Do-it-yourself Justice - Considerations of Social Media use in a Crisis Situation: The Case of the 2011 Vancouver Riots

On 15 June 2011, the ice hockey Stanley Cup final took place between the Vancouver Canucks and the Boston Bruins in Vancouver, Canada. Riots started downtown as the Vancouver Canucks were losing the final. The riots lasted all night long. At the same time and following the event, different people (mainly rioters, local authority officers, and Vancouver citizens) used social media to `cover' the riots by uploading pictures and videos of themselves, using them to communicate with fellow citizens, to help local authorities identify rioters, by sharing and tagging pictures of them, and to enforce justice by themselves. The use of social media during the riots has raised issues such as the quality of legal processes in which such media are used to provide evidence, mob behaviour, or vigilance justice. In this paper we look at the ethical considerations related to these issues.