Week 4
Discuss how youth media formats are linked to youth as a market segment.
Find an example or describe a recent instance where consumer products and the media are involved in articulating a particular youth culture.
Media formats such as the internet, WAP technology, television, radio, magazines and student / university mediums are linked to youth as a market segment as they use times/places/sites highly popular to youth, to market consumer products which youth are likely to select and then purchase. For example, recently there was a spate of advertisements used on free to air television that promoted the use of the Nokia mobile phone. In line with current youth culture where the mobile phone is one of the most highly sought after possessions, these advertisements put across the message that if you have a Nokia mobile phone you will be popular and in some ads there we suggestions that you would be sexually fulfilled.
Week 5
What is the second media age?
When did it ‘begin’. Does it signal the slow death of TV, Radio and the Press? Have youth abandoned first media age media?
The second media age differs from the first media age (television, radio, newspapers), in that it overcomes the previously one-way nature of mass communication (one author, many recipients). It encompasses multimedia and new media such as the internet.
Although the internet has offered the possibility to integrate the media that made up the first media age, youth are still avid consumers of first media age media. Computers and similar devices facilitated the second media age have yet to become affordable and portable enough to be utilised in day-to-day settings that involve constant movement – such as driving etc.
Week 6
What comes first: media or subculture? Outline the interrelations between subcultures and the media.
Describe how youth subcultures have been understood as resistant.
Discuss the relationship between ‘counter-culture’ and mainstream culture.
Youth is greatly influenced by the media, which acts as an arena for sub-cultural youth to propagate its ideas, beliefs, and values in, leading to the formation of a distinctive social category of youth. However, the formation of youth as a social category is additionally influenced by factors other than the media. These factors which include different social contexts, such as peers and popular culture must not be overlooked. These factors have the potential to also significantly influence the formation of youth as a social category along with media.
Week 7
Watch an episode or two of a youth soap opera such as Neighbours, Home and Away or Passions. Make a list of qualities, activities and interests which are attributed to the male and female characters. Which of these are deemed normal and natural for each gender, and which are presented as abnormal, exceptional or unconventional.
Identify one or two dominant binary oppositions associated with male/female characters in a soap opera episode.
After watching a few episodes of the youth soap opera Neighbours it was found that male characters fitted very closely to the stereotypical male and female characters to female stereotypes. Females were often shown to be more socially intelligent, making good judgements on issues that affect other people especially on an emotionally level. Males on the other hand were seen as more insensitive, especially in social interaction. Females were shown as gossiper and placed in traditional female roles – housewife, hairdresser, and schoolteacher; however, one character had an interest in mechanical matters, which is seen as untypical for a female character. Males were shown as being interested in sports and had higher paying jobs than most of the women, such as hotel owner, doctors, lawyers etc. Also, all of the characters where white Anglo-Saxon. There was a theft in one of the episodes, as in traditional stereotypical definitions, the thief was male and the victim was female.
Are young people interested in news?
Young people are interested in news to a degree because it informs them of different types of events (e.g. dramatic, criminal, sporting etc) and thus imparts new knowledge. However, the lack of focus news bodies have on the development, achievements, and political activity of young people risks turning the young away from news sources. Sport is focused on of course, which often involves youth, however, the main content of factual information is usually aimed at people over the age of 25 (such a business men and women).
Week 8
Describe the facets of Ari’s identity in Head On, and the contexts in which he shifts between different identities.
Explain how the character of Ari problematises simple binary accounts of identity.
Ari is a confussed 19 year old who has trouble reconciling his ethnic identity with his homosexuality. He tries to integrate and assimilate into somewhere, but cannot seem to fit in anywhere. He cannot find words to describe his own sense of self or identity. His negative self-definition leads him to taking solace in anonymous gay and straight sexual acts and drug use. He confronts both his sexuality and repressive Greek upbringing by setting out on a restless exploration of his sexual identity; it is an anxious search to find himself.
Week 9
Find an online zine/blog/homepage which reflects your particular interests. What information does it give you that do not go through the commercial media?
Describe the ways in which that zine/blog/hopepage constructs an alternative youth identity to those in the mainstream media.
The Dawson’s Creek website, although a mainstream television programme, gives additional information that does not make its way through traditional media. There are specific areas of the show that fans can examine in more depth such as actor profiles, information on future episodes of the show, and a message board to facilitate interaction between fans that may live on opposite site of the world but share a similar interest in the programme.
How does reality TV resist scripted programming?
Reality TV such as Big Brother resists scripted programming in the way they, instead of professional actors with lines, relies on ‘ordinary’ people to fuel the programme. However, this ‘non scripted’ programming is dependent on many other aspects of film production, such as editing and artificial environment, to keep the show at an entertaining level.
Week 11
How is online life considered to disrupt stable identity?
Report on your personal experiences online and describe the ways in which you might represent yourself differently.
In online life, the ability for a person to change from male to female, from young to old in the stroke of a key is effortless. Identities can be manipulated so much without observing users realising it that a conversation with a 12-year-old boy could infact be a conversation with a 35-year-old housewife. Identities are no longer stable entities, but interchangeable like the latest fashions. Personally, I have represented myself online on different occasions as being of a different age, or different aesthetic appearance. Modification of identity can be liberating but demoralising also. The need for people to fit in to social norms can clearly be seen by interactions on the internet. Even though there is anonymity in most online interaction, in my experiences people readily present themselves as aesthetically pleasing, maybe in the hope of gaining wider acceptance in the online community.
