“Media representations are complex, not simple and straightforward”. How far do you agree with this statement in relation to youth and collective identity?

The power relationship between the media and youth is a difficult one. As they are both constantly changing and adapting each other’s views and thoughts. In the Sun newspaper the Article ‘I Predict a rioter’ gives a bad representation of youths in particular black youths are labeled with statics as being ‘previous criminals’ that shows that they were the main party involved in the riots. Henri Tajfels theory of the In and Out group can be applied to this as clearly youth are working together in gangs in order to enhance their identities. In the article the media incorporates horrific pictures of buildings burning and male youth holding lethal weapons which give off a sense of fear in society and creates moral panic. The media suggested how web 2.0 gave rioters freedom as they were able to spread views and share information to cause a rise in the rebellious action.  However after the riots Marxist views came into action as Blackberry shut their entire network down in order to put regulations into place.Merleau Pontys theory ‘We have an embodied experience and anything in which we use our bodies to create new things with builds our identity’ is evident as Young people choose to use Blackberry and Facebook during the London Riots 2011 as it was cheap and an easy way of getting themselves heard. This was clearly different to the Brixton Riots in the 1980’s as there was no web 2.0 so youth had less sense of power as regulations and authority could rule and control them.

In contemporized music videos there are many negative and explicit ideologies being projected through visuals in which youth watch and mediate so much that explicit music videos often become de-sensitized by youth. In snoop dogg’s video ‘Drop it like its hot’ there are visuals of him vandalizing a wall with graffiti, this representation can be seen as negative as it encourages youth to go out and vandalize their own society. The Mirror stage looks at how we reflect behaviour from the media (the mirror) and we reflect what we see and then mediate it and recognise the ‘self’ this can be applied to this music video as many of the visuals of Snoop Dogg reinforces his wealth and use of drug taking. Many youths of today especially young boys will reflect on this video and will aspire to be like Snoop Dogg who is evidently a role model as censorship is no longer important. Videos like these have negative implications on crime rates and also influence drug use such as smoking majurijana. This video is a contrast to older rap videos in the 80’s where most hip-hop lyrics reflected poverty and injustice society and caused youths to rise up against authority.

Over time the media can influence how people perceive the world. This is known as the cultivation theory this relates to how the media has changed conventions and heightened representations which have been accepted by us as the passive audience. In Rhianna’s SNM Video the lyrics is very explicit as she refers to sexual encounters and in a way encourages this as a positive thing. Many young girls watch these videos and believe that this representation is correct. Acland’s Theory: Media representations of delinquent youth reinforce hegemony by showing what is unacceptable can be applied to this video as Rhianna is seen as a dominant figure, she is shown harassing and holding the media hostage which reinforces a rebellious ideology to youths and young girls who mediate this representation. This video has had a significant impact on young girls as they now believe sexual encounters are acceptable at a young age this could also explain why teenage pregnancy statistics are so high. In addition to this the media are constantly portraying negative representations that have an effect on youth identity however when these negative identities are formed they continue to project continuous negative representations to keep a variety of ideologies which shows that media representations are complex and not just straight forward. From a personal point of view music videos that has numerous amounts of explicit language and negative representations have become the norm to me due to the saturated inescapable forms of media and I believe this will continue until censorship fades away gradually.