It’s been an unsettling week in Britain. Thousands of youths have gone on a sophisticatedly orchestrated rampage through the streets - or more precisely the shopping precincts - of London and several other cities around the country.

The orchestration I refer to was the sophisticated use of social media - and, in particular, Blackberry Messenger (BBM). This use of social media and mobile messaging as a mobilisation tool has led to our Prime Minister, David Cameron, considering legislation to effectively censor social channels:

“...when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them. So we are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.”

Other politicians have called for social and mobile messaging networks to be taken off air at times of civil disobedience. Aside from the inevitable response from experts and civil liberties groups about both the feasibility and the wisdom of restricting the free flow of information, this response also ignores the extensive use of Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, both during and after the disturbances to help anxious people know how to respond to the events of the week. The best examples have been from @riotcleanup and @riotremedy, each sporting over 350,000 followers at the time of writing as they coordinate the grass roots activity to repair the damage that has been done.

Social Goodness

And this isn’t the first time social media has been used for aftermath situations. Take for instance the Tsumni and earthquake in Japan earlier this year. As mobile carrier networks in Japan were over capacity, Twitter and Facebook were the linchpins that enabled communications, updates and outreach. As we’ve seen with any major disaster- enabling capabilities and MMS has changed the way we can adapt and react to situations and occurrences in the world. For instance MMS has enabled us the capability to donate to a disaster such as the Haitian earthquake last year, directly from our phones and then to socialize it to our friends via Facebook, Twitter and Email, if we so choose to do so. One month after the earthquake, more than $32 million was raised via text donations.

Social Visibility

The power to coordinate riots such as we’ve seen in the UK this week, is the same power that keeps people informed on how they can help and how to avoid risky situations they might otherwise not be aware of. And the same power that helps the authorities identify the troublemakers. As @caitlinmoran, a leading columnist at the The London Times, tweeted:

• I don't get the logic of banning people from inciting violence on Twitter/Facebook WHEN IT MAKES THEM INCREDIBLY EASY TO TRACE.
• In many ways, Facebook/Twitter work as an incredibly effective bear-trap for stupid people. Viva la internet!

Social tools and MMS may accelerate and help rogue individuals and groups to organize chaos, but it will also help them to get caught in the end. Social media today has been seen and used as a strong call to action in non-commercial interactions, but it is also our most informative tool to pick up the pieces afterwards and is instrumental in organizing positive contributions to society.

Simply stated, we can’t afford to be anti-social.

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