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Social media is increasingly being used by police forces and businesses to follow and deal with protests and crime, a new study into the use of social media in street protests has found.

But social media also provides 'witness testimony' which can contradict media reports of an incident.

Paul Reilly, professor at the University of Leicester's Department of Media and Communication, also found that some rioters ran the risk of implicating themselves through their social media posts.

Reilly studied the role that social media played in the Stokes Croft riots in Bristol in April when about 300 people took to the streets to demonstrate against the opening of a new Tesco Express store.

More than 160 police officers in riot gear were involved in a raid on a squat, known locally as Telepathic Heights, occupied by opponents of the supermarket store. At one stage an abandoned Wiltshire police car had its windows smashed and doors ripped off, which was captured on YouTube.

Many of those on the street took short videos with their mobile phones to show the actions of the police.

Reilly examined 70 YouTube videos and commentaries, piecing together the different angles like a jigsaw to build up a picture of what actually happened at Stokes Croft.

In his paper, entitled Every Little Helps, Reilly argued that contrary to the stories that appeared  in the media, this was not an anti-store demonstration that turned violent but a peaceful event gate-crashed by rioters.

Reilly said: 'I pieced together things that were not picked up even in the press. A lot of people from the area were defending their legitimate protests on YouTube and trying to differentiate this from the violence. They were using surveillance techniques to illustrate what had happened and to counter what the media said about it.

'They probably failed in their aim because the public felt sorry for the police, rather than sympathetic to those making the recordings, and in many cases peaceful protestors caught on camera received no credit at all. It all points to a trend of how people, young and older, have access to information on social media in ways that haven't been available before. This goes back to 9/11, it's not new. But the degree to which people can post videos of events and comment on them is new.'

He believes that the use of social media in times of unrest has both negative aspects. Reilly pointed out that, during the recent riots, while undoubtedly rioters and looters did keep in touch and direct operations through social media, Hackney shopkeepers were also able to follow events on Twitter, allowing them to board up their shops and leave when it appeared the rioting was moving their way.

In Leicester the police used Twitter to dispel rumours and hearsay during the disturbances. 'They communicated through Twitter during the riots rather than just used the site afterwards for intelligence purposes,' said Reilly.

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