Earlier this afternoon Prime Minister David Cameron made a statement regarding ‘the disorder in England’, in which he suggested that the government will be working towards the feasibility of controlling social media at times of unrest. Specifically, he said

“Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. And 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.”

The full text is available from the number10 website. Leaving aside that any such targeted control might not be technically possible, Cameron’s statement effectively demonises tools which many of us have been promoting for their collaborative, immediate, and social nature. Social media aren’t only about organising one’s social/ antisocial life. They are about and bring about the free flow of information, and because of this, they are intrinsically linked to the idea of education. As one of our LSE bloggers put it today “In a sense the rioters using social media were only doing what we celebrated when it happened in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab Uprisings”. Surely it is important to emphasise and to focus on the second part of that comparison. Finally, it is important to remember what social media are: they are defined by their openness. Somehow it strikes me as a bad idea to want to fight a technology which embodies the principle of openness, of opening up, collaboration and sharing with a gesture that is all about shutting down.

For a quick overview of social web tools, visit our CLT page.

Finally, for reasons: “Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it…” (MH, 1949)