I just listened to an interesting article on Radio 4 with historian Timothy Snyder discussing the Impeachment of Donald Trump for inciting political insurrection.
Snyder had an interesting ‘grand historical perspective’ on why the Impeachment was necessary – the insurrection, led by overt White Supremacists was the moment that post-truth started to manifest as fascism.
The Impeachment was important because ‘institutions’ had to make a statement that a group of people with radical views can not just come together in violence and overthrow the democratic will of the people.
He also made an interesting point about the void that’s been created by the death of local news outlets – he described the USA as a ‘news desert’ – you’ve only got the mainstream news which more people increasingly distrust, as demonstrated by the reporting of the recent election results.
Trump was one of these people, believing the mainstream media was his enemy and that the election results were a fraud, a view widely dismissed in most of the media, but popular in various alternative media outlets.
So Trump went with the ‘election rigged’ view, pushed this narrative on Twitter, and this an other right wing social media circles amplified this view, largely in isolation from what was going on in the mainstream.
Hence the Capitol Hill riots were based on a President spinning a narrative of ‘fake election’ not corroborated by mainstream news, but spread on social media, and the view kind of verified by ‘mob agreement’ rather than objective fact-checking.
That is pretty much was post-truth is – people united by narratives which have no easily verifiable basis. That’s not necessarily bad, but then when one such person who is spinning one of these post-truth narratives manages to make manifest a political insurrection, that’s the basis for Fascism right there.
Relevance to A-level sociology
It’s a tough one to understand this event, but certainly there are links to:
Theory and Methods – this is a very uncertain, polarised, post-truth event – truly the downside of the postmodern – a real event based on a fictional narrative of a stolen election!
Agenda-setting is where the media only ask a limited range of questions about a topic, thus limiting the number of perspectives or angles from which an issue is explored. It is a concept mainly associated with Marxism, and it is one of the main ways in which the media maintain ideological control according to Marxist analysis.
Examples of agenda setting:
Focussing on the violent aspects of a political protest, rather than the arguments behind why the protest is taking place
Charlie Brooker does a great job of analysing how this occurred during the G20 protests in London 2009 – the television crews DID NOT cover the political speeches that took place during the day, they just waited around until some violence did (finally, it was rare!) kick off later in the day, and then it was the violence that became headline news:
Focussing on the ‘drama of the London riots’ and the harms done to victims rather than on the reasons why people took part in the London riots.
I’ll admit, the London Riots were great entertainment, and if that’s all you wanted, the media did a great job of covering the burning and the looting, framing the event in terms of ‘lack of parental responsibility’, ‘moral decline’ and ‘feral youths’
However, the mainstream media didn’t do such a great job of covering the findings of the research which was published months later, which suggested that the actual reasons the riots took place were, according to the rioters themselves: unfair treatment by the police, unemployment, government policies the shooting of Mark Duggan.
Focussing on why the economy is or isn’t growing, rather than asking whether or not economic growth is a good thing.
There is a daily media-focus on the economy and economic growth: most radio and T.V. news slots have a regular ‘business feature’ and economic growth is always framed as universally good.
However, what is never discussed is the fact that not everyone benefits equally from economic growth – the capitalist class with shares and investments benefit hugely, but the poor benefit almost not at all! America is an excellent example of this – the richest country on earth, but with huge inequalities, you have to ask whether economic growth is actually ‘good’.
The authors of the Spirit Level argue that if we want social progress in Britain then inequality is now the biggest barrier to improving quality of life for most people, but this is rarely discussed in the media.
Marxists argue that news values and agenda setting work together to reinforce dominant, elite world views of society as normal and natural, and to marginalise alternative perspectives on society which may upset existing power structures.
Related Posts
News Values play a role in the process of Agenda Setting:
What were the main causes of the 2011 London riots? What sociological perspectives does the evidence support?
The London Riots of August 2011 are a good way of introducing ‘perspectives’ on crime and deviance, as well as the strengths and limitations of studying crime using different methods.
The 2011 London Riots – Background/ Context
Between 6 and 10 August 2011, several London boroughs and other cities and towns across England suffered widespread rioting, looting and arson.
The first night of rioting took place on 7 August 2011 after a peaceful protest in Tottenham, following the death of Mark Duggan, a local man from the area, who was shot dead by police on 4 August 2011. Police failed to notify Duggan’s family of his death and no senior police officer was available to meet the protest, creating anger at perceived disrespect. The protesting crowd outside the police station set light to two police cars, and the pictures of this circulated on social media attracted other people to the area – what started as a relatively peaceful protest quickly descended into a riot involving mass looting.
The following days saw similar scenes in other parts of London with the worst violence taking place in , Brixton, Chingford, Peckham, Enfield, Croydon, Ealing and East Ham. The city centre in Oxford Circus was also attacked. From 8 until 10 August, other cities in England including Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool, along with several towns, saw what was described by the media as ‘copycat violence’.
The riots were characterised by rampant looting and arson attacks of unprecedented levels. As a result, David Cameron returned early from his holiday in Italy and other government leaders also ended their holidays to attend to the matter. All police leave was cancelled and Parliament was recalled on 11 August to debate the situation.
There were a total 3,443 crimes across London linked to the disorder, including 5 deaths and at least 16 others injured as a direct result of related violent acts. An estimated £200 million worth of property damage was incurred, and local economic activity was significantly compromised.
The riots have generated significant on-going debate among political, social and academic figures about the causes and context in which they happened.
Biased Media Reporting on the London Riots
This Daily Mail article on the London riots by Melanie Phillips on is a superb example of a New Right take on the ’causes’ of the event…extracts below…..
‘ The violent anarchy that has taken hold of British cities is the all-too-predictable outcome of a three-decade liberal experiment which tore up virtually every basic social value. What is so notable and distressing is that this mayhem has been carried out in the main by teenagers and children, some as young as eight. These youths feel absolutely entitled to go ‘on the rob’ and steal whatever they want.’
‘What has been fuelling all this is not poverty… what we have been experiencing is a complete breakdown of civilized behavior among children and young people… We are not merely up against feral children, but feral parents… either they are too drunk or drugged or otherwise out of it to care, or else they are helping themselves to the proceeds, too.’
‘As David Cameron observed yesterday, there are clearly pockets of society that are not just broken, but sick. Most of these children come from lone-mother households. And the single most crucial factor behind all this mayhem is the willed removal of the most important thing that socialises children and turns them from feral savages into civilised citizens: a father who is a fully committed member of the family unit. The result is fatherless boys who are consumed by an existential rage and desperate emotional need, and who take out the damage done to them by lashing out from infancy at everyone around them. Such children inhabit what is effectively a different world from the rest of society. It’s a world without any boundaries or rules. A world of emotional and physical chaos.’
‘This breaking of the family was encouraged by the Welfare State… Welfare dependency further created the entitlement culture that the looters so egregiously display. It taught them that the world owed them a living. It taught them that their actions had no consequences.’
Actual evidence on the ’causes’ of the London Riots’
Melanie Philips no doubt enjoys writing for the right wing daily mail, and her readers no doubt enjoy the sense of righteous moral indignation they feel when reading her articles (they are all in pretty much the same vein!). Unfortunately for them, but more unfortunately the impoverished teenage children of the single parents she lambasts, this is an extremely narrow analysis of the causes of the Riots. Moreover, Philip’s analysis is not supported by the rigorous quantitative and qualitative research carried out by the London School of Economics in the year since the riots. This is not to say that irresponsible parenting and the breakdown of social control didn’t have something to do with the riots – but there are a lot of other factors that need to be considered as well.
The findings below are based on the research findings taken from Reading the Riots – Researchers spoke to 270 rioters: 185 people in London, 30 in Birmingham, 29 in Manchester, 16 in Liverpool, seven in Salford and three in Nottingham. Thirteen were in prison.
Who were the Rioters?
They ranged in age from 13 to 57
A third said they had never been found guilty in court or cautioned
The overwhelming majority said gangs played little or no part in what happened.
About three-quarters were aged 24 or under, only a small minority, people over 40.
Around 80% of interviewees were male, although anecdotal evidence from observers of the riots, suggest the proportion was nearer 90%
They came from a wide range of ethnic groups but A slightly larger proportion were from an ethnic minority (50% black, 5% Asian) or of mixed race (18%); this also varied by area: the ethnic makeup of interviewees in Salford and Manchester overwhelmingly white.
The general attainment levels were lower than those of the population as a whole: of the adults, a third had no qualification higher than GCSE , one-fifth of the rioters claimed to have no educational qualifications at all, one in 20 said they had a degree.
Most had prior experience with the Criminal Justice System – only 32% said they had never been found guilty in a court or been cautioned.
What were the main causes of the riots?
Based on the above interviews, the rioters themselves stated the following five main causes (percentages reporting this as a factor in brackets)
Poverty (86%)
Policing (85%)
Government Policy (80%)
Unemployment (79%)
The shooting of Mark Duggan (75%)
Of course, if you conducted the research again using a broader sample and different methods, then you might get different results. But based on this evidence, there does not appear to be any support for the New Right’s perspective on what caused the riots…
Sociological (/Criminological) Perspectives on the London Riots
Asking about the ‘causes’ of crime is only one aspect among many in the crime and deviance course. Some of the perspectives on crime look at crime much more broadly.
Functionalism – argues that society needs crime. Rather than looking at crime as a purely negative phenomenon, crime also has positive social functions. The riots, for example, lead to a temporary suspension of inter-gang violence, and, as a media event, it gave the rest of us something unite against, thus increasing unity in society more generally.
Bonds of Attachment Theory (Functionalism) – The cause of deviance is the breakdown or weakening of informal agencies of social control such as the family and community. Criminal activity occurs when the individual’s attachment to society is weakened. This theory would blame poor parenting as the main cause of the riots.
Consensus Subcultural Theory – argues crime is a collective response to the above situation of frustration – If you can’t gain status by getting a job, you seek status by some other means within a subculture (possibly a gang) and riots can offer you an opportunity to gain status by ‘going further than the next person’.
Traditional Marxism – Argues that crime is a response to a Capitalist system that breeds materialism, greed and selfishness. They also point out that many members of the Elite classes are criminals themselves, but it is generally only the powerless that get punished for their criminal acts, while elites tend to avoid punishment. The rioters were largely teenage youths living in poor areas and many got disproportionate punishments for their involvement in the riots, while politicians engaging in criminal acts often get away without punishment.
Interactionists – See criminal behaviour as a response to labelling by agents of social control – mainly the police. Focussing on the riots – Interactionists would argue that police racism over the last 3 decades has led to black youths being disproportionately targeted by stop and search – and it was this history of negative attention from the police that sparked the riots.
Right Realists – Argue that the riots were caused because of a basic breakdown of both informal and formal social control – weak communities and too few police on the streets, and society not being tough enough on crime. Rioters had too much freedom and felt like they could get away with their crimes.
Left-Realism – Argues there are two main causes of crime – Marginalisation and Relative Deprivation – largely borne out by the Guardian research above.
Post-modernism – Argues that the riots are a response to a postmodern society characterised by consumerism, an obsession with self-identity and a quest for excitement. For many the riots were a ‘scene’ where they could ‘play a game’ – engaging in vandalism and challenging the police provide both status and excitement – much more than any nightclub could offer.
Explore the ’causes’ of the London riots in more depth…
They’re all pretty left wing, so redressing the balance of the right-biased mainstream media…
and Zygmunt Bauman – The London Riots – Consumerism coming home to roost as the World’s leading critical sociologist – he’s got to get in somewhere near the top..
They found that deprivation was the most significant predictor of whether a riot would break our or not. Deprivation levels were also positively correlated with the intensity and length of rioting.
They also found a positive correlation between the number of police stop and searches in the previous two years and the likelihood of rioting occurring and conclude that a combination of deprivation and an ‘anti-police’ identity were the main factors which explain the 2011 London riots.
However, the mainstream media didn’t do such a great job of covering the findings of the research which was published months later, which suggested that the actual reasons the riots took place were, according to the rioters themselves: unfair treatment by the police, unemployment, government policies the shooting of Mark Duggan.
