期刊名称：Contention: The Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest
电子版ISSN：2330-1392
出版年度：2015
卷号：2
期号：2
页码：23-36
出版社：Punctum Books
摘要：The 2011 August riots that combusted with the police shooting of Mark Duggan in Tottenham,North London, (Laville, 2011; Vasagar, 2011) spread literally like wildfire to cities and townsacross England in the space of a matter of hours. At the time, much was written about thesupposedly ‘nihilistic’ and ‘opportunistic’ nature of the events, and how, unlike previous urbanrebellions, they could not be considered to have any ‘political’ dimension, although there weresome notable exceptions to such blanket dismissals, which were offered en bloc from even ‘radical’quarters, not say media and academic ones. The article seeks to offer an analysis and critique ofthe media narrative of the events in English cities that August, with the aim of contributing totheir demystification and better understanding, more than three years on. The article is writtenfrom a Marxist perspective, heavily drawing on Critical Theory and using content analysis andan ideological critique of the media to develop its argument. In the three years since the riots of2011, the production of literature on those events has been fairly continuous, but largely obliviousto their significance, or just why they received such blanket and unequivocal condemnation.This article, in keeping with its origins as one of ‘the notable exceptions’ at the time makes aninterrogative critique of the media’s part in ‘simulating events as they happen’.
