Critical investigation research

To what extent does news media create moral panic and represent teenagers in a negative way that the public should fear?

"British youths are 'the most unpleasant and violent in the world”[1]

Stanley Cohen (1987) defines moral panic as a sudden increase in public perception of the possible ‘threat to societal values and interests’[2]

According to the BBC’s report there is ‘a marked increase in the number of girl gang members and a rise in sexual violence within gangs’[7] 

‘Teenage Twitter users are not the sharpest, most culturally-aware knives in the drawer-- but we are also regurgitating news that you've probably already seen’[12] from this, its suggesting that teenage twitter users are mindless passive audience, as suggested by the hypodermic needle[13]

The diegetic sounds of the shouting and the bashing of the riots displays the dangerous atmosphere giving the audience a message of a menacing environment portraying the character roles of the youths being the villain and the police being the hero, as suggested by Vladimir Propp, 'as it denotes the action of the character'[16]

As mentioned in Bill Osgerby’s ‘Youth Media’ “Positive media representation of youth did not disappear, but there was a palpable resurgence of more negative coverage”[21] so the view on crime that some people take from the media could be positive for young teens.

This is an example of cultivation theory where the effects of TV over a long period of time ‘shape our perceptions of reality and the world around us by affecting our attitudes and certain ways of thinking’[26]

Overall teenagers are represented in a negative way and have been labelled as deviant but ‘the notion of ‘youth’ is seen as a fairly recent invention’[28]

“Positive media representation of youth did not disappear, but there was a palpable resurgence of more negative coverage”[31]