Critical investigation Proposal

Working title

how does representation of teenagers in social media such as Facebook and twitter reinforce the negative stereotypes and create moral panic for the public?

Angle


what impact do the media have on the audiences?

The hypodermic syringe approach to media effects believes that a direct correlation exists between the violence and anti-social behaviour portrayed in films, on television, in computer games, in rap lyrics, etc. and violence and antisocial behaviour such as drug use and teenage gun/knife crime found in real life. The model suggests that children and teenagers are vulnerable to media content because they are still in the early stages of socialisation and therefore very impressionable. Katz and Lazarsfeld (1965) suggest that personal relationships and conversations with significant others, such as family members, friends, teachers and work colleagues, result in people modifying or rejecting media messages. They argue that social networks are usually dominated by opinion leaders, i.e. people of influence whom others in the network look up to and listen to. These people usually have strong ideas about a range of matters. Moreover, these opinion leaders expose themselves to different types of media and form an opinion on their content. These interpretations are then passed on to other members of their social circle. Katz and Lazarsfeld suggest that media messages have to go through two steps or stages.

http://revisionworld.co.uk/a2-level-level-revision/sociology/mass-media-0/effect-media-content-audiences-and-society


e.g. 

Teenagers are frequently alienated in the media to the point that it has become a real problem in our society. This is affecting the togetherness of our communities and creating unfair stereotypes. Do all teens fit the stereotypes that the media creates?You could argue that teenagers only have themselves to blame for these negative stereotypes, for example the London Riots in 2011 where it was well renowned that young people were the main offenders. This generalisation by the media has had serious effects on communities such as the one in Farnham Common.

Hypothesis

i came up with several of different example of how the new media represent teenagers in a negative way. The examples we came up with were that the media represent teenagers as hood rats as they see groups of teenagers on the roads drinking and smoking which causes bad influence on Younger  However i believe this puts a bad impact on the good teenagers as well as they also get that negative representation. However there are also positive representations of teenagers that subvert that stereotype for example there are youth groups which help people etc. and Disney which shows the positive side of teenagers as Disney does not contain any smoking, drugs elements etc.  I also believe why might the news media want to represent the teenagers negatively and we came up with different things for example. The news media always want a point of discussion and to something to talk about so that they get the audience attention and make money by raising false awareness most of the time. Raising awareness helps media make more money as the audience want to know more and more. We also discussed that there are binary oppositions between teenagers as you see some good and some bad but the as we see on the media we always see the bad side of them which is a very common stereotype.

Linked production piece

Reality TV-
News report-

MIGRAIN

media language

• What are the denotative and connotative levels of meaning? Denotation – the everyday or common sense meaning of a sign. Connotation – the secondary meaning that a sign carries in addition to it’s everyday meaning.


• What are the non-verbal structures of meaning in the text (e.g. gesture, facial expression, positional communication, clothing, props etc)? The props that the negative representation of teenagers wear are hoodies, hats etc.

• What are the dominant images and iconography, and what is their relevance to the major themes of the text?                                                                                                         

As you can see this collage that I have produced contains both bad vs good representations of teenagers where the pictures on the left show bad teenagers how they are smoking at a young age being classed as 'hood rats' most of them are hanging around outside doing nothing showing that they have no future. Due to this the media have used this to show parents how teenagers are being outside of their homes and this has cause moral panic to the public because the public and the parents think that all teenagers are like that but this isn't the case. this is because as you can see on the right; it shows the positive representations of the teenagers where this is challenging the stereotype of 'teenagers are always bad' this shows how there are also good teenagers in the world who care about others and there future and are always thinking about there educations and making the world a better place.

Media Institutions 

•         Media institutions like Sky News, which is partly owned by News Corporation which is owned by      Rupert Murdoch.
  ·         BBC news; a public service broadcaster
  ·         Uses and grats- Blumler and kats. Interactive, red button.
  
  
  Genre
  
  
  ·         Non fiction (but can be questionable)

  
  

  ·         News report

  
  

  ·         Formal; more realistic and believable.
  
  

Representation:

Teenagers are being represented in a negative way across the media and social network sites such as Facebook and twitter which create moral manic to the public. This is because the media exaggerates a lot which makes the situation look worse then it already is and this cause moral panic as the audiences who are parents/public get worried. Sometimes the media raise false awareness and this is only to have something to talk about so that they can attract viewers into watching it more and more and keep building stories into the views mind and this changes how they see teenagers and how they are represented. all this leads to the media doing this is only so that they can gain some money over it.

• ·         Stereotypes and also countertypes.
• ·         Representation of teenagers being loud, disrespectful, carefree, violent etc
• ·         The countertype: smart, educated, university, posh etc.
• ·         How others see young teens. Are they intimidated?
• ·         Representation of the intuition. Are they informative, quick, accurate?

Audiences

‘Moral panic’ is a sociological concept that seeks to explain a particular type of overreaction to a perceived social problem. Developed in the turbulent political and 

intellectual context of the late 1960s, its principal aim was to expose the processes 

involved in creating concern about a social problem; concern that bore little relationship 

to the reality of the problem, but nevertheless provided the basis for a shift in social or 

legal codes.

    

     The audience for my question is parents and the public this is because they are the ones that will be watching the media/reports mostly and getting impacted by the reports as this will create fear when they go out as there will be teenagers around. 

Narrative:

• ·      Voice over’s to narrate what’s going on. Provides an anchor. The voice of God.
• ·      Opening has a summary of all the stories so the audience knows what to expect.
• ·      Also hooks them in to continue watching to get the full story.
• ·      The story is told by the reporter. Gets views from people involved i.e. victims, families local community.

SHEP

Social:

·        Are the negative stereotypes being reinforced?

·        Who are the actual victims? Teenagers because they all have been given a negative image. Or adults who live in a world with a bunch of thugs.

Historical:

·         Bach in the 1980’s teenagers (especially females) represented as being naive.

·         Early 90’s represented as being conforming and un-sexualised .

·         Now we’re drawn a more realistic view of who they really are; loud, sexually aware, disobedient.

http://aarmanitvdrama.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/representation-of-british-youth.html

Economic:

·         Have teenagers suffered economically? EMA, increase costs of university ,protests

Issues and Debates

Representation and stereotyping:

·         The way the media demonises the youth has left an imprint on today’s society as being ill-mannered, violent and being associated with drugs, sex and gangs. Hoodies, joggers, baseball caps, oversized shirts are a part or the iconography of the stereotyped teens. The media reports certainly does amplify stories to do with the youth like in recent events such as the protests and riots; it was all that was shown on all news channels. Where’s the success of teenagers? Their academic success? Achievements?

       Teenagers have become massive consumers of emedia and especially social networks such as facebook and twitter.

·      Also connect through Smartphones.

·      Blackberries were a huge problem in the summer of 2011

·      Moral panic as the news go viral

·       ‘ Sexting’, sending naked pictures.

Regulation and censorship:

Moral Panic:

·      Moral panic is caused when the media exaggerates stories scaring the public. As an aexample the summer of 2011; the London riots. People were informed to stay inside and to not go outside at the fear of being attacked or robbed and also to keep children inside so they wouldn’t join the riots. The news reached all over so before long, even places that weren’t affected would have heard about it which resulted in more panic

Media technology and the digital revolution – changing technologies in the 21st century:

·  

·      There have been rules put up to restrict the view of violence from children but what about teenagers; they’ll still be affected with what they see on the TV and on video games. It influences their behaviour and attitudes.

Theories

Audience theories: In terms of socio economics, people who watch news reports are more likely to be in the higher band of ABC1

Semiotics: this idea was introduced by Barthes and is about signs and denotations. So the denotations of the costume like hoods, caps, joggers etc. It could symbolise carefree and no respect.

Gender and Ethnicity: stereotypically what would define a violent teenager would be a young black male.

Colonialism: Due to post colonialism Alvarado distinguishes between four groups and the way teenagers are represented then they’d belong in the dangerous category.

Articles

 Teenage violence: Life at the sharp end-http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1556148/Teenage-violence-Life-at-the-sharp-end.html

·         Teenage victims of domestic violence targeted as definition is extendedhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/sep/19/teenage-victims-domestic-violence-definition

·         London teenage violence: the death tollhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jun/02/knifecrime.ukguns1?INTCMP=SRCH

·         Senior police officer blames parents for teenage violence

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/aug/15/ukguns.society?INTCMP=SRCH

Teen 'stabbed through heart' at Boxing Day sales, court hearshttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9628040/Teen-stabbed-through-heart-at-Boxing-Day-sales-court-hears.html

Academic Text/Books

·  Inside the mind of a teen killer- Phil Chalmers 2009. "We are living in the most violent times in recorded peacetime history."

·         The Psychology of Teen Violence and Victimization-Volume 1- Michele A. Paludi 2011. "Teenage victims are not often afforded the same resources as adult victims of physical abuse and sexual violence, and even when they are, the resources are designed to assist adult victims and are not tailored to the unique psychology of teens, who are often marginalized in our society.”

·         Page: 22. Delinquency in Society-Robert Regoli, John Hewitt, Matt DeLisi - 2009. “In the public’s mind, a few juveniles hanging out together on a street corner elicits the image of delinquent gang. While these juveniles may not belong to any formal gang, it is thei appearance that decides a person’s view.”

·         Page: 6. Youth Cultures: Texts, Images, and Identities-Kerry Mallan, Sharyn Pearce – 2003. “Theoretical stories are situated within the writers’ own personal predilections and disciplinary traditions”

·         Page 1: Crime, Justice and the Media- By Ian Marsh, Gaynor Melville, Gaynor Melville. 2009 .-“Dorfman (2001) found that over three-quarters (76%) of the public said they formed their opinions about crime from what they see or read in the news, more than three times the number of those who said they got their primary information on crime from personal experience (22%).”