Young people are often
negatively portrayed by the media. The media show a large amount of news
stories about of the high threat from hoodies, youth knife crime, binge
drinking and ASBOs being 'awarded' to young people. Even some ‘good news’
stories are portrayed negatively such as the rising marks at GCSEs and A levels
are taken as ‘are exams getting easier?’. Although, the media are very aware of
how the stories affect societies views of youths as recently articles
have been highlighting the issue. Yet the negative media coverage of
youths continues to stereotype them as troublemakers who don’t get involved in
the community and do practically nothing of use.
An example of the media
being aware of the effects is an article in the Telegraph where it uses statistics
to show how the media have create a moral panic of teenage behaviour. "Figures
show more than half of the stories about teenage boys in national and regional
newspapers in the past year (4,374 out of 8,629) were about crime. The word
most commonly used to describe them was "yobs" (591 times), followed by "thugs" (254 times),
"sick" (119 times) and "feral" (96 times)." This supports
the idea that the media are aware of the effects and impacts of the article on
youths. Another example could be the documentary
is 'teen troubles' where they focus on a girl who was given multiple ASBOs
where the media then referred to her as "asbo queen." The presenter
asked the newspaper why they did that they explained that: Most
news about anybody or anything is negative. Bad news sells more than good news
and so is reported more. Bad news stories such as crises, starvation, youth
crime etc are reported more because they are considered more interesting and
more newsworthy. People want to know about how much crime their is in their
area and who causes it, if crime goes up there is a media frenzy. If on the
other hand crime goes down it is just given a much smaller mention, often
counterbalanced by a story about people's perception of crime going up rather
than down."
Film is another medium that
portray youth as being criminals and corrupting society. Attack the block from
2011 by Joe Cornish at the start of the film juxtaposes a group of youths
wearing Black clothes and covering their face with a young white women wearing
a practical green coat. Their language is also juxtaposes "fuck the
feds" and "get mucked" compared "hello mother." This
shows a stereotypical view of teenagers although the plot changes the view of
teenagers as they save the world from aliens invading where several youths even
died to save their block. This exaggeration and unrealistic plot gives the
alternative opinion of teenagers by suggesting that they can have a positive
impact on society but they aren't appreciated for it. This is best shown when the
protagonist Mose's comes up with the theory that the government sent the aliens
to attack the block to get rid of them. Yet they are the ones fighting them off
and protecting society and others such as when they ask the nurse why her
boyfriend isn't protecting her.
A recent Tv programme that
is being promoted , "Aliens", comically illustrates the idea that
youths should be isolated and separated from the rest of society so
that they don't disrupt and corrupt the community by labelling them Aliens.
The plot twist shows that the protagonist who detests the youths/ aliens is
half alien this connotes that their are two sides of the story that should be
considered. If this stereotype is accepted by the youths then they will
struggle to act the way that society wishes them too.
There are two modern
examples that use the theme of Aliens to demonstrate youths in society.
Overall, this shows that Teenagers will struggle as in the media they are shown
as being isolated in society which could be due to their behaviour that realistically causes them to be separated. However, they also imply that the media could be the cause of their behaviour as well as the media separating
them from society as the media create the moral panics that are acted upon in the community.
Show how the media portrays young people. (Creates their identity)
• Explain what the effects are of the media’s portrayal of young people (effects of identity being mediated)
Include a historical and/or future context.
–Was it always like this?
–How are things changing with the internet?
–How will they change.
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