In the last 72 hours London has seen extensive rioting across the city. Throughout the news coverage there has been frequent mentions of social media and the role it has played in ‘organising’ the rioters.

Specific services mentioned are primarily Twitter and RIM’s BlackBerry instant messaging service BBM. Text messaging in general is also getting a few mentions.

Reports have focused on how the services have been used to ‘organise’ the rioters, sending short updates relating to scenes of violence and the number, or lack of, police in a given area. There has been some instigation that the riots may not have taken place, or been less intense, should such services have not been available to them.

But it is not the services to blame, it is the people. While Twitter or BBM may be used for succinct and direct communication, the reach of traditional news television channels can do just as much to incite a small group of thugs in Ealing to copy a small group of thugs in Clapham. The same services are being used by different people to a much more positive effect. Twitter has been used to organise a mass clean up of affected areas - but again it is not the services, it is the people.

In the 1980s we had no smartphones, no micro-blogging services and no widely used instant messaging services. We did have organised riots driven by political and sociocultural motivations. It’s hard to believe social media had more than a minor role in these very sad events.