Keele Research Repository

This chapter takes as its central theme the processes of re-imposition of social order in the aftermath of a series of high-profile riots that occurred in several English cities in 2011. The focus here is not on the possible motivations of the rioters themselves, nor is it on the processes of physical restoration of social order on the streets of the affected communities during and immediately after the events of August 2011. Rather, it will examine the ontological challenges posed to the socially included by the riots and the assumed or imagined motivations of the rioters. It will explore the process by which images associated with news media narratives were interpreted and re-interpreted by readers, copied and shared on social media, and in the process re-imagined the riots and the rioters to produce a set of sense-making, ontologically reassuring narratives to restore the breach caused by the riots themselves and provide wider ontological reassurance for the socially included spectator in late modernity (cf. Young, 1999).