- Highlight what collective identity is and distinguish between collective identity and representation.
- Why is mediation important with regards to representation?
- In what way does hegemony influence mediation?
Within society it is important to have a form of identification and a place to belong. Institutes of socialisation all help in forming this identity; some such institutions includes peers but also significantly the mass media. Collective identity is an important form of self-identification of social groups influenced by their shared norms and values which is different from representation that is defined by the media biased stereotypical ideas of a social group. Mediation is an intervention in a dispute in order to resolve it which the mass media is often strongly involved in, especially within political matters. However, the danger of the power of the mass media is that it is an important cause of hegemony within society. Hegemony is when the norms ad values of one social group is forced on to another social group.
The above newspaper articles are perfect examples of youth representation within the media. The Sun is a right wing newspaper owned by the media conglomerate giant Rupert Murdoch with affiliations to the Conservative party and therefore such perspectives. The second newspaper, The Daily Mirror, is a left wing working class tabloid who rally support for the Labour party.
The Sun employs a text to image ratio of around 1:2 with the image of the violent youth taking precedence over the newspaper; this conforms to Ann Gould's theory of youth as violent due to the hidden identity and fire raging in the background. Furthermore, the graphological feature of the typeface "ANARCHY" being both capitalised and an enlarged font causes moral panic, as coined by Albert Cohen, due to the prominence of the word meaning a state of disorder without recognition of the controlling authorities. Additionally, the pre-modifying adjective of "MINDLESS" before the word "VIOLENCE" emphasises the assumption of all youth subculture to be sharing the norms and values of those at the riots who were not necessarily there for the political purpose; this is the false representation within the media. Moreover, the use of the colour red in the sub heading links to the colour of the flame and draws viewer attention to the statements that criticise youth subculture. This particular newspapers outlook on the situation is critical and therefore its mediation is one from a perspective social order as opposed to the actions of the few youth which is an example of disorder. Finally on the subject of The Sun, hegemony is evidenced in this headline due to the bullet point "PM jets back" which presents the Conservative prime minister in a heroic position but also shows the readerships class status due to the lexicon used; the word "jets" compared to the more working class newspaper, The Daily Mirror's "flies". Furthermore, the societal class position of the readership of this newspaper is also evidenced through the language used such as "ANARCHY" compared to the colloquial slang of "YOB" and therefore the norms and values of the media owner is shared through mediation on the subject of the riots.
On the other hand, The Daily Mirror is a working class tabloid newspaper with a readership from a lower societal position than The Sun. The text to image ratio is not that different from the other featured newspaper although the image is more documentary in style rather than focusing solely on the youth representation. This however contrasts to the head word of the head line "YOB" which means a rude, cosy and aggressive youth; this temporal context was over-reported on in the newspapers which placed youth as the folk devils of the event which lead to a public moral panic about youth as anarchic beings separate from the norms and values of wider society. Additionally, the lexis used is more informal such as the word "Cops" rather than police. From this perspective, this newspaper is subtly less critical of the featured youth by not relying on the image of a stereotypical deviant youth. This may be due to biased understanding that the youth who were preset during the riots were more likely to be of a working class.
Therefore, both newspapers are critical of youth and influence the masses somewhat with their statements. The Hypodermic Syringe Model states that a passive audiences is injected with daily doses of media that complete influence their norms and values which therefore supports the ideas of hegemony. However, the other two approaches of The Decoding Approach and The Uses and Gratifications Approach challenge this. The Decoding Approach states that active audiences are able to decode their own messages from a media source whilst The Uses and Gratifications Approach explains that active audiences use the media to fulfil their own needs; these needs include: entertainment, information, identity and relationships.
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