Twitter Users Blast London Rioters

Twitter users overwhelmingly focused on the U.K. riots last week, and many of them were highly angered by and critical of the chaos. While much of the mainstream news coverage involved an exploration of the causes of the anger behind the riots, social media users were much more intent on denouncing the destruction that left five people dead, more than 3,100 arrested and an estimated £200 million worth of property damage.

For the week of August 8-12, the British riots were by far the most discussed subject on Twitter, according to the New Media Index from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. The subject was so dominant that it was among the top five stories each day last week and appeared on the top story lists six times more often than the next largest subject, Twitter itself. In addition, the five most popular news-related videos on YouTube last week were all related to the riots.

(Aug 22)