Is the use of social networking to promote riots and social unrest a new thing?

Social Networking and The UK Riots

Over the last few weeks in the UK, we have seen media images of the riots in many of the major UK cities in England.  One of the things that cause the most outrage was the “new” factor of social networking. Social networking sites such as twitter, facebook and blackberry messenger were used to encourage people to get involved in the riots.  The social networking sites have enabled riots to be planned quickly.  Presumably people who wouldn’t have known about when and where the riots were taking place otherwise. 

So this is all a new thing isn’t it? Well, no actually it isn’t.   Cyber networking is not a new phenomenon. This is the uses of blogs, emails, social networking sites and forums to organise riots or demonstrations. 

Organisations known as New Social Movements or NSMs have been organising and coordinating activities such as riots and direct action via the internet for some time.

The G8 summit in Genoa, Italy in 2001 is a prime example of where cyber networking was used to inform people about demonstrations. The events started as  a peaceful demonstration, but quickly became a violent riot.  Over 200,000 demonstrated worldwide in different cities.  Websites and forums such as the Genoa Social Forum were blamed for organising and encouraging the demonstration.  Other social media, forums, websites and media outlets were raided by the police.

In Egypt, in January of this year, the internet and instant messaging services were disrupted as the government believed that dissidents were using the internet to provide political unrest.  Texting services became slow or unavailable. And Facebook reported a substantial drop in visitors from Egypt.

So is the use of social networking to promote physical unrest a new thing this month? 

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