LA Riots Revisited

Today marks the 20 year anniversary of the Los Angeles civil unrest that occurred because of the Rodney King verdict. As mentioned by professor Losh in class, the Rodney King beating was one of the first events in which citizens recorded and widely spread the incident, giving the situation a different perspective.

Image provided by Colorlines

Now it is not so uncommon for citizens to document and spread crucial information through social networks such as facebook or twitter. In remembrance of the famous incident, @RealTimeLARiots is retweeting the information gathered during the series of events that led up to the riots as they would have occurred at their exact moment. The last tweet will be the verdict on April 29 at around 3pm.

I find this form of archiving very interesting as it displays not only the power of new media, but the influence it has on our present culture. Revisiting these series of events also allows me to place into context how similar incidents are still occurring today. Projects like these may be able to hold our society accountable or at least be a reminder that we continue to struggle for social and racial equality.


More information can be found on the following link.

http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/04/livetweeting_the_los_angeles_riots_as_they_happened_20_years_later.html