The study found that social media was actually largely used in organising post-riot cleanup.
The Help Siva Project, a campaign to help a store owner and his family after his shop was destroyed in Hackney, was largely successful due to the active use of Twitter.
Jane Egginton, an organiser of Hackney Homemade Markets, was located where the riots started. She was also one of the main organisers for the Help Siva Hackney Campaign.
"To me it’s not news that social media didn’t have a role. The actual percentage of people involved using social media was actually relatively small," she told CBR.
Data from the research found that Twitter was a big tool in mobilising cleanup efforts and Egginton agrees:
"Certainly we couldn’t have done what we did without social media. I had never appreciated the power of Twitter and social media really and in terms of contacting each other Twitter was the main medium and that is what was behind the speed and the success of the campaign," she said.
Mark Pytlik, another main organiser of the HelpSiva Project and the founder of StinkDigital.com was very pleased with the response in using Twitter for the campaign and to promote the HelpSiva website.
"Once it was up I just used Twitter to make sure that people shared it online. We emailed and tweeted to a lot of organisation and blogs in and around Hackney. I asked them to retweet and then it took on a life on its own," he told CBR.
Observers are on the ground during the riots say that blackberry messenger was the main tool they saw rioters used to organise themselves. Marco Leitao Silva, a London based Portuguese freelance journalist at the time, said the instant messaging service was used frequently.
"I was with the rioters and I saw a lot of them using the BBM Messaging service a lot."
Despite BBM Messaging being a main tool of organisation for the rioters, it is merely an instrument like social media.
"Social networks must be seen as a tool. To blame social media is to look at one side of the debate. The same tool was used to call people for cleaning efforts. I learned about the cleaning efforts in Clapham by Twitter. I saw on Twitter people mobilising themselves and making a wide appeal on Twitter and that’s what we have to keep in mind." added Silva.
