Monday, 3 October 2011

What factors influence the representation of British Youth in Media?

Influences in the British youth involve a varying number of areas which can affect stereotypes and the general representation of British youth. These factors include: current events, producers, TV programming, dominant ideology, institutions, news channels, films, trends and fashion, race and religion, age and gender, sexuality.
The current trends/context while in the production of a Media text can affect how the representation of the British youth is at this time. When the London Riots were being held, the Media gave a negative representation to the British youths to the audience, presenting them as being mindless looters, while the initial idea of the riots were to give the public awareness of their feeling of being left out. Factors which mainly affected this way of representation were when mostly the burning and looting were broadcasted, and minimal of the positive and/or calm approach of some.
The producers can give any type of representation they want to the audience using the people they produce. As some producers create reality shows, a part who do a fixed winning on who is the most marketable, while representing the some British youth in a way either negatively or positively in any way the producers want. Their main purpose for creation can also be to create a stereotype representation to the British youth, especially when the programme has just started due to the fact that the audience would perceive the characteristics of the character easier when viewing a stereotype, which also leads to maintaining the stereotype itself, which can cause problems when the stereotype is negative, such as how the majority of how the British youth is being represented today.

What responsibility does the Media have for or understanding of groups in society?

In terms of collected identity, the Media has a huge responsibility upon representing these groups to the audience. Audience can perceive a certain group by how they are represented while an individual would be of a different type of person to their audience pool. This could create clashes of beliefs to the certain people who have been represented.
An example of a big issue in collective identity being represented in media is the London Riots, where mainly hooligan hooded youngsters are the prime suspects who are also only mainly interviewed by Media and published. Due to this, Media corrupted other people’s minds to start up in aggression to how their social group has been described negatively. The BlackBerry Messenger, Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking providers have been hit the hardest due to the lack of publicity they’ve given to the Media for evidence of crimes in exchange for the personal details privacy of their users. Their responsibility in this is crucial due to the fact that they have to give out every person’s personal details, which can create a lack of trust to these companies from their customers.
“Identity is complicated – everybody thinks they’ve got one” – David Gauntlett. This quote shows that collateral representation can create social trespassing when conjuring images of a group of people who have a different identity, since everyone is unique, to the mass audience. Their responsibility in this is to carefully pick out the points, in terms of the character’s representations in mise-en-scene, camera, sound, etc., which can create less criticism towards the media.
Institutions such as the BBC are expected to represent every social group as they are being funded by TV licence. In terms of international group representation, this crosses legal terms in different areas of the world, which can criticise the company holding the media which represented this way. This event is made to happen less by the media gaining more information of not only the story, but the legal terms which apply in an area, also minding the audience they may be hitting, which can cause problems.
Once, Osama Bin Laden has been broadcasted sitting next to Bert, a Sesame Street Muppet. This raised criticism from the creators of Sesame Street. against the world-known terrorists. This collective identity can affect the Muppet negatively, while giving Bin Laden the initial representation of being powerful.
The Media's censorship is a must, but with growing technology, and the introduction of the World Wide Web, people worldwide can read leaked information, which the Media themselves can't stop.