Critical investigation: Media Magazine and online research

1) There’s a riot going on

• "In particular, it's interesting to look at how the participants were described. In most of the tabloid media coverage, the rioters were consistently and repeatedly identified as young people. These were the 'feral youth', the 'hoodies' and 'yobs' who apparently rampage uncontrolled in our cities, bent simply on destruction for its own sake."

• A good starting point is to look at the language that was used to describe what took place. To talk about 'riots' rather than, for example, 'civil disturbances' or 'unrest' - or even 'uprisings' or 'protests' - immediately defines the meaning of the events in particular ways. The word riot suggests something wild and unrestrained, something fundamentally irrational that cannot be explained. The riots, we were told, were simply an 'orgy of brutality', in which people appeared to lose all rational control.

• The newspapers consistently featured large, dramatic images of what the Daily Mirror called 'young thugs with fire in their eyes and nothing but destruction on their mind', or the Daily Express called simply 'flaming morons'.

• The spectre of the mob, of marauding gangs, of the violent underclass, has a long history; although in the Conservatives' account of the social collapse of 'Broken Britain', these fears have taken on a new urgency. These young people, we were told, had not been sufficiently socialised: they were led simply by a kind of 'childish destructiveness'.

• In fact, many of the people ultimately convicted for crimes during the rioting were by no means young. Youth offending, youth detention and reoffending have declined in recent years. Meanwhile, just a few weeks later, young people achieved record passes in their GCSE and A Level exams. Those involved in the disturbances were obviously a small minority. Yet in much of the media coverage, they came to stand for Young People - or particular categories of young people - in general.

• There is obviously a class dimension to these representations. The 'feral youth' imagined by the politicians and the tabloid headline writers are implicitly working-class. In his recent book Chavs, Owen Jones points to the emergence of a new form of class contempt in modern Britain. The working class, he argues, has become an object of fear and ridicule, not just in this kind of media coverage but also in popular figures such as Little Britain's Vicky Pollard and Catherine Tate's 'Am I bovvered?' character.

• Again, this is despite the fact that many of those ultimately convicted after the rioting were in respectable middle-class jobs, or from wealthy backgrounds.

• 
  

2) We’re All in this Together - Structured Reality TV and Social Class

• In August 2011 riots in London, Manchester, Liverpool and other British cities highlighted the disenfranchisement felt by many who perceive themselves to be at the bottom of the social pile. Austerity policies put in place after the banking crisis in 2008 and as a response to the global economic crisis, mean that Major's idea of a classless society seems further away now than perhaps it did twenty years ago.

Icons in the hood - how working-class youths became chavs

• Most recently, Plan B's music video for iLL Manors contentiously uses footage from the London riots of summer 2011, and appears to celebrate the stereotypes that the media perpetuate about council estate youths. Both lyrics and video take pot-shots at politicians, and specifically David Cameron's rhetoric about 'hugging a hoodie' and Brokeitain. It is a visceral, rage-filled, arguably hypocritical, difficult and challenging piece of media that has been hotly debated and defended by Plan B in interviews. Overall it seems its message is, It is filed with imagery of chavs behaving as society expects them to, and would make a perfect case study to analyse for the representation of youth.

• 71% of articles from a range of tabloid, broadsheet and local papers involving young people were negative in tone, and a third were crime-oriented.

• But what really brought the chav back into the headlines were the 2011 riots. Hooded youths running wild in cities across the country were displayed endlessly on the nightly news and all over the newspapers with their faces covered, tracksuits and bling on show, looting and engaged in apparently wanton destruction. The repeated figure of the Adidas-clad youth cockily strutting in front of a flaming vehicle adorned many front pages; and in many readers' eyes this anonymous participant became an icon of the state of modern Britain.

• Whatever your opinion of chavs, chavettes and hoodies, the representation of young people in the British media can definitely have an impact on people's attitudes in real life. When asked about chavs, a group of school students classified them as in the habit of causing trouble, hanging round the streets, drinking and taking drugs' [They are] working class, they live in council houses'. Their parents 'don't care, and they don't work.Harris, 2007, The question that must be asked is, to what extent this attitude comes from the students observing and interpreting what they see around them, and how much of it is a result of iconic representations created and perpetuated by the media? In order to answer this, we must look at some of the most iconic images of the chav that have appeared in the media, from television sketch shows to national newspapers, over the past decade.

4) There’s a riot going on

• These kinds of images of young people are unfortunately typical of much news media coverage. A 2005 IPSOS/MORI survey found that 40% of newspaper articles featuring young people focused on violence, crime or anti-social behaviour; and that 71% could be described as having a negative tone. Research from Brunel University during 2006 found that television news reports of young people focused overwhelmingly either on celebrities such as footballers or (most frequently) on violent crime; while young people accounted for only 1% of the sources for interviews and opinions across the whole sample.

• a study by the organisation Women in Journalism analysed 7,000+ stories involving teenage boys, published in online, national and regional newspapers during 2008. 72% were negative - more than twenty times the number of positive stories (3.4%). Over 75% were about crime, drugs, or police: the great majority of these were negative (81.5%) while only a handful were positive (0.3%). 

• Many of the stories about teenage boys described them using disparaging words such as yobs, thugs, sick, feral, hoodies, louts, heartless, evil, frightening and scum

British hip hop and grime –chavvin’ it large?
As with so many other youth movements
– from mods to rockers, hippies and emos –
popular music has undoubtedly had a significant role to play in creating and perpetuating the iconic image of the chav. British artists such as N-Dubz have been referred to as chavs; Dappy in particular, with his stringy hat and controversial brushes with the law, conforms to the typical idea of the aggressive, rude and almost comical image of the chav.Most recently, Plan B’s music video for iLL Manors contentiously uses footage from the London riots of summer 2011, and appears to celebrate the stereotypes that the media perpetuate about council estate youths. Both lyrics and video take pot-shots at politicians, and specifically David Cameron’s rhetoric about ‘hugging a hoodie’ and Broken Britain. It is a visceral, rage-filled, arguably hypocritical, difficult and challenging piece of media that has been hotly debated and defended by Plan B in interviews. Overall it seems its message is if you stereotype people as socially worthless then they will grow into those stereotypes It is filled with imagery of chavs behaving as society expects them to, and would make a perfect case study to analyse for the representation of youth.I predict a riot – chavs hit the headlines The word chav may have been in decline in mainstream media since December 2004, when stories about chavs reached a peak: 114 were published in that month alone (Smith, 2005). But the press representations of young people are still overwhelmingly negative. Recently71% of articles from a range of tabloid, broadsheet and local papers involving young people were negative in tone, and a third were crime-oriented.

It’s not surprising then that Plan B and others are concerned about stereotypes becoming self-
fulfilling prophecies: Here, then, is a modern folk devil maligned