Riots fuelled by alienation

摘要

The dramatic unrest in London and other UK cities over the past week is being described as the world's first decentralised riots, facilitated by social media such as Twitter, the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) network and Sony's Playstation Network. But deep psychological forces are also at play. In times of social unrest, violent acts that would usually seem extreme can quickly become the norm among groups of people who identify with each other in terms of age, social status or other attributes, says Alex Haslam of the University of Exeter, UK, who studies group conflict and social identity.