I refer to the article: "Two jailed for inciting disorder"(http://sg.news.yahoo.com/two-jailed-inciting-disorder-182231949.html):
Two men made use of facebook to incite disorder in England. The first man, Jordan Blackshaw, created a facebook event named "Smash Down Northwich Town", and the other man, Sutcliffe-Keenan, set up a facebook page titled "Let's have a riot in Latchford".
We can see in this example that the impact of social-networking sites are not to be underestimated. In social-networking sites, such as twitter, facebook and so on, people can connect with others. People can also, regardless of their age, meet up together and unite. If used for a noble cause it can be very beneficial, but when used in situations such as inciting disorder, the consequences would be dire.
One person alone is not enough to start a riot. It will have to take many people with the same ideas or ideologies to unite and come together in order to start a riot. Social-networking sites is one such place where they could unite. Perhaps there are individuals in various parts of the world with an ideology, who feel that there is a need to do a certain thing, but they feel they cannot do it because they are alone. However, after connecting with many other people all over the world through social-networking sites, they will realize and say:"Hey! I am not alone! There are so many people out there with the same thinking as me!" Then, these group of people, will now come together and discuss what they want to do. My guess is that this is one of the starting points of the whole of the England Riots.
The police are fearful of a mass gathering in real life as they know that riots and other forms of trouble could arise from there. However, they do not know that such a mass gathering need not take place in real life anymore: everyone has gone online nowadays.
Once again, I reiterate my stand that social-networking sites are a very powerful tool in connecting people. When put to good use, it can be beneficial, but when used improperly, will result in disasters.
Hi Wen Hong,
ReplyDeleteI like your views on this issue because you managed to draw out the lesson of using social-networking sites properly, which I have to agree with. This incident not only showed the power of the Internet, it also showed the power of unity. In order to make sure that no such incident happens again, I think that such events should be reported to the Facebook authorities so that they can remove it before the actual plan actually takes place. I also learned from this incident that many people nowadays, especially youth, like to do things just for the adrenaline rush, without thinking of the consequences. In this case, many youths just wanted to riot for fun, but they did not realise how hard an impact was brought upon London. Therefore, I hope that everyone will learn how to think before they act so that bad things will not take place.
Nathanael