Friday, 18 September 2015

How has the way the media has represented and/or created collective identity changed over time?

Media represents groups in society in a variety of ways that in a way can be argued that it has changed over time to a certain extent. This can be supported with the theorist David Gauntlet who says society requires us to choose an identity and media helps with this. On the other hand, Potetta and Jasper states that an identity is first constructed by outsides who may still enforce it, but depends on acceptances by those to whom it is applied to.  Youth is a collective identity that uses both of the theorists in the media to have a profile in society, although the issue is how youth has changed.


In the medium of Newspapers, Youth in the modern day are shown in a negative light such as in 2008 the Daily Mail shared the idea that "the true horrors we fear today aren't supernatural bogey men created by sciences. They're our own youth." Following the theorists, this would show that the modern youth's collective identity is negative. Similarly, the historical youth identity is shown negativly.  Douglas Hurd in the Guardian in the 1980s describe the youth; "with too much money in their pocket and too many pints inside them, but too little self discipline and too little notion of the care and responsibility which they owe to others."  This connotes that the collective identity of young people hasn't changed over time.

The media have created and continue to create many moral panics using music as the stimulus of them.  Elvis Presley's  rock and roll music was highly commercial but also extremely controversial. He was quickly branded as damaging and dangerous to the 1950's society. Any TV appearances of Elvis also showed his young, excited teenage fans and this led to an over emphasis of teenage involvement in deviant behaviour. Elvis was said to have aroused teenage girls in ways they shouldn’t be aroused with his “hyper-sexual” dancing of the time. Justin Bieber could be a modern example of Elvis Presley as his music focus on the idea of love and relationships which young teenage girls would strongly appeal to. Although, as Justin Bieber being a member of the youth as well he conformed to the stereotypical view of taking risk and being involved in crime. This consequent in dedicated fans self harming which started a trend that took over social media, especially twitter where there was hashtag cutforbeiber. There are many examples of music that created and influenced the youth's identity, it could be argued that in history that music was a bigger factor than today as technology has developed there are more media texts and sources that are easily accessible.   

 'Press gang' was a tv series in 1980s about school teenagers that have been set up to run a newspaper this shows the collective identity of teenagers as being intelligent and hard working. They are presented as trying to be part of the adult world, comparing this to the modern  tv series 'Misfits' shows how the media has changed how they represent youth. In 'Misfits', the characters are a group of young offenders sentenced to work in a community service program that presents the youth as being rebellious and criminal that are reluctant to give back to their society. This proves that the media has changed how they present the youth. 


Using the media text of film to see how youth is presented supports the idea that the identity has changed overtime. For example, a historical film Juno faces a mature issue as the youth actually become responsible due to the fact they're potential parents. The way they show it is comical and in a way they even show the adult world being more destructive. In comparison,  a modern film facing a mature issue is The fault in our stars where the characters are terminally ill which portrays the youth as being responsible and sensible about a serious issue. They fulfil there dreams and prospects in a short period of time that indicates them as being determined and successful. 

Media represents groups in society in a variety of ways that in a way can be argued that it has changed over time  to a certain extent.  































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