"Did the news media provide a fair and accurate representation of British youth during the 2011 riots?"
The presentation I did will help me put together my final question for my critical investigation. The current question I will be answering is "Did the news media provide a fair and accurate representation of British youth during the 2011 riots?" this is a very powerful question because there will be a lot of wider context to cover in terms of demographics, unemployment rates, newspaper articles and news reports. In addition to this there is going to be a lot of resources available to me on the internet for me to use.
2)Angle
- is the way the british media represnting youths having an affect on the audiences opinions?
- Is this simply a moral panic of the 21st century or is further regulation required?
The more the British media continue to marginalise British youths, the more it will cause youths to continue being rebellious.
4)Linked production piece
Music video similar to Plan B's Ill Manors.
5)MIGRAIN
Media Representations
In this text the main people who are represented are black people and Youths, they are represented in a bad way as being violent, aggressive ,"Thugs" and "Yobs", The people are describing them in this way are the British media.
They are being described like this mainly because of the tragic events that occurred in the 2011 London riots. The reason they are being represented in this way is because stats show that the demographics of the London riots were that 90% of the people who had court were aged under 21 and over 45% of the people in the London riots were black, so therefore the media would put the main focus on this minority group,although its not a fair representation of the whole minority group.
Media Languages and Forms
In this text the main people who are represented are black people and Youths, they are represented in a bad way as being violent, aggressive ,"Thugs" and "Yobs", The people are describing them in this way are the British media.
They are being described like this mainly because of the tragic events that occurred in the 2011 London riots. The reason they are being represented in this way is because stats show that the demographics of the London riots were that 90% of the people who had court were aged under 21 and over 45% of the people in the London riots were black, so therefore the media would put the main focus on this minority group,although its not a fair representation of the whole minority group.
Media Languages and Forms
- The denotations of the London riots were that the people involved with these acts were chaotic, violent, thugs and insane people who just wanted to loot free things. However, the connotations could be the deeper meaning in terms of issues within the society and government such as poverty and low incomes
- The significance of the connotations are that it creates an interest on what gave these rioters the fuel to take part and it will also discover both sides of the incident rather than just looking at what the media represents it to be.
- The non verbal meanings of the text shows us that the rioters are reinforcing the stereotypes they already have on them, such as being heavily involved in crime, aggressive and violent as you would be able to tell from their facial expressions.
- They're also wearing tracksuits and sports wear which makes them fit better into the description of a "Thug"
- The mise en scene shows that they're already in the streets in terms of the settings.
- These were the images that were most dominant images and iconography, and was relevant to major themes of the text
- Media Audiences
- The audience for this particular case is aged between 16-60. This is because what happened was a moral panic for the whole of the UK and for some even worldwide as the London Olympics were only a year after.
- I also believe that the newspaper mainly target the ABC1 demographic because they are the ones who were most likely not to be involved.
- The physchographics could've been targeted at the reformers, resigned, explorers and aspirers. the assumptions are that they aren't aware of what is going on in the UK in terms of Poverty, Low income houses, lack of jobs, police harassment, and made the youths look like they were just rioting for the sake of it
Unemployment rates are continuing to increase which means that a lot of people(mainly young) are struggling to get jobs in order to pay for essential things they need, this could mean that it would lead them to crimes, as research showed that their is a direct correlation between the amount of people behind on bills and the crime rate in London.
Could the government have done something to prevent the riots from happening?
Could they have done something different after the riots?
- Representation and stereotyping in the media and how news corporations such as the BBC and The Guardian represented youths during the London riots, i mainly looked into how they were represented in a negative way and the stereotypes created by the media were reinforced.
- Moral Panics, the text i will be focusing on which is the 2011 London riots caused a major outbreak and Moral panic within the country
- News Values since this was a moral panic, the news gave this particular text a lot of prominence.
- Media effects refer to the theories about the ways in which mass media and media culture affect how their audiences think and behave. and in this case, it is how the rioters reacted to how the News represented them.
- Media technology and the digital revolution – changing technologies in the 21st century
Medhursts theory of representations. This theory believed that stereotypes are used as a shorthand to represent a group of people which is usually a minority. This was done a lot during the London riots as youths were labelled as "thugs" and "Yobs" to identify the rioters.
Perkins theory of Representations, This is similar to the Medhurst theory which is the theory believing that the media use stereotypes to get a message across in the media.
Media texts
For my critical investigation my main focus will be on the 2011 London Riots, this is because this particular event caused alot of controversy between race and social issues within society and the media. Also, this event happen in London which caused a moral panic,this is an advantage to me because i have a lot of knowledge on this particular event.
Other media texts
- BBC News
- The Guardian
- Ill Manors(Movie)
TV documentaries
- The Riots: In Their Own Words
- London Riots 2011 [ Our Crime ]
- Riot Night - England Riots 2011 Documentary
- London's Burning (2011)
written by: Martin Conboy
Internet Links
1. At least FIVE from Media Guardian or Guardian Culture or another newspaper website.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/aug/11/riots-social-media-gang-culture
http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/aug/05/chalk-farm-edinburgh-london-riots
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/dec/05/riots-revenge-against-police
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/09/uk-riots-psychology-of-looting
2. At least FIVE from university websites/academic papers online. Use Google Scholar as a starting point.
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep01303?WT.ec_id=SREP-20130226
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-6757.2000.tb01168.x/abstract
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1745-9125.12004/pdf
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-37210-0_34#page-1
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264275112000315
3. Any other relevant sites/articles - the more the better.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/dec/05/who-were-the-rioters
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/aug/16/london-riots-young-people-voice-anger1. At least FIVE from Media Guardian or Guardian Culture or another newspaper website.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/aug/11/riots-social-media-gang-culture
http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/aug/05/chalk-farm-edinburgh-london-riots
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/dec/05/riots-revenge-against-police
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/aug/09/uk-riots-psychology-of-looting
2. At least FIVE from university websites/academic papers online. Use Google Scholar as a starting point.
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep01303?WT.ec_id=SREP-20130226
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-6757.2000.tb01168.x/abstract
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1745-9125.12004/pdf
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-37210-0_34#page-1
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264275112000315
3. Any other relevant sites/articles - the more the better.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/dec/05/who-were-the-rioters
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15426720
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14462688
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14467988
