For as long as anyone can remember the battle between youths and older generations has been fuelled by the media…“playgrounds have been turned into battlegrounds” and words are now a lethal weapon. It is a binary opposition which has been taken to extraordinary levels and waged a war between adolescents and adults.
The media has taken the stereotype of youths, the way the public view youths and the way in which youths view themselves, and exploited the idea, turning it into nothing, but a delusional monster. The youths of society are tomorrow’s future leaders, inventors and scientists, eager to learn and offering new perspectives. The media however, has hijacked the appearance of teenagers, constructing a distorted idea, and warping their reputation into a fictitious lie based on “half-truths”, appearance and generalisation. The Sunday Herald Sun and Courier-Mail newspaper articles have fabricated the stereotypes of youths as violent “animals” and “thugs”, therefore manipulating their audiences to adopt the invited readings through means of silencing, marginalising, generalising and use of connotative language.
The Sunday Herald Sun newspaper article ‘Sad Increase of Youth Violence’ is an example of the gross injustice and distortion of the stereotype of youths; an article which extends beyond so far as to generalise all teens as “bloody-thirsty, animal-like” thugs. The article misrepresents a majority, if not all teenagers as dangerous delinquents and untrusting monsters who are a dysfunctional sector of society. The newspaper article constructs a deceptive and incorrect generalisation of youths; repeatedly associating teens with animal-like terminology and connotative meanings, where youths are painted as not only the e...
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...raying teens as “young trouble makers…like a pack of animals” with uncontrollable urges to destruct everything in their path. The world’s media has sunken to a new low, to a point where the enticement of money is now more important than the conscience of the honest truth. The media must undoubtedly improve their behaviour and representations of youth culture, or risks seeing an even greater division between youths and society.
Works Cited
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/sad-increase-of-youth-violence/story-e6frf7kx-1111114373899
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/youth-gangs-rule-streets/story-e6freoof-1111117083344
http://members.fortunecity.com/smashx14/portrayal.html
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/look-beyond-the-scare-stories-the-kids-are-all-right-20111024-1mfq6.html
http://www.npsp.sa.gov.au/page.aspx?u=1010
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The problem of youth violence is not an unsolvable one. Although fictional, American History X provides an accurate example of how youths can make the transition from violent behavior. We must work to seek out the blind and the lost boys to help them find their vision in a world that is so often covered in darkness.
This article talks about the effects of media exposure on adolescents and the violence that is can bring. Using the social conflict theory it portrays the media as having a harmful impression on today’s children. The article shows how crime statistics have decreased the arrests for violent crimes committed by youth offenders has not (Fowler, 2002). The article also shows how the APA is teaming up with federal programs to help resolve these harmful effects that the media is portraying. The article shows that media is responsible for the social conflict that these adolescents are dealing with. The APA and other organizations along with the federal government are combating this problem from every angle (Fowler, 2002). While the article does speak of some statistics it may be inflating them by not including a breakdown of what violent crimes are being committed.
The media has come to dominate the lives of many of today’s youths. In The Great Imagination Heist, Reynolds Price expresses extreme dismay at the media’s ever-tightening grasp over the impressionable minds of adolescents. He sincerely feels that the effects of prolonged exposure to television, film, video games, and the Internet are detrimental to the development of a youth’s imagination and ability to think freely, without outside influence. The word “heist” indicates the intention to rob or steal. Price laments what he perceives to be the robbing of original, personal thought. He longs for the days when people read books freely and television was little more than a negligible aspect of our daily lives.
In Bradbury’s dystopian classic, Fahrenheit 451, Clarisse says “ ‘I’m afraid of children my own age. They kill each other’ ” (Bradbury 27). Bradbury claims through Fahrenheit 451 that our society is becoming increasingly violent in youth’s culture. Furthermore, common sense seems to dictate that as technology advances violence, increases as well. Although schools are considered to be the safest places for children, media, behavioral problems, and influences inside and outside the home has increased the violence in our society.
People today believe in racial stereotypes from the influence of various media, which ridicules someone of another race or gender by a one-dimensional point of view, including you. It is just upon that people will take action or overreact to the little things just because of what their minds think from what stereotype media promoted. Some people may ponder on themselves into running away from a stranger just because of their gender and by their race, making a decision whether they are unsafe to go close to. Some media have promoted stereotypes of others for entertainment and influencing people to believing in the misjudgment of certain races.
Since the war in Britain the most recurrent types of moral panic has been associated with the emergence of various form of youth (originally almost exclusively working class, but often recently middle class or student based) whose behaviour is deviant or delinquent. To a greater or lesser degree, these cultures have been associated with violence. The Teddy Boys, the Mods and Rockers, the Hells Angels, the skinheads and the hippies have all been phenomena of this kind (Cohen, 2002). Youth appeared as an emergent category in post-war Britain, on one of the most striking and visible manifestations of social changes in the period. Youth...
Welch, M, Price, EA, and Yankey, N 2002, ‘Moral panic over youth violence: Wilding and the manufacture of menace in the media’, Youth Society, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 3-29
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This essay will look at the different ways in which young people are portrayed in the media. It will focus on how the idea of childhood innocence has been challenged by the media and rather than ‘little angels’ children are now seen as ‘little devils’ in the public eye. By looking at ‘The Bulger Case of 1993’ we can see where the idea of ‘little devils’ and children as evil beings began. It will examine why media stories of young people are focused much more on negative aspects such as crime and gang culture rather than positive ones. It will also look at how television programmes such as ‘Teen Mom’ and ‘Skins’ portray the youth of today and whether these programmes come across as a positive or negative portrayal of teenagers. The idea of a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ will also be examined and whether the way the media portrays children can be harmful to the construction of their identities and possibly lead to alienation.
You’ve seen the shows, nearly everyone has. You know, the one’s with “dumb blonde“, “pant- sagging gangster” or the “goth girl“? TV personnel and other forms of media have always used stereotyping and body image in their publicized works, easy tools in their fairly capable hands. Stereotyping, by Merriam-Webster’s definition is “to develop a mental stereotype about”. In my own words, it is to pre-judge someone or a group of people before meeting or interacting with them. Stereotypes also create and endorse the idea that if you don’t look and act a certain way your going to be an outcast or you’ll just be tossed to the side, and never paid attention to. Making it sensible that stereotypes and body image go fit together like pieces in a puzzle. Stereotypes are often added to television shows and movies to add drama or comedy. But, contrary wise, they actually add a sour taste in your mouth after watching every “nerd” or “girly gay guy” get pushed around and picked on, sometimes even physically punished, all for the sake of drama or even distorted comedy. Then, the “skinny, make-up cove...
A harsh and punitive response to youth violence was, in part, brought about by a moral panic across America. Exaggerations by the media and political figures act as instigators of panic. Both the media and politicians promoted the concept of the super-predator youth. The media played its part by publishing or airing many individual stories of violent youth. Those in question represented only a small amount of the adolescent population. However, many Americans took these media-conveyed stories at face value, and it seemed to the public that there could be a juvenile delinquent around every corner just slavering to steal their wallet or sell them narcotics (Howell, 27).
With the high rise in violent video games in the last few years, adults see certain acts of violence portrayed in some video games to be a cause of violent acts committed by kids. This is such an easy decision to make, lay blame on something that is new, something radical like violent video games. People don’t even take a look back and remember “Novels, films, radio, and television have all been accused of leading young people astray and inducing violent or antisocial behavior. The fuss about video games may be just another case of curmudgeons complaining” (Walling 1436). If they saw these then they would see a pattern and might not think of pop-culture as harshly. Unfortunately many people do not, and then they blame it on everything but themselves. These arguments are fueled b...
Our society consists of consumers that buy into stereotypes and the propaganda that is being fed by the government and the media. Stereotypes steer individual's perceptions of a group of people in a certain way, usually negative, and generalize that opinion to all members of the group. Aware of the influence stereotypes have on people's views, governments use stereotypes already imbedded in society as a propaganda tactic to persuade people's thoughts, opinions and beliefs in order to benefit their cause. The media was used for disseminating stereotypes the effect violent music has on teenager's behaviours such as in the shootings at Columbine. After the September 11 attacks, the U.S. government used the media as an outlet to emphasize Muslim stereotypes to influence people to support the invasion of Iraq. Stereotypes and other propaganda techniques such as "name-calling, manicheanism, and censorship" are powerful instruments used in propaganda, because it tactfully influences the population to think in the way that the government and media want them to think (Shah, 2003). However, its success depends on how strong the stereotypes are instilled in society, how well they are maintained within propaganda and if the public is unaware of the propaganda techniques used.
“The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses” (Thinkexist, 2010). The mass media, including news, movies, magazines, music, or other entertainment source has become a part of daily life for many people. As the quote mentions mass media and its power are capable of influencing people’s mind and behavior. Contents in the media introduced to young people make it difficult for them to distinguish between what is real and what is not, as a result stimulating confusion and blind imitation. The mass media plays an important role in the increase of violence, sexual activity, and risky behaviors among teenagers.