Footballers... Teenagers... Old People... Chavs... Ethnic Minorities... - these are all examples of collective identities. In fact, the list is endless.
Media and collective identity means how the media interprets different groups of people But what is Human identity? It's the set of behavioral or personal characteristics by which an individual is recognizable as a member of a group.
Identities are represented through contemporary media in a number of ways, whether it be through TV, Radio, Press, Film or Internet. The most topical representation at the moment is of British youths. With the rise of Teen dramas such as Skins, Misfits and The Inbetweeners, teenagers are constantly being represented negatively and positively. We have to also consider the coverage of the London riots, which sparked a huge negative representation of these adolescents. Newspapers had pages full of rampaging teens, creating explosions and battering police cars, aswell as bold headlines to create a massive negative representation of the specific group. Obviously the representation was subsequently generalized throughout the whole of the collective.
So where did this representation come from? The British TV Drama Skins hit TV was screened in 2007 and created a stir amongst critics, parents and young people themselves. The show, which is written with help of youths, focus' on controversial story-lines such as drug abuse, mental illness, sexuality and death. The program highlights what youths get up to when at Sixth Form College and many viewers find the representation very realistic and believable. For example one show started with scenes of clubs full of underage teens drinking heavily and taking class A drugs - the result was a death of a girl on ecstasy. This instantly gave teenagers a negative representation just from this scene. Throughout the episode it was also made apparent that characters skipped lessons, got into fights and slept around. One scene showed a couple having sex in a hospital - was this showing the collective group as irresponsible and inconsiderate. Skins did have its positives too. The end of the episode showed a character bonding with his family after using his religion to understand his feelings and thoughts. This representation seems to show that teenagers are just curious and will eventually come to their senses.
But the nature of the show isn't the first of its kind. 80's BBC drama Grange Hill was primarily a tamed version of Skins. Relationships, sexuality and drug abuse was spotlighted throughout series' and at one point the show was asked to be "toned" down due to such controversial publicity.
Newspapers also represent teenagers negatively, particularly during the London riots in 2011. We observed that the majority of the negative representation was coming from 'Redtops' (e.g The Sun, Daily Mirror and Daily Star). We noticed that the more sophisticated newspapers (e.g The Guardian, The Times and Daily Telegraph) focussed on the incident itself rather than targeting the groups responsible. The 'Redtops' headlines' purpose was to shock the reader, for example: "Rioters aged 7" and "Olympics girl, 18 'Trashed Cop Car'. whereas the more sophisticated newspapers purpose was more intended to inform, rather than to make judgements, for example, "The Anarchy Spreads". The more intellectual newspapers accepted the incident and tried to figure out why it had happened. Emile Durkheim tries to explain crime by arguing that when collective conscious and values are unclear it can cause 'anomie'. Anomie is defined as a state of norm-lessness - where society doesn't understand or share the same clear goals anymore. Emile Durkheim's arguments can be clearly seen within the riots, society didn't feel they shared the same goal as the government.
You could argue that teen TV drama's has had an affect on the on the way that young people learn the values of society, and are partly responsible for anti-social behaviour within teens. For example: in the pilot of the hit teen TV drama, Misfits, aggression is a constant theme throughout the episode, particularly against their probation worker. From the start of the episode the main characters are seen not listening to and swearing at their probation worker, implementing an anti-authority value into the audience. Judith Butler argues that people take on different forms of their personality whilst around different types of people - she calls this Performativity. For example: people act cocky and aim to impress when around their friends, but around authority people act sensible and try hard not to offend. However, when the values of acting in an acceptable way around authority (e.g police) break down when influenced by shows such as Misfits - which follow a group of young offenders - and Skins. A video which was highlighted in the Press, shows how this transfers into real life. You can see a group of police officers attempting to fight off a number of youths in London, before a whole mob comes out of nowhere and attacks them. This could be used as an example of how teenagers are influenced by these shows and also how the press used performativity to show the riots.
To conclude it seems very obvious that the representation of teenagers throughout the press and television is usually negative - with violence, sex and drugs always being associated with the collective identity. Obviously this is partly because it makes great television and draws in customers, yet it does not seem right that media business' should do this at all teenager's expense. So where next? It seems that constant negative coverage across the media will only make things worse. Teenagers will probably adhere to the negative things associated with them because of the stereotype being created. It seems simple, but the only way out of this situation is to give teenagers some good representation and a voice to disprove the stereotype. The likes of the British Youth Council and UK Youth Parliament are attempting to help, but without the aid of TV and Press, it is unlikely anything will change. Perhaps in the future we will see a variety of positive representations of the teenage collective in all media forms, which should remove the likelihood of more violence and improve the stereotype of youths all together.
