First draft, Introduction
How does the representation of young
people vary in todays media, looking specifically at the BBC 1 reality
television program 'The Junior Apprentice' and the BBC 3 documentary 'Sun, Sex
and Suspicious parents'?
The representation of young
people varies in different television programmes, some media texts view young
people in a stereotypical way and attach youth with a negative label
- "Youth are often portrayed by news media as a social problem, as
immoral or anti-authority and consequently constructed as folk devils as part
of a moral panic" (1), other
texts represent young people in a more positive limelight "We
found some news coverage where teen boys were described in glowing terms –
'model student', 'angel', 'altar boy' or 'every mother's perfect
son',"(2). I will question whether the representation of young people does
vary by analysing the BBC 1 reality television show 'The Junior Apprentice' and
the BBC 3 television documentary 'Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents'. My first
aim is to identify common and reoccurring representations of young people in
mainstream British programmes, and to see whether the representation varies or
conforms to stereotypes. The other aim of my investigation is to find out
whether the way in which youth are represented in some of today’s media
actually affects their behaviour and acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy. I
intend to use different media theories during my investigation to support my
study; one of these theories will be the uses and gratification theory, which
questions why people find certain texts engaging? I will also use the
hypodermic needle theory, which suggests, “media content is injected with a
hypodermic needle” (10). I will also use active and passive audience theories
and the cultivation theory – how the media injects ideologies in to passive
audiences.
The two media texts I have
chosen to compare are both broadcasted on the BBC which is the most popular
British broadcasting company therefore most shows viewed on their channels have
a high amount of viewers making most of their texts mainstream. The first media
text I have chosen to analyse is "Sun, sex and
suspicious parents". This documentary is broadcasted on BBC3,
whose main target audience is young people of ages from about 14 to 25. The
show involves two groups of friends going on holiday to popular party
destinations such as Magaluf, Zante and Malia. The show regularly represents
teens getting drunk, partying and abusing their independence. In the show,
1 young person from each friendship group is focused on the most and followed
throughout their holiday. The programme has a twist though; the young lads/
girls do not know that their parents are watching their every move. The
episode which I have analysed follows Joe Major and Millie Butler, both 18
years old and on a holiday to Malia with their respective groups of friends.
The other media text I will
be analysing will be the BBC1 reality show “The junior apprentice”. This
narrative involves a group of young entrepreneurs who have a big business idea,
each of them take part in competetive tasks and try to show off their business
skills to Lord Sugar, who will then finally decide which candidate he feels is
the strongest and invest in his/her business idea. The episode, which I have
chosen to analyse, is the first episode of a series, which concentrates on a
big group of youngsters at the beginning of their journey.
The media often represents
youth with limited variety and complexity. Youth are often
represented as irresponsible, lethargic and disrespectful.
"Young people no longer respect their parents. They are rude and
impatient. They frequently inhabit taverns and have no self-control." (3)
This is a very generic statement as it assumes that all young people are the
same. The negative stereotype of youth evolves from extreme incidents
involving young people, such as the 2011 London riots. "The image of young
people in Britain was severely tarnished by what happened last August and the
stream of court cases and convictions that followed were equally damning"
(5). Such events cause moral panics – “The majority
of moral panics since the 1950s have been manufactured around concerns about
young people’s behaviour, such as their membership of specific ‘deviant’
sub-cultures”,(11) society is then affected as audiences consume
the ideologies of the media and assumes that the representations are true
this then leads to people labelling the demographic stereotypically,
which has been represented poorly in the media. Young people are represented in
a negative and sterotypical manner on "Sun, sex and suspicious
parents", this is shown when Joe is talking about his hotel room, the
camera shows the audience Joes untidy room with unmade beds, and clothes
scattered around the room, while Joes says how “there is pants everywhere and
there is rubbish everywhere”. This shows Joe’s lack of respect for the room, it
also shows his laziness, as he has not bothered to tidy the room. During this
scene a high angle shot is used, this shows how his behavior is wrong as the
camera angle used makes us look down on him. Joe then goes on to say “but we
don’t care”, this supports the stereotypical representation of youth, proving
young peoples lack of responsibility. However "The junior
apprentice" does not represent young people in the same light. Young
people are much more polite in this show, they are all hardworking and mature.
This is shown when all of the contestants are having their first meeting with
Lord Sugar, the contestants do not talk while others are talking and respect
each person. Most contestants are well spoken and really polite. This goes
against the common stereotype. The majority of the audience will believe the
representations that are shown in each text. Most audiences are passive, this
type of audience presumes that the different representations of youth are true
as they do not interact with the media text and believe all of the information,
the media ideologies are injected in to their minds, on the other hand the
minority of the audience would be active audiences who question the
representations and are much more involved with the text.
The majority of the media
focus on other negative stereotypes attached with youth, such as ‘drunkens and
troublemakers’ “Underage drinking in Britain is among the worst in the world”
(6) Many people say that the recent generation of young people are growing up
to quickly, “Experts feared that young people were growing up too quickly” (12)
and that this is proven by the alcohol in which many young people do consume
and the way in which they dress as well. Sun sex and suspicious parents shows
many scenes where this is evident, in a specific scene Joe is shown playing
drinking games with his friend, the game involves Joe spinning round after
having a considerable amount of shots, this shows how young people abuse the
privilege of buying alcohol. The show proves that young people enjoy getting
drunk and having a good time. In another scene, Joes friend Chidgey is shown
with blood over his face after being involved in a fight, this shows the
violence of young people and how alcohol can affect them. On the other hand the
junior apprentice does not show any scenes which support this stereotype,
throughout the show there are no violent scenes, and there is no alcohol
consumed by any of the contestants.
Some media texts give a
varied representation of young people and do not just focus on the common
negative stereotype. Some media texts represent young people
as intelligent, mature and promising "21.3% of students
received A*/A grades this year". This is quite a rare representation in
the media, as many types of media like to focus on the negatives and usually
ignore the positives. The positive representations are shown in the opening
sequence of the junior apprentice when the narrator is introducing the
contestant and he says “Britain’s brightest and youngest business minds” this
shows how there is bright young people being represented in the media. At times
sun sex and suspicious parents contradicts this representation, one scene shows
Joe with an injured foot and a bleeding mouth after a ‘play fight’ with one of
his friends, this shows the immaturity of youth and how there is two sides of
youth, the mature grown up side – of going on holiday without their parents and
drinking alcohol, and the childish and immature side of them – fighting with
their friends and playing games.
Other representations in the
media of youth include “fun and energetic”. Sun sex and suspicious parents uses
this representation as the show includes many scenes showing the young people
dancing, joking and having a good time, this is shown in the scene where Joe
and Millie are in a night club on a night out and are seen together dancing and
laughing, this is a positive representation as it shows young people as
innocent and having a good time. Audiences could interpret this differently,
younger audiences may watch this to entertain themselves or to personally
identify with the fun that Joe and Millie are having. However older audiences
may be watching the show for information on young peoples holidays, and may see
the behavior shown by Joe and Millie as immature or rowdy. The junior
apprentice also represents young people as energetic and fun, this is shown in
the scene where the candidates are exploring the house that they are going to
live in, the contestants are shown running around the house, deciding what bed
is theirs and playing table tennis. This shows that although the main
representation of youth in the reality show is intelligent and bright, there is
proof that they have a more childish and energetic side to them
The majority of the media
represents youth in a negative way, but does the way in which they are being
represented in the media, mirror the way they behave in reality? One side
suggests that young people’s behavior is effected by their representation in
the media and that it acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy, the independent
carried out a study on young people and found that because of the negative
portrayal of young people that other youths feared each other “Nearly
three-quarters said they had changed their behaviour as a result of this” (2)
“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. (2) With all of the negative press surrounding
young people there is no doubt that they will change their behaviour because of
it, whether they are becoming more aware/scared of other young people,
conforming with the negative stereotypes as they see them as reality and want
to settle in, or fighting the negative stereotype and wanting to change the
perception of young people. Theories such as the hypodermic needle suggest that
the media injects their ideologies in to audiences and depending on the type of
audience that they are they will react differently, passive – the audiences
that just take in the information that the media gives out and instantly
believes it. And active audiences are more involved with the text and question
it. Passive audiences are more likely to conform to the stereotype as they
presume that the representations are reality.
The other side of this
argument is that the portrayal does not affect the behaviour of today’s youth
and that in fact the behavior of young people effects how media represents
them. Many argue that young people are as bad as the media make out and that
the representations aren’t over exaggerated. Others argue that the representation
is fair and that there is a suitable amount of positive stories about young
people as well. The cultivation theory says that because of the huge increase
in media consumed on a day to day basis by the majority of the population, that
any ideologies of media texts are likely to be believed as they are being
exposed to it at all times. The cultivation theory suggests, “that television is responsible for shaping, or ‘cultivating’ viewers’
conceptions of social reality” (9)
In conclusion, different programmes
offer a variety of representations of youth, although there is negative
representations of youth in the media, there is also positive representations,
but the negative representations are much more common within media texts. The
national youth agency found in one of their investigations that “the media produces both positive and negative stories about young
people however overall the media as a whole tends to report more negative news
stories.”(7) The negative
representations do effect young people’s behaviour and this is because of the
amount of media which they consume (the cultivation theory). Theories such as
the hypodermic needle also explain why young people’s behavior changes. The
National youth agency also found that “The
young people taking part in the research felt that the way the media portrays
them and other young people can have an impact on the way they view themselves”. Overall media does offer a variety of
representations of young people and the young people’s behavior is effected when
they are exposed to it
Bibliography-
How does the representation of young
people vary in todays media, looking specifically at the BBC 1 reality
television program 'The Junior Apprentice' and the BBC 3 documentary 'Sun, Sex
and Suspicious parents'?
The representation of young
people varies in different television programmes, some media texts view young
people in a stereotypical way and attach youth with a negative label
- "Youth are often portrayed by news media as a social problem, as
immoral or anti-authority and consequently constructed as folk devils as part
of a moral panic" (1), other
texts represent young people in a more positive limelight "We
found some news coverage where teen boys were described in glowing terms –
'model student', 'angel', 'altar boy' or 'every mother's perfect
son',"(2). I will question whether the representation of young people does
vary by analysing the BBC 1 reality television show 'The Junior Apprentice' and
the BBC 3 television documentary 'Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents'. My first
aim is to identify common and reoccurring representations of young people in
mainstream British programmes, and to see whether the representation varies or
conforms to stereotypes. The other aim of my investigation is to find out
whether the way in which youth are represented in some of today’s media
actually affects their behaviour and acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy. I
intend to use different media theories during my investigation to support my
study; one of these theories will be the uses and gratification theory, which
questions why people find certain texts engaging? I will also use the
hypodermic needle theory, which suggests, “media content is injected with a
hypodermic needle” (10). I will also use active and passive audience theories
and the cultivation theory – how the media injects ideologies in to passive
audiences.
The two media texts I have
chosen to compare are both broadcasted on the BBC which is the most popular
British broadcasting company therefore most shows viewed on their channels have
a high amount of viewers making most of their texts mainstream. The first media
text I have chosen to analyse is "Sun, sex and
suspicious parents". This documentary is broadcasted on BBC3,
whose main target audience is young people of ages from about 14 to 25. The
show involves two groups of friends going on holiday to popular party
destinations such as Magaluf, Zante and Malia. The show regularly represents
teens getting drunk, partying and abusing their independence. In the show,
1 young person from each friendship group is focused on the most and followed
throughout their holiday. The programme has a twist though; the young lads/
girls do not know that their parents are watching their every move. The
episode which I have analysed follows Joe Major and Millie Butler, both 18
years old and on a holiday to Malia with their respective groups of friends.
The other media text I will
be analysing will be the BBC1 reality show “The junior apprentice”. This
narrative involves a group of young entrepreneurs who have a big business idea,
each of them take part in competetive tasks and try to show off their business
skills to Lord Sugar, who will then finally decide which candidate he feels is
the strongest and invest in his/her business idea. The episode, which I have
chosen to analyse, is the first episode of a series, which concentrates on a
big group of youngsters at the beginning of their journey.
The media often represents
youth with limited variety and complexity. Youth are often
represented as irresponsible, lethargic and disrespectful.
"Young people no longer respect their parents. They are rude and
impatient. They frequently inhabit taverns and have no self-control." (3)
This is a very generic statement as it assumes that all young people are the
same. The negative stereotype of youth evolves from extreme incidents
involving young people, such as the 2011 London riots. "The image of young
people in Britain was severely tarnished by what happened last August and the
stream of court cases and convictions that followed were equally damning"
(5). Such events cause moral panics – “The majority
of moral panics since the 1950s have been manufactured around concerns about
young people’s behaviour, such as their membership of specific ‘deviant’
sub-cultures”,(11) society is then affected as audiences consume
the ideologies of the media and assumes that the representations are true
this then leads to people labelling the demographic stereotypically,
which has been represented poorly in the media. Young people are represented in
a negative and sterotypical manner on "Sun, sex and suspicious
parents", this is shown when Joe is talking about his hotel room, the
camera shows the audience Joes untidy room with unmade beds, and clothes
scattered around the room, while Joes says how “there is pants everywhere and
there is rubbish everywhere”. This shows Joe’s lack of respect for the room, it
also shows his laziness, as he has not bothered to tidy the room. During this
scene a high angle shot is used, this shows how his behavior is wrong as the
camera angle used makes us look down on him. Joe then goes on to say “but we
don’t care”, this supports the stereotypical representation of youth, proving
young peoples lack of responsibility. However "The junior
apprentice" does not represent young people in the same light. Young
people are much more polite in this show, they are all hardworking and mature.
This is shown when all of the contestants are having their first meeting with
Lord Sugar, the contestants do not talk while others are talking and respect
each person. Most contestants are well spoken and really polite. This goes
against the common stereotype. The majority of the audience will believe the
representations that are shown in each text. Most audiences are passive, this
type of audience presumes that the different representations of youth are true
as they do not interact with the media text and believe all of the information,
the media ideologies are injected in to their minds, on the other hand the
minority of the audience would be active audiences who question the
representations and are much more involved with the text.
The majority of the media
focus on other negative stereotypes attached with youth, such as ‘drunkens and
troublemakers’ “Underage drinking in Britain is among the worst in the world”
(6) Many people say that the recent generation of young people are growing up
to quickly, “Experts feared that young people were growing up too quickly” (12)
and that this is proven by the alcohol in which many young people do consume
and the way in which they dress as well. Sun sex and suspicious parents shows
many scenes where this is evident, in a specific scene Joe is shown playing
drinking games with his friend, the game involves Joe spinning round after
having a considerable amount of shots, this shows how young people abuse the
privilege of buying alcohol. The show proves that young people enjoy getting
drunk and having a good time. In another scene, Joes friend Chidgey is shown
with blood over his face after being involved in a fight, this shows the
violence of young people and how alcohol can affect them. On the other hand the
junior apprentice does not show any scenes which support this stereotype,
throughout the show there are no violent scenes, and there is no alcohol
consumed by any of the contestants.
Some media texts give a
varied representation of young people and do not just focus on the common
negative stereotype. Some media texts represent young people
as intelligent, mature and promising "21.3% of students
received A*/A grades this year". This is quite a rare representation in
the media, as many types of media like to focus on the negatives and usually
ignore the positives. The positive representations are shown in the opening
sequence of the junior apprentice when the narrator is introducing the
contestant and he says “Britain’s brightest and youngest business minds” this
shows how there is bright young people being represented in the media. At times
sun sex and suspicious parents contradicts this representation, one scene shows
Joe with an injured foot and a bleeding mouth after a ‘play fight’ with one of
his friends, this shows the immaturity of youth and how there is two sides of
youth, the mature grown up side – of going on holiday without their parents and
drinking alcohol, and the childish and immature side of them – fighting with
their friends and playing games.
Other representations in the
media of youth include “fun and energetic”. Sun sex and suspicious parents uses
this representation as the show includes many scenes showing the young people
dancing, joking and having a good time, this is shown in the scene where Joe
and Millie are in a night club on a night out and are seen together dancing and
laughing, this is a positive representation as it shows young people as
innocent and having a good time. Audiences could interpret this differently,
younger audiences may watch this to entertain themselves or to personally
identify with the fun that Joe and Millie are having. However older audiences
may be watching the show for information on young peoples holidays, and may see
the behavior shown by Joe and Millie as immature or rowdy. The junior
apprentice also represents young people as energetic and fun, this is shown in
the scene where the candidates are exploring the house that they are going to
live in, the contestants are shown running around the house, deciding what bed
is theirs and playing table tennis. This shows that although the main
representation of youth in the reality show is intelligent and bright, there is
proof that they have a more childish and energetic side to them
The majority of the media
represents youth in a negative way, but does the way in which they are being
represented in the media, mirror the way they behave in reality? One side
suggests that young people’s behavior is effected by their representation in
the media and that it acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy, the independent
carried out a study on young people and found that because of the negative
portrayal of young people that other youths feared each other “Nearly
three-quarters said they had changed their behaviour as a result of this” (2)
“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. (2) With all of the negative press surrounding
young people there is no doubt that they will change their behaviour because of
it, whether they are becoming more aware/scared of other young people,
conforming with the negative stereotypes as they see them as reality and want
to settle in, or fighting the negative stereotype and wanting to change the
perception of young people. Theories such as the hypodermic needle suggest that
the media injects their ideologies in to audiences and depending on the type of
audience that they are they will react differently, passive – the audiences
that just take in the information that the media gives out and instantly
believes it. And active audiences are more involved with the text and question
it. Passive audiences are more likely to conform to the stereotype as they
presume that the representations are reality.
The other side of this
argument is that the portrayal does not affect the behaviour of today’s youth
and that in fact the behavior of young people effects how media represents
them. Many argue that young people are as bad as the media make out and that
the representations aren’t over exaggerated. Others argue that the representation
is fair and that there is a suitable amount of positive stories about young
people as well. The cultivation theory says that because of the huge increase
in media consumed on a day to day basis by the majority of the population, that
any ideologies of media texts are likely to be believed as they are being
exposed to it at all times. The cultivation theory suggests, “that television is responsible for shaping, or ‘cultivating’ viewers’
conceptions of social reality” (9)
In conclusion, different programmes
offer a variety of representations of youth, although there is negative
representations of youth in the media, there is also positive representations,
but the negative representations are much more common within media texts. The
national youth agency found in one of their investigations that “the media produces both positive and negative stories about young
people however overall the media as a whole tends to report more negative news
stories.”(7) The negative
representations do effect young people’s behaviour and this is because of the
amount of media which they consume (the cultivation theory). Theories such as
the hypodermic needle also explain why young people’s behavior changes. The
National youth agency also found that “The
young people taking part in the research felt that the way the media portrays
them and other young people can have an impact on the way they view themselves”. Overall media does offer a variety of
representations of young people and the young people’s behavior is effected when
they are exposed to it
Bibliography-
(1) http://revisionworld.co.uk/a2-level-level-revision/sociology/mass-media-0/media-representations-age-social-class-ethnicity-gender-sexuality-and-disability
(2) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hoodies-louts-scum-how-media-demonises-teenagers-1643964.html
(3)http://www.theguardian.com/education/2009/mar/17/ephebiphobia-young-people-mosquito
(4) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hoodies-louts-scum-how-media-demonises-teenagers-1643964.html
(5) http://metro.co.uk/2012/07/02/young-britons-will-do-something-to-change-image-after-last-years-riots-488826/
(6)http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10484563/British-girls-have-almost-worst-drinking-habits-in-Western-world.html
(7) http://www.participationworks.org.uk/news/young-people-publish-research-how-negative-media-portrayal-affects-their-lives
(8) http://www.participationworks.org.uk/news/young-people-publish-research-how-negative-media-portrayal-affects-their-lives
(9)http://www.utwente.nl/cw/theorieenoverzic/Levels%20of%20theories/macro/Cultivation%20Theory/
(10) Key ideas in media
(book)
(11) http://revisionworld.co.uk/a2-level-level-revision/sociology/mass-media-0/media-representations-age-social-class-ethnicity-gender-sexuality-and-disability
(12) The coming
of age in America – The transition to adulthood in the 21st century
(book)
