A riot of communication

One aspect of the current milieu that has probably struck us all is the way in which rioters have managed to coordinate themselves and evade the police. As has been mentioned on numerous broadcasts, the fragmented nature of the riots has caused difficulties for controlling forces used to dealing with large swathes of people. In addition, whereas in the past police have been able to mobilise quickly through private radio, protesters and other groups have had to rely on public tools such as Twitter, etc. Communication and media is central here too but the tool of choice has been the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) network. The New Scientist has a useful little article here explaining both how it works and how it can be hacked.