Essay: "Discuss your views on "media representations of youth reflect society's concerns and fears"

Essay: "Discuss your views on "media representations of youth reflect society's concerns and fears"

Media representation refers to the way in which the media portrays particular groups, communities, experiences, ideas or topics from a particular ideological or value perspective. Due to the media's power and influence, it has the ability to create perceptions of groups among spectatorial viewers. Saussure (1983) suggests that "Audiences can look at a media texts from a syntactic point of view, just describing what they see, or from a representational or symbolic point of view where they attribute meaning to what they see", whilst the Uses and Gratifications theory suggests that "Audiences are active individuals rather than passive ones. They will select what they watch, will consume in different ways and believe different things." This illustrates how the content that is presented by the media can have the ability to significantly affect a viewers viewpoint on a matter. Sometimes these perceptions that are created are considered wholly representative of the group, and sometimes media representations are considered false or contrived. The youth are a social group that are considered often misrepresented in the media, causing controversy.

Generally, the activities of the youth in the media are portrayed negatively. Statistics complied by the Youth Media Agency propose that 76% of the reporting of young people in the media is negative, 39% of adults are unaware of the positive things that the youth do,  80% believed that negative portrayals in the media led to strained relationships between the youth and older generations. Whilst the media has created this stigma upon the youth and forced them to be victims of negative stereotyping (often portraying them as having criminal tendencies and unfavourable attitudes), it was found that only 12% of crime is actually carried out by the youth (http://www.ukyouth.org/resources/youth-statistics/item/379-young_people_in_the_media#.VokhsFvOWf8).

In my opinion, I agree with the above statement that media representations of youth reflect society's concerns and fears due to the aforementioned statistics that show that whilst the youth are represented negatively so frequently, they are not responsible for much of the crime that is carried out in the UK. The representations that are so frequently portrayed in the media would be an example of society's concerns and fears, as they create the impression that the youth are 'Folk Devils', which is a group of people that are seen as a threat to society. Furthermore, a process of Deviancy Amplification Spiralling can occur. This is when a cycle of increasing numbers of reports on a category of undesirable behaviour (in this case the negative activities of youth) can lead to a moral panic. This will often lead to an increase in media reporting around the group, further marginalising them whilst increase their detachment from society. This was theorised by Stan Cohen in 2011.  The youth then becomes an empty category in representation and reflects adult concerns (Giroux).

An example of a media text that portrays the youth in this light is the feature film 'Bullet Boy' (2004), directed by Saul Dibb. In this film set in an urban London location, a young black male serves time in prison for stabbing, before being released and planning to turn his life around. Upon his release and then throughout the entire film, we are presented with a group of violent natured black youths who appear to only have drugs and crime on their agenda. Throughout the film, we see numerous examples of anti-social and impudent behaviour, vulgar language and sexual activity. The story ends with the main character being involved in another murder, suggesting that he is incapable of staying away from criminal behaviour, reinforcing many of the negative stereotypes of the demographic. To a spectatorial viewer consuming this media text, it may be presumed that the characters involved in the film may be representative of the demographic as a whole, which would then reinforce societal fears and lead to further marginalisation and moral panic.

In conclusion, although there are many examples of media texts that portray the youth positively, there is strong evidence to suggest that the youth are being discriminated against strongly in the media to reinforce societal fears and concerns - such as that 76% of the media reporting of the youth is negative. Bullet Boy is an example of a media text that fortifies this. Although generally fictional pieces such as this realism film take the most negative aspects in society for entertainment purposes, they can still be influential and morph the ideologies of active viewers, as Saussure suggests, in order to correlate with social fears.