Initial Ideas for Our own lesson

We could do an activity where we get the class to write down their views on british teens and ask them to write a short list of what they think.

And then get them to write a seperate list of what the older generation think of teenagers.

This will be an introduction of different ages and their stereotypes.

Our Xtranormal Video

Today Chloe and I created our xtranormal video for questions Two and Four. We are very pleased with the video as it is fun at the same time as being informative.


Suitz Movie
by: q1collect

Question Four: To what extent is human identity increasingly mediated?

Question Four - To what extent is human identity increasingly mediated? 

In the media the people in which are portraying individuals identity is actually the people creating the sources of media. Such as 'The Press' 'Television' 'Music' and many other media areas. Instead of letting the individuals represent themselves how they think they should be shown, the people who are writing the articles and programmes are the people giving their own representation of the identities.
 

David Gauntlett is a media theorist. He stated that you can only get the truth of identities if the people themselves are allowed to creatively represent themselves. Where as in the media the truth of the human identities is being twisted (mediated).

The television industry have to continuously make sure the images of characters within series and TV dramas are appealing to the audience, fitting in with a certain theme relating to the show, or the present day fashion. Despite this not necessarily being a fair/truthful representation the television industry do this because they know the stereotypical thoughts of teenagers will entice more viewers. 

 For example ‘Skins': within this programme Teenagers are portrayed as self- asorbed, followers, rebellious, greedy people that fail to see the real importance in life. In the first episode of Skins we see the storylines plotted out before us, buying drugs for a party and attempting to lose their virginity. The first storyline line we are introduced to tells us how Tony, is trying to help his mate, Sid, lose his virginity. This displays teenagers as sex crazed loonitics.The second storyline in which we are made aware of is of Sid and Tony trying to buy some drugs for a party in order to have a wild and crazy night. This shows how teenagers feel the need to put 'crap' into their bodies in order to have a good time.


So as you can see Skins is an example of a programme in which feels the need to represent all teenagers as a group of identities which are addicted to drugs, drink, sex and partying. These stereotypes are becoming increasingly popular to use in television programmes in todays world despite these stereotypes  not being the case for the majority of teenagers. 


In addition to this Documentaries are clearly based on real footage ,which in some ways makes the images displayed of teenagers in the program more interesting for the audience because  they would see it as a reflection of their true human identity. However producers of Documentaries can manipulate the audience by only choosing negative footage of teenagers to display.

The press industry also creates a stereotypical human identity for teenagers of the present day. For example the riots in 2011. The press chose specific images they wanted to display to the reader and the type of language they use to manipulate the reader to how they receive the information. 

Question 4) To what extent is human identity increasingly mediated.

Within David Gauntletts videos overall he was trying to show how you can only get a truthful representation of identities if you let them express themselves in a creative way. In this example it was the use of lego to represent the volunteers and show parts of their personalities and to show who they think they are themselves and how they want to be represented.

So therefore this will help us when answering the question 'To what extent is human identity increasingly mediated' in many ways. For example in the media the people in which are portraying individuals identity is actually the people creating the sources of media. Such as 'The Press' 'Television' 'Music' and many other media areas. So therefore instead of letting the individuals represent themselves how they think they should be shown, the people who are writing the articles and programmes are the people giving their own representation of the identities.

From this you can see that David Gauntlett stated that you can only get the truth of identities if the people themselves are allowed to creatively represent themselves. Where as in the media the truth of the human identities is being twisted (mediated).

Representing Identities - Media Theory

The guy I studied was David Gauntlett; who is the professor of Media and Communications at the University of Westminster, and his theory and the method he used to represent identities. His method consisted of getting the general public to create things as a way of exploring specific experiences and specific identities.

It consists of using visual methods such as drawings,collages and videos to get the brain thinking in a different way compared to using methods such as focus groups and interviews as the visual ways are more hands on to hope that the results will be more accurate and honest.

David Gauntlett states that humans are always thinking of more than one thing such as food, drink, work and gossip. So therefore for a researcher to focus on just one area it won't be as meaningful or descriptive compared to using creative methods which will allow people to express their own stories in a longer time period, it means you will get more meaningful results.

The video also states that the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty stated that we have a imbodied experience, we live in bodies and experience the world in bodies. And therefore from this it states that using research methods which will use our bodies to make thing will lead to a more realistic response.

From this David Gauntlett decided to collaborate with Lego Play which is an consultancy process which uses lego in order to explore issues in the organisations. So David Gauntlett used it for social research. The research process consisted of the participants getting to use lego - thinking and building in metaphors (For example to build a creature) - which will lead to building identities (For example then build this creature in to what you feel like on Friday morning). So the person would go from creating something literally to going to a feeling. And from this you would gradually get deeper until you say build a model of your own identity. So David Gauntlett states that you will get more from this representation of the persons' identity as it can be represented as a whole instead of a list and then from this you would add influences that they personally have.

This process would be conducted with a variety of people from different backgrounds, such as architects,   unemployed, charity managers, students, norweigan students. This is so that you get a diverse spread of people not to just group and stereotype them. The models will allow these groups to express themself personally.

This method could be used for many things such as experiences in specific areas such as hospitals, schools or an illness. So for this example it was used to explore how people think about their own self-identity.

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.