ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the media storms that follow lone-wolf terror attacks, examining in particular the role of eyewitness imagery produced on mobile phones and their usage in the news media. The 2013 public daytime murder and attempted beheading of British Army Soldier, Fusilier Lee Rigby in Woolwich London became a media event through an assemblage of technical and cultural performances—disparate parts that unfolded in real time, and formed the aftermath of a horrific violent spectacle. The assemblage is an extraordinary coming together of certain types of practices, the public as eyewitnesses, mobile and networked communication technologies as surveillance, and the particular conventions of crisis news reporting coalescing around the event itself. This case study helps clarify the mediations that occur in the immediate aftermath of such an attack and investigates exploitation of reporting conventions as a plausible terror tactic.
