Press Representations

Teen Trouble: 2007

12% of crime is commited by teenagers

news of the world 'there to entertain' 'responding to an interest and demand'

they forget that youths are part of society

small minority who break the law, therefore the rest get punished aswell.

getting teenage stories are more looked at now. moral panic and cultivation theory, the amount of press coverage mean the most likely that the adutls will think it's real.

hyperdermic theory, injected by the media, believe everything. old people are passive consumers, agree with the media (Stuart Hall)

Mods got made to throw stones to get a story for journalists

The more CCTV the more footage to show bad behaviour

governments look like they are saving society for adults

the more youths are shown on media the more desensites the youth become (becoming violant)

we are called the generation asbo.

reports coming from police, obviously negative

more adults than youths, so adults have a bigger mouth

Reading the riot acts

british newspapers symbolise british youths with hoodies

representing youth:

ipsos mori survey 2005:

40% of articles focus on violence, crime, antisocial behaviour, 71% are negative

Brunel uni 2007:

tv news: violent crime or celebrities; young people are only 1% of sources

Women in journalism 2008:

72% of articles were negative, 3.4% positive

75% about crime, drugs police

Boys: yobs, thugs, sick, feral, hoodies, louts, scum

only positve stories are about boys who died young

David Starkey: 'the whites have become black'

What role did new media technologies, particularly social networking sites play in the london riots?

Do media cause riots or revolutions?

'Broken Britain' rhetoric fuels fears about state schools - The Gaurdian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/sep/08/broken-britain-rhetoric-fuels-fear

How can you link cultural Hegemony to this article?

-This article suggests Cultural Hegemony by almost rejecting the lower class people and improving schools for the middle class by making 'acadamy schools' only focusing on helping the middle class.

-There is this sense that the lower class are all at fault when it is only a small percentage of them. They class poverty and bad behaviour together as 'broken britain'

How does this article suggest moral panic?

-Parents are scared of putting their child in a state school among lower class children, reinforces moral panic in order to maintain cultural hegemony

Mcrobbie symbolic Theory?

linking crime and violence to the lower class defining a boundry between lower and middle class.

Clearly shown, as they say that

Online Media

Facebook:

Social network
Your Profile
Your life
Chat
Sharing images
Events
Friends
Status
memories
gossip
nosey
stalking
judgemental


impact on facebook on british youth?

negative

you speak more online than in the real world
become more shy in the real world than on facebook
photos you want to get rid
allows people to manipulate people


Positive

exposure to other worldwide cultures and keep in contact with friends abroad
Helps to promote themselves
good use of advertisments  (eg bands)
every class and status is welcome
it's free

brumler and kals:

personal identity
personal relationships/social interaction
knowledge/information
entertainment
escapism

What new forms of social interaction have media technologies enabled?

• globalisation
• sharing of information
• development of self identity
• self realisation
• collective intelligence
• reshaping media messages and their flow; reshape and recirculate messages
• increased voice
• consumer communication with business (greater influence)- mass collaboration
• Awareness-bands/skills
• communication has become an interactive dialogue
• user generated content (UGC)
• self presentation and self disclosure
• increasing diversity within cultures
• online media focus on some or all 7 functional building block- identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups

"Online media are especially suitable to construct and develop several identities of the self" (turkle,1998)

"the mobile phone has become a central device in the construction of young peoples individual identity"

digital identity:

Identity consists of several fragments that permanently change

Online identity:

"identity is complicated. everyone thinks they've got one"

Media Use in Identity Construction

Katherine Hamley

Highlight key points/quotes that you think are important and then answer these questions when reading this text:

•      Young people are surrounded by influential imagery – popular media (Examples?)

TV, Internet, Magazines  

•      It is no longer possible for an identity to just be constructed in a small community and influenced by a family (Discuss)

There will be more of an impact from the media of developing and creating the teenager’s identity nowadays than the influence of the parents. All aspects help construct your own identity

•      Everything concerning our lives is ‘media saturated’ (What does this mean?)

The bombardment of different media getting absorbed influencing your behavior

In society today the construction of a personal identity can be seen to be somewhat problematic and difficult. Young people are surrounded by influential imagery, especially that of popular media. It is no longer possible for an identity to be constructed merely in a small community and only be influenced by family. Nowadays, arguably everything concerning our lives is seen to be ‘media-saturated’. Therefore, it is obvious that in constructing an identity young people would make use of imagery derived from the popular media.
However, it is fair to say that in some instances the freedom of exploring the web could be limited depending on the choice of the parents or teachers. So, if young people have such frequent access and an interest in the media, it is fair to say that their behaviour and their sense of ‘self’ will be influenced to some degree by what they see, read, hear or discover for themselves. Such an influence may include a particular way of behaving or dressing to the kind of music a person chooses to listen to. These are all aspects which go towards constructing a person’s own personal identity.
Firstly, it is important to establish what constitutes an identity, especially in young people. The dictionary definition states the following:

“State of being a specified person or thing: individuality or personality…” (Collins Gem English Dictionary. 1991).

The mass media provide a wide-ranging source of cultural opinions and standards to young people as well as differing examples of identity. Young people would be able to look at these and decide which they found most favourable and also to what they would like to aspire to be. The meanings that are gathered from the media do not have to be final but are open to reshaping and refashioning to suit an individual’s personal needs and consequently, identity. It is said that young people:

“…use media and the cultural insights provided by them to see both who they might be and how others have constructed or reconstructed themselves… individual adolescents…struggle with the dilemma of living out all the "possible selves" (Markus & Nurius, 1986), they can imagine.” (Brown et al. 1994, 814).

When considering how much time adolescents are in contact with the popular media, be it television, magazines, advertising, music or the Internet, it is clear to see that it is bound to have a marked effect on an individual’s construction of their identity. This is especially the case when the medium itself is concerned with the idea of identity and the self; self-preservation, self-understanding and self-celebration.

 “With a simple flip of the television channel or radio station, or a turn of the newspaper or magazine page, we have at our disposal an enormous array of possible identity models.” (Grodin & Lindlof 1996)

I believe the Internet is an especially interesting medium for young people to use in order to construct their identities. Not only can they make use of the imagery derived from the Internet, but also it provides a perfect backdrop for the presentation of the self, notably with personal home pages. By surfing the World Wide Web adolescents are able to gain information from the limitless sites which may interest them but they can also create sites for themselves, specifically home pages. Constructing a home page can enable someone to put all the imagery they have derived from the popular media into practice. For example:

“…constructing a personal home page can be seen as shaping not only the materials but also (in part through manipulating the various materials) one’s identity.” (Chandler 1998)

This is particularly important as not only are young people able to access such an interesting and wide ranging medium, but they are also able to utilise it to construct their own identity. In doing this, people are able to interact with others on the Internet just as they could present their identities in real life and interact with others on a day to day basis.
In conclusion it can be seen that the popular media permeates everything that we do. Consequently, the imagery in the media is bound to infiltrate into young people’s lives. This is especially the case when young people are in the process of constructing their identities. Through television, magazines, advertising, music and the Internet adolescents have a great deal of resources available to them in order for them to choose how they would like to present their ‘selves’. However, just as web pages are constantly seen to be 'under construction’, so can the identities of young people. These will change as their tastes in media change and develop. There is no such thing as one fixed identity; it is negotiable and is sometimes possible to have multiple identities. The self we present to our friends and family could be somewhat different from the self we would present on the Internet, for example. By using certain imagery portrayed in the media, be it slim fashion models, a character in a television drama or a lyric from a popular song, young people and even adults are able to construct an identity for themselves. This identity will allow them to fit in with the pressures placed on us by society, yet allow them to still be fundamentally different from the next person.

David Gauntlett: "Identity is complicated-everybody thinks they've got one"

David Buckingham: " A focus on Identity requires us to pay closer attention to the ways in which media and technologies are used in everyday life and their consequences for social groups"


Buckingham:

He classifies identity as an 'ambiguous' and slippery term'

• something unigue to each of us, but also implies a relationship with a broader group
• can change according to our circumstances
• is fluid and is affected by broader changes. relate this to britishness? We can see the connection between all of the changing subcultures. or cultural imperialism, eg American culture imprinted on british culture leads to globalisation
• become more important to us if we feel it is threatened 

- Social mobility
- Immigration- being a much cultural society

David Guantlett:

• Identity is complicated, however, everybody feels that they have one
• Religious and national identities are at the heart of major international conflicts
• the average teenager can create numerous identities in a short space of time( especially using internet, social networking site, etc)
• We like to think we are unique, but Guantlett questions whether this is an illusion, and we are all much more similar than we think 

Impact of online media sites, the influence of creativity:

1. Creativity as a process, about emotions and experiences
2. Making and sharing, to feel alive, to participate, in community
3. Happiness, through creativity and community
4. Creativity as social glue, a middle layer between individuals and society
5. Making your mark, and making the world your own

What is collective identity?

Representation: the way reality is 'mediated' or 're-printed' to us

Collective identity: the individual's sense of belonging to a group ( part of personal identity)

Inbetweeners

Ben palmer 2011

Media Effects:

do media representations of young people effect how they are percieved? if so how does this effect occur?

Hypodermic model:
passive consumers, respond and believe every single thing we hear or read.

Cultivation theory:
The more you see enough violence in the media amongst british youth , the more realistic it becomes

Copy Cat theory:
Influenced by what you see, so you copy what you see.

Moral Panic:
creates a panic within society, youths becoming antagonist and police turn into protagonist.

whose perspective is dominant in each of the texts?
what do representations have in each common?
How are representations different?
how are parental figures represented?

Contemporary British social realism:

• Attempt to portray issues facing ordinary people in their social situations
• Try to show that society and the capitalist system leads to the exploition of the poor or dispossessed
• These groups are shown as victims of the system rather than being totally responsible for their own bad behaviour
• low budget

Audience:

social realist films which address social problems in this country offer a very different version of 'collective identity' than british films which are also aimed at an american audience. Films like Notting Hill and Love actually reach a much bigger audience than the lower budget social realist films.

• Social realist films are aimed at a predominantly british audience
• If many more people see the commercial films, consider which version of our colloective identity is the more powerful.

When comparing how britishness and our collective identtiy is represented in films consider:

who is being represented?

who is representing them?

how are they represented?

what seems to be the intentions of the representations?

what is the dominant discourse? ( Communication, World view offered by the film, the way we are spoken through)

What range of readings are there?

look for alternative discourses.

Collective Identity

• the media contributes to our sense of collective identity but there are many different versions that change over time
• representations can cause problems for the groups being represented because marginalized groups have little control over thier representation/ sterotyping.
• The social context which the film is made influences the message/ values/ dominant discourse

Stuart Hall, 1980

Active Audience theory

• Encoding- Decoding is an active audience theory developed by Stuart Hall which examines the relationship between a text and its audience
• Encoding is the process by which a text is constructed by its producers
• Decoding is the process by which the audience reads, understands and interprets a text.
• Hall states that texts are polysemic, meaning they may be read differently by different people, depending on their identity, cultural knowledge and opinions.

(the difference in interpretations because of different backgrounds)

READING/ DOMINANT HEGEMONIC

we understand the media text exaclty how it is said giving an established mindset of framing

NEGOTIATED READING

a mixture of adaptive and oppositional elements around the reading to make it fit to you. It makes its own ground rules- it operates with exceptions to the rule.

will acknowledge the reading but conflict with it.

OPPOSITIONAL READING/ 'COUNTER-HEGEMONIC'

you disagree with the text entirely  

any representation is a mixture of:

1. the thing itself
2. the opinions of the people doing the representation
3. the reaction of the individual to the representation
4. the context of the society in which the representation is taking place

Stereotyping

Why do we stereotype?

so we can recognise people easily

we naturally see the world in this kind of shorthand way, with connections between character traits

Implicit personality theory:

implicit: embedded

when we first meet somoene, you have already made a judjment on them

what we experienced on the past we tend to rely on that

we give a system of rules to tell us which charateristics

we categorise people into types to simplify the persons perception

a prototype is then formed

if we encounter somoene in reality or in the media who seems to fit neatly into a prototype, we feel reassured

make assumptions about people

identity

it is almost as if we conspire with the media to misunderstand the world

Comparative analysis of Quadropheina Vs. Harry Brown,‘How are British youths represented in Quadrophenia and Harry Brown’

The main theme tells a story of youths being part of a subculture fighting for their survival. In Quadrophenia (Franc Roddam, 1979) focused on the ‘Mods’, was a time to rebel from parents and react against the post war radicalism. In Harry Brown, (Daniel Barber, 2009) there is this sense of injustice of not being part of the society with nothing else to do. Both subcultures wore iconic symbols such as the hoodie in Harry Brown and the long green coat In Quadrophenia to give them their identity.

During the beginning of Harry Brown, in many scenes of the presence of youth, we don’t get to see a clear, visible image of one of their faces, often shown in a long shot. Whereas in Quadrophenia we instantly are faced with the youth, making them seem less threatening.

The scene in the interrogation room, we see a clear contrast between the youths and the policeman. The lighting was dimmer on the potential killers (youths) whereas the policemen were clear and visible, as they had a brighter lighting on them. This creates an evil, creepy feel to the youths towards the audience. In comparison to Quadrophenia in the court, the lighting was bright and both the youth and the policemen were seen as joyful characters. Though like Harry Brown, the youth had this cheeky attitude making jokes towards the police, giving this sense of immaturity. This brings up the Gramsci theory of cultural hegemony, as the police want to be in charge and seem to be a higher class, especially in Harry Brown.

The parents are more evident in Quadrophenia, giving the sense that parents had a more important role at this time. We see a scene where Jimmy gets kicked out of the house and the mum has an argument with him, showing who is in charge of the house. Jimmy cries later on, this suggesting his love for her, even though he pretended not to care. In contrast, Harry Brown doesn’t show much present of the parents with only one scene of when one of the youths was getting taken away by the police. There wasn’t much communication and shows a change in the time periods as the parents have left their child to grow up without any discipline, and seem to have given up on them where there was no sympathy from the mother when her son was getting taken away from the police. The youth don’t even appear to take any interest on their parents with hardly any presence of them.

In both films, the youths have scenes where they run riot on the streets representing the Mcrobbie theory. This is when symbolic violence among the working class is part of social reproduction. In Quadrophenia they ran loose in a touristic place during the day fighting against another subculture in contrast to Harry Brown, they rioted in their own place at night against each other. This suggests that representations have changed in different time periods, where in the past they had the confidence and were able to riot anywhere at any time. In comparison to Harry Brown, they only caused a nuisance at their own territory. The Cohen theory is shown through moral panic. Every so often, a certain category of people are perceived by the media as a threat and creates a panic against moral beliefs. This is evident in both films as the youths are perceived as threats caused by the riots and act without morals, especially in Harry Brown, as more media was around to expose the audience.

Binary opposition is used where the police are seen as the opposite sides from the youths. There is more binary opposition in Harry Brown because the youth are represented as a lower class and are emphasized as the evil ones by the dim lighting. In Quadrophenia, the police seem in much more control as they virtually stopped the riots taking place after the previous looting. Different to this in Harry Brown, the youth seem just as strong as the police, with scenes where the police have almost an out of control situation, this again proving a change in representations of the attitudes between the police and the youth.

In conclusion, we can clearly identify from the two films that British youths have evolved in a less caring and nastier manner, increasing their power over their binary opposition of the police; though this isn’t their own entire fault for why they have changed.  This has occurred because of the widening between social classes where the youth appear in a lower class. In addition, the parent’s role doesn’t seem to have the same love and passion for their child as there was in Quadrophenia, and I feel that it is the parents fault for letting their child go by not bringing them up well. For the future, it gives the sense that the youth will only appear less and less respected to others and will seem more violent, exposed by the ever-growing media. The adults seem to want to give their own meaning of the youth and keep on creating their own fear suggested in the Giroux theory of youths being the empty category filled with interests of the adult world.

Character Profile on Mods

The British Mod style emerged from a desire among British youth to break away from the stiffness of the 50’s and uncouth look of the teddy-boys, and to emulate the more stylish Italian, French and, latterly, American fashions. They listened Modern Jazz and R&B. They also had scooters and went clubbing.

The original mod style is a slim-fitting dark coloured suit, worn with a lighter coloured shirt and thin, dark tie, along with a pair of dark shoes. Mods usually prefer a two-tonic coloured suit, made of a light material and fronted by three buttons (with the bottom button being left undone). The jacket has a breast pocket which can be adorned with a handkerchief in a variety of styles. The shirt is usually a button down with the most popular make being the ‘Ben Sherman’ incorporating a small button at the back of the collar.