Print Representations

C4 Teen Trouble 2007

• People think that youths commit a great deal of crime but in reality it's 12%
• Newspapers write about the most exciting stories
• Dispersal orders and 'mosquitos' are enforced to help try to stop youth trouble
• 'Queen ASBO' treated horribly by the media
• Youths are victimised and discriminated against
• 6 times more likely to die by falling down the stairs than by being stabbed, but media represent knife crime to be almost an epidemic
• Despite the debates about the hypodermic syringe theory, you could argue that because of creation of moral panic proliferation of negative press this theory does exist from adults.
• Cultivating the adults mind and the perception created by society in demonising youths, more you see it more you believe it's actually happening.
• Desensitisation theory links here, where with so much coverage of youths being terrors adults get used to it, and are more likely to not be emotionally effected by it.
• How responsible are the newspapers and the government?

Riots - Representing youths

• IPSOS MORI Survey 2005 - 40% of articles focus on violence, crime, anit-social behaviour; 71% are negative
• Brunel University 2007 - TV news: violent crime or celbrities; young people are only 1% sources
• Women in Journalism 2008 - 72% of articles were negative; 3.4% positive. 75% about crime, drugs, police. Boys; youbs, thugs, sick, feral, hoodies, louts, scum. Only postive stories are about boys who died young

Case study - What role did new media technologies, particularly social networking sites play in the London riots? Do media cause riots or revolutions? Technology and surviellance: mobile phones, CCTV, 24hour news...

'Broken Britain' article

• How can you link cultural hegemony to this article? in this article she mentions how there is a class division between middle and lower class, in society and in schools. With parents not wanting them to integrate, this shows how the ruling class want to hold on to their dominance over lower class students, so by keeping them apart it helps keep this division. She notes how MPs are categrising lower class youths with all having bad behaviour, and labelling the country as 'Broken Britain' she says how this may 'risk entrenching class divisions in education even more deeply.'
• How does the article suggest moral panic is being caused? Media and the ruling class like the Government have creating this moral panic which makes the public and middle class see that the youths are all having bad behaviour and are out of control, therefore they see all youths to be like this therefore they fear all youths that are working class.
• Can you link in McRobbie's Symbolic Violence theory? How?
• How far do you agree with this article that governments decisions and policies are continuing to create a divide between the middle and working class? Discuss

Between 6 and 10 August 2011, several London boroughs and districts of cities and towns across England suffered widespread rioting, looting and arson.