3) What are the social implications of different media representations of groups of people?

Inital response to question three:

So the collective identity we have chosen is teenagers within Britain. The media sources will be both the press and television. So for this question we will be studying how the media represent teenagers and how this has an affect on society and groups of people.

Because of teenagers within Britain being represented so negatively through both the press and the television this affects the society in many ways. For example because all the press headlines are always stating dramatic and negative events about teenagers it makes people stereotype all young people within Britain in this way. 'commit crimes; dont care about anyone but themselves; always drunk/partying; unemployed' these are all stereotpical thoughts which the general public of teenagers because of this negative representation.

 As well as this the negative representation makes the elder generation fear all teenagers and make them suspicious even though not all teenagers are actually acting in this way. In todays society the public are very judgemental of groups of people if they are represented within the media in a negative way. So therefore because of teenagers always being portrayed in a poor way it means that the public will judge the younger generation.

But not only will it affect other groups of people it will also have an affect on the teenagers themselves. Due to the media representing them in such a negative way the teenagers will start to feel negative themselves and therefore will live up to the poor expectations of the public.

The media representing teenagers in this way also makes teenagers wary of other teenagers, 'nearly a third said they are always or often wary of teenage boys they don't know. And 51% of teenager boys said this was due to the media stories about boys. Compared to 40% which said it was from a bad experience of other teens'. So from these statistics it clearly shows us that the press representing teens in this negative way are actually have a large impact onto teenagers themselves.

A young researcher who took part in the project, Naushin Shariff, said: "I have made heads turn and had adults cross the road when I wear my hood up because I was feeling cold.
"I am not an aggressive person, nor a 'feral youth', but am treated like one. It is only a minority that cause trouble, yet the media seem to label us all.” So as you can see because of the way the media represents teenagers it means that teenagers clearly think they are being labelled as all teenagers being violent etc, when really it's just the minority which is extremely unfair.