Prensky, 2001).
The security of citizens is increasingly being impacted by a failure to protect their
anonymity. Data mining after crisis can result in malicious activities such as identity
theft, or be used in citizen vigilance to threaten or harass individuals believed to be
involved in a riot (Watson, et al, 2014). An example of this is of a man who was
slandered for being involved in the looting and fires set at the Hudson’s Bay
Company store in Vancouver the night of the riot. It was later discovered that he
worked for the store and was trying to stop the looting and was putting out fires,
52
which is why he appeared in video footage and photos.8 One individual posted on
the Criminal List blog, “lets [sic] make sure we don’t paint everyone with the same
brush and villify [sic] those who don’t deserve it.”9 A similar situation occurred after
the rioting in London. Dane Williamson spent nine days in jail for a crime he did not
commit after being misidentified on social media. Williamson had five alibis proving
he did not commit the arson he was accused of, but the chaos of the rioting meant
that he was arrested and set aside until the rioting stopped and those arrested were
actually investigated (Keeling, 2011, 20 August). This type of misidentification in
Vancouver and London are not unique instances. The bombing of the 2013 Boston
Marathon also had examples of wrongful identification of innocent individuals, that
time on social networking website Reddit, which allows members to vote
submissions up or down the main webpage based on their interests (Watson, et, al,
2014). Spectators at the marathon had shared information and images on various
social media networks and a crowdsourced investigation occurred that ultimately
resulted in various individuals being wrongly labelled as the perpetrators of the
attack (McNutt, 2014). This type of misidentification has serious security concerns
for the individuals accused as well as lasting negative effects on their lives and must
not be allowed to flourish. Social disorder is temporary, but the collective responses
online are lasting.
Citizens as Resources
The depth and extent of a top-‐down approach to mobilization versus a bottom-‐up
mobilization is affected by the organization and structure of the crowd and the mass
reaction it builds itself around (Sandoval-‐Almazan & Gil-‐Garcia, 2014; Henman,
2012). A top-‐down approach does not provide a platform or medium to discuss
mobilization, instead it seeks to mobilize resources for a narrative determined by
the elites (Goldsmith, 2015). A bottom-‐up approach suggests the existence of an
empowered user base and ICT only serves to enable this empowerment by 8 http://vancityriotcriminals.tumblr.com/, last consulted on April 2, 2015. 9 Ibid.
53
providing platforms for interaction (Trottier, 2014). Bottom-‐up initiatives tend to be
longer lasting and more committed to the goals of the movement because they have
spontaneously formed in response to a perceived or real grievance, are based upon
collective intelligence, and are continually evolving, not fixed (Henman, 2012; Della
Porta, 2014).
The naming and shaming of suspected rioters is an example of a bottom-‐up
initiative that formed after the 2011 riot in Vancouver, another example is the city
clean up organized via social media. The theme of the messages and posts on social
media was one of resilience as citizens mobilized online to clean up the city. Social
media was a powerful force for this mobilization. A Facebook group, ‘Post Riot
Clean-‐Up – Let’s help Vancouver’ was created within hours of the riot ending. The
description posted for the group said “Once the embarrassing rioting has ended in
Vancouver let’s all show the world what Vancouver is really about by helping
rebuild and clean up so it is better than it was before” (Post Riot Clean-‐Up – Let’s
help Vancouver, posted June 15, 2011, 12:00AM). In the early hours of June 16,
2011, citizens from Vancouver and the surrounding metropolitan area poured into
the downtown core armed with brooms, mops, shovels, and cleaning supplies to
remedy the destruction caused hours previously (Furlong & O’Keefe, 2011). As one
individual posted on the Facebook page, “Let’s all come together to aid in the clean
up, the true citizens of Vancouver and true Canuck fans’’ (Post Riot Clean-‐Up – Let’s
help Vancouver, posted June 16, 2011, 2:00 AM).
An estimated 15,000 citizens appeared to sweep sidewalks littered with broken
glass, scrub offensive graffiti, and turn their city back to the way it was before the
riot and looting took place (Ryan, 2011, 17 November). “THIS IS MY VANCOUVER.
Please use #thisismyvancouver in your twitter [sic] posts when talking about the
riot” (Post Riot Clean-‐Up – Let’s help Vancouver, posted June 19, 2011, 2:23AM).
The use of this Twitter handle echoes the unwillingness of citizens to be defined as
rioters; they wanted the resilience and the sense of community in the people living
in Vancouver and the surrounding areas to be remembered instead of the rioting
54
and looting. A post on the Facebook group ‘Canucks fans against the 2011
Vancouver Riots’ sums up the many messages on social media, “Saw it first hand . . .
Thousands of vancouverites HELPING to clean the place. Last night I was ashamed
to be a vancouverite…Today, IVE [sic] NEVER BEEN SO PROUD!! <3 VANCOUVER”
(Canucks fans against the 2011 Vancouver Riots, posted June 16, 2011, 10:45PM).
Commitment of Citizens
The grassroots organization and mobilization facilitated by ICT and social media to
rally citizens and prompt a mass clean up in Vancouver the morning after the rioting
was as successful as it was due to the public’s belief in their sense of community and
the resilience of their city. As McCarthy and Zald (1973) pointed out, the definition
of grievances will expand to meet the changing and evolving nature and opinions of
the members of the movement. In Vancouver, the grievance was initially to supply
the authorities with evidence in the form of photos and video footage, then the
grievance evolved to helping the authorities identify those suspects online, and in
the middle of this shift there was a call online to help Vancouver return to its pre-‐
riot state (Furlong & O’Keefe, 2011; Schneider & Trottier, 2012). These grievances
appeared during the riot and evolved in a matter of hours after it had concluded,
attesting to the speed with which ICT can mobilize and spread a message.
Highlighting the resilience of citizens was the incentive to participate in the clean up
efforts and the efforts to make this happen were carried out in the virtual realm.
There was little evidence of the rioting in London being propagated on Twitter or
Facebook though these social media platforms were used heavily to harness the
power of social networking to coordinate and organize clean up of areas affected by
rioting and looting (Tonkin, Pfeiffer & Tourte, 2012). An account was set up on
Twitter called @riotcleanup and it attracted over 70,000 followers by the second
day of rioting and its aim was to help citizens coordinate and mobilize clean up
efforts (England riots, 2011, 9 August). The organizing to arrange the clean up
55
reached more than seven million Twitter users, far in excess of any tweets inciting
rioting (Rusbridger & Rees, 2011). Groups were also created on Facebook, including
‘Post Riot Clean-‐up – Let’s help clean up London’ and ‘Liverpool Cleanup.’
Thousands of citizens joined these groups and expressed their support for its goals,
“we need to pull together, help clean up and show our support!” (London Riots
2011, posted August 9, 2011, 3:50PM). Resilience was also a common theme,
“inspirational and proof of good outweighing bad, that what this is all about”
(Liverpool Cleanup, posted August11, 2011, 12:00PM). The photo below captures
the kick off of a clean up in Clapham Junction.
Photo retrieved from the Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-‐2024035/UK-‐riots-‐2011-‐500-‐Londoners-‐offer-‐help-‐clean-‐rioters-‐mess.html
A separate and distinct type of mobilization was also attempting to gain ground in
England, a hashtag was set up on Twitter entitled #OperationCupOfTea and it called
for citizens to stay in and drink tea, essentially establishing a self-‐imposed curfew
(Tonkin, Pfeiffer & Tourte, 2012). The anti-‐rioting campaign created a Facebook
page and had 200,000 likes within hours and was seen as a blithe but still serious
56
attempt to discourage riotous behaviour by appealing to the English temperament
and stereotype of drinking tea (Tonkin, Pfeiffer & Tourte, 2012).
Involvement from Outside the Crowd
The Internet allows users to seek specific information they might not be able to find
elsewhere and communicate with others regardless of spatial dimensions like time
and place, while also contributing to the way in which relationships are formed and
maintained online (Neubaum, et al, 2014). This is further impacted by the
willingness of people in online communities to cooperate with each other,
regardless of the diversity that exists between them, as long as they are able to
further the goals of their movement (Stanley, 2003). This contributes to the social
cohesion in a society; Stanley (2003) maintains that social cohesion is at the crux of
the actions of a crowd as individuals form communities to accomplish their goals. If
members are not committed to the cause then the purpose they serve as resources
for the mobilization effort is minimal (Della Porta, 2014).
Establishing an Identity
Rallying and mobilizing the resources was not challenging; social media lit up faster
than a car on fire outside Rogers Arena where the championship game was played. A
strong identity of the rioters against everyone else spontaneously erupted as
various forms of ICT enabled people in proximity to, or involved in, the riot to
record, post, and share text, photo, and video footage online (Schneider & Trottier,
2012). Jenkins (1983) asserted that strong identities lead to successful mobilization
and the identity that formed in Vancouver after the 2011 riot was absolute and
unwavering; it was the rioters on one hand and everyone else on the other. This
identity contributed to the citizen vigilance that mobilized after the riot. Using this
us versus them mentality, involvement from outside the crowd would refer to those
57
individuals who rioted and looted participating in the citizen vigilance and clean up
efforts. This did occur in the sense that some individuals turned themselves in to the
police or came out to help clean up the mess they themselves helped create, but it
was not to any great extent. The strong identities that existed during the rioting and
the density of the interpersonal networks of crowd members did not have any
bearing on this; therefore the involvement from outside the crowd was negligible.
Citizen Vigilance and Defining the Situation
Schneider and Trottier (2012, p 62) define the circumstances in Vancouver as those
“citizens not affiliated with law enforcement [who] increasingly engage in a form of
pseudo-‐police work on social media sites.” The ubiquity of digital cameras
contributes to a more participatory and empowered form of lateral surveillance as
citizens use everyday technology to leverage and manage the resources of the crowd
(Goldsmith, 2015). Citizen vigilance has contributed to bringing thousands of new
crimes to the attention of police, and due to citizen scrutiny they are often reported
soon after they have occurred (Crawford, 2012, 31 October).
Not to say that this form of activity did not exist prior to the proliferation of social
media and ICT, centuries old “WANTED” posters could be seen as the earliest
incarnation of citizen vigilance. However the form that occurs on ICT enabled
mediums differs in that it engages citizens at a different level: in the definition of the
situation, a task previously not possible. Citizen participation in the meaning making
and framing of a social event is a new phenomenon. This is only possible due to the
platforms presented by ICT to allow users to participate, generate content, and
provide accounts of an event. This then allows contributions to public sense-‐making
and the public definition of the situation, which sets the parameters for the
possibility of action, including what, and how, to respond (Schneider & Trottier,
2013). This does not mean that ICT and social media determine collective action,
simply that they provide a medium on which individual views can be traded,
58
amended, and distributed to come to a shared consensus of the event (Schneider &
Trottier, 2013; Watson, et al, 2014; Kotsiopoulos, 2014).
The definition of the situation after the 1994 riot greatly differed from that of the
2011 Vancouver riot. This is largely due to the presence of new information
communications technologies that contributed to citizen participation in the 2011
riot. After the riot in 1994, the police requested raw video footage from local
television stations and newspapers in an effort to identify rioters; the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) refused this request, as they wanted to avoid being
messengers of the police (Schneider & Trottier, 2012). Two weeks later the CBC was
compelled by court order to surrender all footage of the riot, as were local
newspapers the Vancouver Sun and The Province (Schneider & Trottier, 2012). A
hallmark of the 1994 riot was the use of force by police, however the police edited
the footage of the riot to remove any images of this brutality before they set up
video kiosks in the downtown core of Vancouver (Schneider & Trottier, 2012). By
controlling the information available to the public at these kiosks the police were
able to define the situation and use the media footage to corroborate their story that
excessive use of force, including the use of chemical agents and canine units was
plausible (BC Police Commission, 1994). The VPD was not able to successfully
mobilize citizens through these kiosks, as the use of them did not result in any
significant success for the police department (BC Police Commission, 1994).
The 2011 riot was defined very differently, as the police could not put that genie
back in the proverbial bottle by monopolizing the public’s understanding of the riot.
ICT and social media were an important and distinguishing factor in this riot. The
2011 riot was at that point in time, among the most documented riots of all time,
this was due to the proliferation of communication and information devices capable
of recording and disseminating images and video of the riot (Schneider & Trottier,
2013). This has contributed to the participation of citizens in shaping events as
people increasingly rely on social networks to interact with each other because they
provide a unique type of emotional support during and after crises (Wang, 2014; Jin,
59
et al, 2014). The police were not able to contain and limit the definition of the
situation as they did after the 1994 riot due to technology, which has allowed social
events like riots to transcend into virtual spaces in real-‐time (Schneider & Trottier,
2013). The ability to replay, review, and render new opinions on the subject matter
is one way in which ICT has affected the ways in which crowdsourced information
led to citizen vigilance (Simon, et al, 2014). While police waded through the mass
amounts of data, users on social media were piecing together narratives found
online without the aid of the police, any legal knowledge, or appreciation of the
limits of the law (Schneider & Trottier, 2012). These users muddy the waters for
police and investigators by trampling all over the information available online and
throwing out red herrings without meaning to do so and distracting the
investigations with rumours and misinformation (UBC Dialogues, 2013, 00:12:58).
Unintentional though they may be.
This citizen vigilance emerged due to a variety of reasons, including dissatisfaction
with the criminal justice system in Canada and to highlight the resilience of the
people of Vancouver (Schneider & Trottier, 2012). To put the 1994 and 2011 riots
into perspective, the VPD had to process approximately one hundred hours of video
footage, all in one format, for the 1994 riot; for the 2011 riot more than thirty
terabytes of data was collected, including five thousand hours of video and sixteen
million images, in a variety of formats10 The overwhelming amount of information
presented to the police in these formats led to the creation of the seventy member
Integrated Riot Investigation Team (IRIT) with police officers and civilian analysts
from eight police agencies coming together to deal with the non-‐traditional
investigative challenges presented by the 2011 riot (VPD Annual Report, 2011). An
upgraded forensic video lab also had to be funded by the provincial Ministry of
Justice to deal with the challenges presented by this riot.
10 https://riot2011.vpd.ca/, last consulted on April 3, 2015.
60
Impatience of Citizens
ICT has changed citizens’ expectations, they have become used to getting answers
right away and were confused as to why the VPD was not pressing charges left,
right, and centre when they had a seemingly endless supply of evidence (UBC
Dialogues, 2013, 00:26:45). One of the initial tasks of the IRIT was to catalogue the
data; without doing so the VPD argued that dealing with all the raw data would have
been similar to trying to find a book in the public library without a catalogue (VPD
Annual Report, 2011). The VPD justified the time dedicated to this endeavour by
reasoning that they wanted to ensure suspects were held accountable for any and all
actions they took during the riot, not just the ones investigators stumbled across.
Once the indexing was complete the VPD could explore this catalogue like an online
search engine and separate incidents could be linked to show criminal behaviour
over the course of the riot to the courts to try and attain more serious sentences
(VPD Annual Report, 2011). For example if a suspect was wearing a white belt all
the video footage and photos could be searched for anyone wearing a white belt.
This was instrumental to the charges recommended against rioters, as it was clear
that many suspects were involved in multiple events (VPD Riot Review, 2011).
It is important to note that text, photos, and video footage posted online do not
automatically become evidence of wrongdoing, rather it is information collected by
the police during the starting point of an investigation (UBC Dialogue’s, 2013,
00:26:59). Information is gathered and investigated and may become evidence but
is not evidence merely by its existence (UBC Dialogue’s, 2013, 00:27:15). Individuals
began posting on various social media websites about the riot within minutes of the
first signs of trouble and were a great source of information for police (Robinson, et
al, 2012, 11 June). These eyewitness accounts have the potential to contribute to
situational awareness so first responders can make informed and better decisions
(Dailey & Starbird, 2014). In these ways information communications technologies
helps link disparate actors to allow joint sense making through mediated interaction
(Fulk, 1993). This sense making is related to influence, which is also a form of social
61
control and affects the context surrounding the crisis or social event and thereby
impacts the definition of the situation (Friedkin, 1998; Friedkin & Johnsen, 1999).
The dissatisfaction with the legal system and recourse to citizen vigilance has
contributed to undermining the law and is a threat to Western democracies (Rizza,
2013). The case of Nathan Kotylak is an example of this. During the 2011 Vancouver
riot Kotylak was photographed attempting to set a police car on fire and was
identified on Facebook less than twenty-‐four hours later (Schneider & Trottier,
2012). A legal minor at the time of his actions during the riot, Kotylak and any
criminal acts he committed would be protected by the Youth Criminal Justice Act
which prohibits publishing the name or any other information related to a young
person under the age of eighteen if it would identify that person as having been
dealt with under the act (Youth Criminal Justice Act, 2002). In theory, Facebook is
included in the act along with traditional media. In practice, however, social media
websites present legal challenges to the publication and identification of minors
committing crimes due to the ubiquity of ICT and social media (Schneider &
Trottier, 2013). Commentators on social media were posting comments about the
consequences Kotylak would face from the police and society “I bet you its [sic] just
a slap on the wrist. apperently [sic] hes [sic] under 18. hell [sic] pay though.. when
hes [sic] out in society.. he WILL pay. (Lets Get these People Locked Up – 2011
Vancouver Riot Pics, posted June 17, 2011, 11:55PM). As a result of online
harassment and threats from citizens’ upset by his actions Kotylak and his family
had to leave their home in suburban Maple Ridge until the emotion abated
(Schneider & Trottier, 2012).
In London there was also citizen mobilization in response to a lack of faith and trust
in the authorities in the form of vigilantes who patrolled the streets, shopkeepers
protecting their businesses, and Sikhs standing guard to prevent looting at their
gurdwaras. However there is no evidence to suggest that this mobilization occurred
through ICT and over social media, therefore they can be seen as participants of the
movement acting from outside the crowd. This mobilization spontaneously formed
62
in response to what was seen as a lack of police presence and control over the
rioting (Manning, 2011, 11 August). The most notable example of these vigilantes
was a group of Millwall Football Club supporters, themselves typically associated in
the media with hooliganism (Tonkin, Pfeiffer & Tourte, 2012). One member of the
group said, “everyone will come out tonight. If people come around here smashing
our shops up, then they'll get what they deserve. We're happy to get into it with
them" (Manning, 2011, 11 August). The irony of the footballers patrolling the streets
did not escape the Millwall supporters; “you know things are bad when the football
crowds have to police the streets” (Croft & Holden, 2011, 10 August). Another one of
the vigilante patrollers, this one from the right wing English Defence League,
described the opinion of those he walked the streets with, “we've had enough of the
police just standing there, basically scratching their arses while people are looting
and ruining the whole area. Everybody here pays tax and we've all had enough of it.
We're sickened by the police doing absolutely nothing” (UK riot vigilantes, 2011, 10
August).
Contrary to groups like the Millwall supporters, Sikhs and shopkeepers protected
their property, and did not consider themselves a pseudo-‐police force roaming the
streets (Croft & Holden, 2011, 10 August). Armed with kirpans, the traditional
sword of Sikhism, and field hockey sticks, Sikhs in the Southall region of London
turned out to guard the local gurdwaras from the rioters and looters who had been
roaming the area (UK riot vigilantes, 2011, 10 August). Shopkeepers and other small
business owners stood sentinel in front of their establishments to prevent looting.
One man interviewed by Reuters said he was not a vigilante, “it’s just about being on
the streets, it's not about running battles, it's just being here. It's exercising our right
to walk the streets" (Croft & Holden, 2011, 10 August). Then Mayor of London Boris
Johnson encouraged this type of behaviour, and is quoted as saying “people who
have the interests of the community and who want to look after each other, of
course I want them out on the streets” (Manning, 2011, 11 August). The website for
the Metropolitan Police echoed similar sentiments by stating that anyone who came
63
under attack could use reasonable force to protect themselves or others.11 On
Amazon, a popular online shopping website, sales of baseball bats rose at
exponential rates, as did sales of a police style baton, lending support to the belief
that citizens were organizing to protect themselves (Manning, 2011, 11 August).
This organic mobilization had no relationship with ICT or social media, rather it was
a response to several consecutive nights of rioting and a perceived lack of police
action; it was not promoted or mobilized through or on ICT. Many individuals who
were interviewed by the panel convened by the English government to investigate
the riot, and had been accused or convicted of rioting, cited a perception that police
could not contain the scale or extent of rioting in Tottenham and London as the
reason they participated in the riots (After the riots, 2012). Therefore the looting
can be understood as a result of opportunism and a perceived suspension of societal
laws and norms. This is supported by Baudains, Johnson, and Braithwaite (2013)
who argued that rioting might prompt, permit, pressure, or provoke additional
offences, as further disorder is deemed acceptable given the circumstances. A lack of
confidence in police appeared to encourage people to mobilize online and assemble
in large groups to vandalize and loot without fear of being challenged by the
authorities (After the riots, 2012). One individual interviewed by the writers of the
joint report issued by the Guardian and The London School of Economics is quoted
as saying that “normally the police control us. But the law was obeying us, know
what I mean?” (Rusbridger & Rees, 2011).
Supply and Demand of Resources
In order to supply resources, a demand must first be recognized. In the case of the
2011 Vancouver riot the demand was twofold: for the supply of photos and video
footage of suspected rioters, and consequently identification of those same
11 http://content.met.police.uk/Site/operationwithern, last consulted on April 18, 2015.
64
individuals. This demand was met by the thousands of individuals who mobilized on
social media through various forms of ICT in response to the VPD’s request for any
information the public could supply to aid in the arrest of rioters and looters.12 In
this sense the goals of the movement and the demand were one and the same. The
recruitment of citizens to meet the demand did not occur in the traditional sense of
going out and seeking individuals to join the movement. In the case of the 2011 riot
in Vancouver the supply was there, they just had to be mobilized and linked to the
demand.
The demand was met, and then crowd continued beyond the initial parameters of
the mobilization effort. Beginning as a way to simply supply information to relevant
authorities, the crowd quickly transformed into a self-‐organized group of users
intent on seeking justice in their own way (Trottier, 2014). This was affected by a
lack of context. As discussed above, individuals were falsely accused and maligned
for being rioters, when they were not. Marwick and Boyd (2010) determined that
social media combines elements of broadcast media and face to face communication,
and by doing so removes the ability to negotiate the complex variations in
presentation and impression, resulting in the collapse of context. One comment left
on the Facebook group ‘Canucks fans against the 2011 Vancouver Riots,’ remarked
that the group should “Stay focused on the goal to bring criminals that were
defacing public properly [sic], theft, assault, vandalism and so forth to justice!”
(posted June 21, 2011, 11:08PM). This is especially true in the case of context as a
picture can be easily misinterpreted. Schneider and Trottier (2012) expanded on
this by recognizing that social media presents a narrow and often incriminating
view of users; the adage a picture is worth a thousand words would be an apt way to
describe this context, or lack thereof.
12 https://riot2011.vpd.ca/, last consulted on April 3, 2015.
65
Recruitment for the Cause
Tilly (1995) argues that incentives must be linked to the goals of the crowd in order
to supply the demand. It has been determined that there was no grassroots
mobilization after the 1994 riot as the police attempted to mobilize citizens to little
effect. There were no incentives to encourage citizens to aid the police in their
mobilization effort (BC Police Commission, 1994). The goals of the crowd after the
2011 riot were to identify and punish the rioters, and help Vancouver return to a
normal state as soon as possible. These goals simultaneously acted as the incentives
to mobilize the crowd. Fulk (1993) suggests that when an individual experiences
attraction to a group, that individual buys in to the group’s norms and attitudes and
begins to exhibit behaviour that is consist with that of the group. Incentives need
not be a personal gain for members of the crowd, they can simply be to accomplish
the goals of the crowd, and if the members are adequately motivated to meet those
goals they will participate and be incentivized (McCarthy & Zald, 1973). In the case
of the 2011 riot in Vancouver, ICT and the proliferation of these technologies
contributed to the crowdsourced information gathering and policing that mobilized
as a result of the goals and incentives of the crowd. There is limited understanding
of the limits of technology-‐mediated mobilization, however it is understood that
incentives will determine the extent of recruitment and goal achievement, as well as
whether or not individuals choose to participate in a social movement (Rutherford,
et al, 2013; McCarthy & Zald, 1973).
In the case of the rioting in London and neighbouring cities the causes vary and are
disputed, however economic conditions, especially high unemployment, racism, and
police brutality are recognized as the key justifications used by rioters (Yelaja, 2011,
10 August). Academics on the other hand, acknowledge that “a complex set of macro
and micro factors were at play here, including anger at Mark Duggan’s death, the
disenfranchisement and disillusionment of young people, as well as the ‘wanton
criminality’ that has been the subject of many politicians’ ire” (Bohannon, 2012, p
831). This wanton criminality refers to the social disorder caused by citizens due to
66
their participation in the crowd, regardless of the consequences. This online
mobilization used various forms of ICT and social media to enable individuals intent
on social disorder to form communities, share plans, and organize themselves to
carry out their actions (Rules of engagement, 2011). The online mobilization that
occurred in London was twofold and by opposing groups of citizens, on one hand to
encourage participation in the rioting, and on the other to coordinate the clean up
and restore the cities to their pre-‐riot state.
In any type of crowdsourced information it has been suggested that one percent of
the crowd will create the content, ten percent will validate it, and eighty-‐nine
percent will use it (Alexander, 2014). In the case of Vancouver these numbers may
not necessarily be accurate. Schneider and Trottier (2013) conducted a study of the
most popular Facebook page used after the riot, ‘Vancouver Riot Pics: Post Your
Photos,’ and found 12,587 postings in the first fourteen days following the riot on a
page with more than 100,000 ‘likes’, this would be approximately 7.9 percent of the
crowd posting content. However it is not possible to measure the accuracy or
validity of the content without police consultation to determine how much of the
content was of actual rioters and their criminal behaviour. Though as of April 3,
2015, the Vancouver Police Department has recommended 366 rioters be charged
with ultimately 300 rioters charged; 1,266 recommended charges and 907
approved charges after 2,424 web tips received and 16.3 million images viewed.13
This large supply of resources was due in part to dissatisfaction with the Canadian
criminal justice system and its perceived leniency and delay in prosecuting accused
rioters (Schneider & Trottier, 2013). A post on the Facebook group ‘Canucks fans
against the 2011 Vancouver Riots’ speaks to this, “Punks that deserve to be in jail
and not out in public. There [sic] disgraceful to all of B.C. Thank god there is alot
[sic] of good people in B.C. And Van with camera’s to catch the little basterds [sic]
and hopefully the Mayor and the law give’s it to them . . .” (posted June 17, 2011,
13 https://riot2011.vpd.ca/, last consulted on April 3, 2015.
67
3:21AM). Phrases such as vigilantes, mob justice, and social witch hunts began to be
used to describe the prejudicial fervour with which online users identified and
criminalized suspected rioters. (Schneider & Trottier, 2012). The boundary between
seeking justice and righting perceived wrongs, and persecuting individuals online is
blurry, especially when these activities are in the hands of unaccountable and
untrained citizens (Trottier, 2014).
Costs and Benefits of Participation
Framing the Message
In regards to the costs and benefits of participation in a crowd’s goals, resource
mobilization theory questions why citizens choose to participate, or not participate
in the mobilization movement (McCarthy & Zald, 1977). This decision can be
influenced by the elites, which as discussed in the theoretical framework for this
thesis, can be considered the moderators of social media and ICT. There is no
evidence of these moderators manipulating the crowd after the 2011 riot, but there
are examples of these individuals attempting to reign in the fury and emotion linked
to the crowd’s behaviour (Trottier, 2014). The editor of the ‘Criminal List:
Anonymous Crime in a 2.0 World? I Don’t Think So!’ made a post on June 21, 2011,
that reads as follows: “While there were very constructive and uplifting things
posted, there were some incredibly horrible things posted as well, items such as
racism, sexism, threats, blaming everyone from specific suburbs via blanket
statements, and harassment. . . . Why are people calling, harassing, and threatening
people whose only guilt in this is being related to someone who participated in the
riot? What is the point of hurting these innocent people, and how is that any
different then the mob behaviour of rioters lynching people in the streets?” Or on
the Facebook group ‘Lets Get These People Locked Up – 2011 Vancouver Riot Pics’
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the moderators made a post that “Without rock solid evidence we shouldn’t wrongly
accuse anyone (posted June 18, 2011, 6:24PM).
The 1994 riot was a different story; in that case the police did manipulate the
message by editing out instances of police brutality (Furlong & O’Keefe, 2011). The
VPD had responded to that riot with an escalated force model of policing to disperse
the crowd and media coverage had been critical of police actions (BC Police
Commission, 1994). By removing the footage of police brutality the police framed
the narrative surrounding the riot. By doing so, the police were able to encourage
citizen mobilization to respond only to the senseless actions of a group framed to be
an aberration from the normal behaviour of citizens, not to the police’s use of force
or crowd control methods (Stanley, 2003). This manipulation was possible as
technology in 1994 did not allow the continuous review and analysis of media
footage as is possible with current technology. This means that in 1994, an
individual had to record the news footage as it was airing on television in order to
have a copy. Technological advances have allowed the 2011 riot to be recorded by
citizens and also be easily accessible by searching various ICT. YouTube footage of
the riot is an example of the availability of such footage.
Costs of Participation
A post on the blog ‘Criminal List: Anonymous Crime in a 2.0 World? I Don’t Think
So!’ discusses a friend who works for the VPD who advised “If you have photos of
crime downtown, posting them on the Net is not helpful. E-‐mail the high-‐res
originals to the Vancouver police DIRECTLY at [email protected] and give them times,
locations, context of photos, and your contact information.”14 This recommendation
is further reiterated by arguments that citizens unaffiliated with law enforcement
agencies hamper investigations as they engage in a form of pseudo-‐police work
without: formal training, following criminal justice protocols in regards to
14 http://vancityriotcriminals.tumblr.com/, last consulted on April 2, 2015.
69
limitations of the police, control of evidence, and the basic legal principle of being
innocent until proven guilty (Schneider & Trottier, 2012; Dailey & Starbird, 2014;
Crawford, 2012, 31 October). These were the costs for the self-‐righteousness and
emotion that swept over Vancouver as ICT enabled new forms of public
participation during crises and social disorder; studies have shown that the public
turns to ICT and online platforms to engage with, seek information, and share
experiences (Dailey & Starbird, 2014).
“Knew I could count on people posting the stupid antics they did, and paying for it”
(Canucks fans against the 2011 Vancouver Riots, posted June 17, 2011, 5:26AM).
Comments such as this highlight how posts made by individuals were beneficial to
the crowdsourced policing that took place as they provided the ‘evidence’ used as
part of the name-‐and-‐shame-‐athon that took place online (Crawford, 2012, 31
October). This sharing online can be considered a cost of the changes in privacy and
immediacy as a result of advances in ICT, especially in regards to social media as
individuals post and share things from every aspect of their lives with little regard
to who sees it (UBC Dialogues, 2013, 00:10:39). The immediacy provided by ICT can
be seen as a factor in the lack of faith in the criminal justice system that contributed
to citizen vigilance. The law works at a glacial speed, and with good reason when it
may deprive an individual of their liberty. However in a modern age when finding
information can be at the fingertips of anyone with access to ICT within seconds,
this lapse of time is seen as an abnormality and can lead to individuals trying to
create their own justice (UBC Dialogues, 2013, 00:26:28; Kietzmann, et al, 2012).
The VPD report on the 2011 riot pointed out that the shaming occurring on various
forms of ICT reached a point at which they felt the need to issue a statement to
remind citizens to be patient and trust in the justice system; yet they contend that at
the writing of the report approximately thirty-‐seven people had turned themselves
in as a result of the shaming (VPD Stanley Cup Review, 2011).
A common criticism after the 2011 Vancouver riot was that the police were not
doing enough to arrest suspected rioters when there appeared to be so much
70
evidence available to them due to all the photos and videos collected. This
frustration with the VPD was further exasperated by the speed with which citizens
could see arrests and court sentencing occurring in England after the rioting that
occurred there later that same summer. As previously discussed, the VPD spent
considerable time gathering evidence, cataloguing it, and proving its legitimacy.
However the authorities in London were able to pull evidence directly from CCTV
footage with no verification needed to prove its authenticity. This had enormous
impact on the speed of the investigation and how quickly suspects were identified,
arrested, and sent to the courts. Within one month of the rioting ending in London
over 1,500 offenders appeared in courts nationwide, which functioned twenty-‐four
hours a day, seven days a week in order to prevent a backlog in the courts (London
riots arrests, 2011, 25 August). A side note to this point is that of the 4,000 suspects
ultimately arrested for rioting or looting, nine out of ten were already known to the
police, meaning that their personal data and information would already have been
in the police systems and easily accessible (After the riots, 2012).
These types of sentiments were expressed on social media as commentators wrote;
“It’s good to see swift justice for a lot of rioters unlike the Vancouver Riots where
not a single person has been arrested since their riots back in June” (London Riots
2011, posted August 18, 2011, 12:00AM). The advantage of having access to
undisputable evidence was of enormous help to the police in London as it
“expedited the process of indictable offences; there is no room for a judge to
question the legitimacy of the evidence, whereas in Vancouver there were
allegations of evidence being photo-‐shopped” (UBC Dialogues, 2013, 00:27:29). Fake
or doctored images were a real concern in Vancouver, but not in London, having
significant impact on the speed of arrests and the public’s satisfaction with the
police and whether or not they resorted to citizen policing (Crawford, 2012, 31
October).
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Benefits of Participation
Citizens choose to participate, or not to participate in social movements for various
reasons; the leaders must make the costs as low as possible and the benefits as high
as possible to encourage participation (Jenkins, 1983). As discussed earlier in this
thesis there were not any clearly identifiable leaders of the movements that formed
in either Vancouver or London who encouraged citizen mobilization. In Vancouver
maintaining resilience and trying to resuscitate the damaged reputation of their city
were the motivations for citizens to participate in the mobilization efforts, but these
did not create tangible benefits for the citizens themselves. Rather the benefit was to
the community at large. This was made possible by the informal coalitions that
formed and allowed collective action for the sake of the community (Buechler,
1993). In London resilience was at the heart of the mobilizing to clean up the city
however causing disorder was at the root of the rioting (Baudains, Johnson &
Braithwaite, 2013). This dichotomy of actions in the mobilization that occurred in
the city represents both the costs and benefits of the use of information
communications technologies for citizen mobilization.
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Conclusion
Technology will continue to advance and the ways in which crises are managed will
continue to shift as a result. “New communications technologies—especially social
media via the Internet—have become important resources for the mobilization of
collective action and the subsequent creation, organization, and implementation of
social movements around the world” (Eltantawy & Wiest, 2011). As a result of the
technological advances available to society this author contends that a reverse
mobilization is occurring. Before the advances that allowed citizens to carry
information communications technologies and access to the Internet in their
pockets, a crowd gathered resources for their social movement, now resources exist
online and wait for a crowd to make use of them. These resources are the networks
and clusters of actors, communities, and ‘friends’ an individual, or crowd, have
access to in working towards the goals of the movement. There has been a
fundamental change in how resources are mobilized; no longer does a need for
resources need to be promoted and then gathered, instead the resources just need
to be accessed online and then deployed to relevant areas and for intentional goals.
Social networks are the ties that bind; these ties create an interconnected web that
allows interactions, norms, and common practices to occur, exist, and form between
individuals. This can be seen in the cases discussed earlier.
Statements made by users on social media provide social cues for others that
contribute to the user’s definition of the situation and the ways in which they
respond. Recruitment in Vancouver was based upon the definition of the situation
and identity; an us versus them mentality differentiated between those who made
the mess and those willing to clean it up. The mobilization that occurred was heavily
motivated by citizen resilience and the need to identify perpetrators of social
disorder and to clean up the streets of Vancouver. In London the mobilization was to
riot and loot, but also to clean up the affected areas. The demand existed and it was
73
a matter of supplying the resources needed to meet it. In other words, there was no
recruitment drive to encourage participation in the mobilization efforts. Due to ICT
citizens were able to interact and organize with others online by searching for
relevant communities on social media. Individuals were able to join social media
communities, whether that was for identifying suspected rioters or to plan a clean
up of the city, on their own. The nature of Facebook groups is such that you can be
invited to join them or you can join them on your own, or request participation if the
group is private. The riot related groups cited in this thesis were not private, as the
very purpose of them was to gain as many supporters and members as possible in
order to expand the movement. As a result of this, the interaction facilitated by
social media is not one that requires the leadership of a movement to recruit
members; instead the members find the groups and communities online. This
represents a fundamental shift in the way in which resources are mobilized for a
movement as it takes the onus away from the leadership and places it upon the
members who become the resources. London provided an interesting comparison to
Vancouver and as previously mentioned the mobilization was as a result of a
different context but it shows a pattern of behaviour for the use of ICT and social
media for the purposes of citizen mobilization. Rioting is typically characterized by
spur of the moment violence and destruction, with the proliferation of ICT this
rioting can be pre-‐planned, organized, or even mobilized in the heat of the moment
by mass broadcasting of messages from personal devices.
Contrary to how governments and informal groups may tend to interact, Vancouver
was an example of the police working with social media networks and the
community at large for a mutual end. The coalition that formed was informal and
existed due to police encouragement of public participation in the investigation of
the riot, the public did so by mobilizing online through ICT and social media.
Whereas a police officer online is a sole actor, lateral surveillance through a crowd
relies on that crowd to serve as a multitude of watchers (Trottier, 2014). Therefore
the emphasis is on presence, community, and the levels of interaction to work
towards the crowd’s goals by leveraging the social capital in the networks of the
74
members of the crowd. In this instance social capital refers to the relationships and
connections in an individual’s social network that can be utilized and mobilized for
whatever goal is set by the crowd.
We live in a contemporary society that privileges information, and the quicker the
information can be attained the better. The prevalence and importance placed upon
information communications technologies and the Internet can be seen in the way
we validate and use it to find answers, ‘Googling it’ is steadily becoming entrenched
in our consciousness as ICT is understood as the go to place for information.
Unfortunately impatience with traditional information sourcing has bled into the
execution of justice, resulting in social media groups and blogs appearing either
during, or right after the rioting in Vancouver. Far from usurping or replacing the
power and presence of conventional policing, citizen vigilance enhances its scope by
ignoring the limitations and law the police abide by (Trottier, 2014). An example of
this was discussed in the analysis chapter regarding the Canadian Youth Criminal
Justice Act.
In lieu of citizen policing or crowdsourced policing socially mobilized citizen
vigilance is a more robust and complete description to describe the events that took
place after the 2011 riot in Vancouver. The citizen response after the 2011 riot was
unprecedented and at its most basic level was about transparency. This original
reason for the mobilization that occurred shifted from transparency through the
provision of relevant evidence to the police, to identifying suspected rioters and
looters, and then on to organizing the clean up of areas affected by the social
disorder. Nonetheless, these shifts did not profoundly absolve the nature of the
mobilization; it was merely modified through the course of citizen vigilance. Citizen
policing and crowdsourced policing are not adequate to describe the situations
described in this thesis as they have connotations that infer citizens taking on the
mantle of conventional policing which is not the case. Socially mobilized citizen
vigilance is preferable as it represents the notion of heightened awareness that
75
came about to provide evidence, identify suspected rioters and looters, and organize
city clean ups.
Figure 2: Components of Citizen Vigilance
The components outlined in the figure above detail the components that comprise
the concept of citizen resilience as determined by this thesis. A combination of all
three factors of emotion, a sense of justice, and resilience come together to form
citizen vigilance, which can be used for the goals of any social movement. Citizen
resilience is the motivation that led to citizen vigilance. The citizen vigilance in
Vancouver did not occur the same way during and after the riots in London that
same year. Citizen vigilance in Vancouver was about helping the police and cleaning
up the city, in London the citizen vigilance was only about cleaning up the city as the
other forms of mobilization were against the police. Yet the common themes of self-‐
reliant and empowered citizens mobilizing for their movements is a correlation and
indicates a wider pattern of increased citizen vigilance and involvement in
previously neglected aspects of citizenry, a pattern made possible by the growth of
information communications technologies.
Emotion Sense of Justice Resilience Citizen
Vigilance
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Reflection
Citizen vigilance and crisis management run in parallel. Crisis management is a field
handled by professionals, whereas citizen vigilance is about the resilience and
strength of citizens and the community at large. Information communications
technologies have increased the scope and extent to which this participation is
possible and will only continue to increase. The increase is made possible by the
role of ICT and social media expanding the actors involved in such activities, as well
as the purpose they serve, and the actions they take. The future of crisis
management needs to embrace the roles citizens will play after social disorder or
crises as well as ensuring their actions do not infringe upon the safety and security
of others. This thesis has made a contribution to the field of ICT enabled
mobilization by suggesting that resources are mobilized in a new and fundamentally
different way through reverse mobilization by existing online and waiting to be
mobilized. This transformation cannot be highlighted enough and as a result of this
change, examination of citizen mobilization also needs to be rethought.
Citizens need to be adequately prepared to respond to crisis situations, and the most
significant aspect of that is timely and accurate information dissemination. New
technological mediums, such as cell broadcasting, should be embraced and adopted
by police forces and municipalities alike. Cell broadcasting sends an official text
message to all mobile devices within a specified area, including visitors from outside
the immediate region. This communications technology allows information to be
shared quickly, broadly, and effectively as the message goes to all devices within
range of the cell towers selected. The system uses short bursts of energy and is
therefore able to function even when cell towers are inundated by excessive traffic.
The capability to receive these kinds of messages is built into all modern mobile
devices, yet the software is not active in the majority of them. Over time, the use of
this type of technology should become equivalent to tuning into specific radio
channels to receive accurate information. As is currently done in many cities to
provide road condition reports for commuters.
77
A common theme in the research conducted into the Vancouver and London rioting
was the lack of access to accurate and timely information. It is of utmost importance
that this information comes from a reliable source with access to up-‐to-‐date data. By
having the ability to mass broadcast pertinent messages to all cellphone users in a
target area, situational awareness is increased, as is the ability to mobilize citizens.
Possible examples include messages sent out requiring assistance from doctors and
nurses in an area ravaged by a natural disaster, notification of safe zones during
rioting, or provision of general information such as the closure of bridges and public
transportation. The resilience of citizens has enormous impact on the aftermath of
social disorder or crisis as resources and aid are mobilized and distributed. The
continued growth and expansion of citizen vigilance will only serve to heighten this
resilience and the outcome will be technologically aware and mobilized citizens
prepared to respond to crisis situations.
78
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