After reading all 3 articles it was more than clear to me that the dominant hegemony portrayed teenagers to be ‘yobs’. The negative comments in comparison with the positive ones was very one sided. Article one states in detail about vodka eyeballing and interviews a previous university student, Melissa. She then talks about her once entertaining experience of this ‘quick buzz’, the article makes it clear that it is almost religious for students to do such activity when out drinking, this immediately makes the audience relate this kind of culture with university students not only juxtaposing their success of making it into university but also how they are portrayed to the public. Article one uses adjectives such as “out of control” “out of hand” and “irresponsible” to generalise youth of today. Although the article Is criticizing students for their actions this could also encourage many youngsters reading the article to join in with the latest drinking game, almost portraying it as a positive thing to do as if you read through the article you get an understanding that ‘the privately educated daughter of financiers’ Melissa has been rather successful, ‘..First-class English degree’, disregarding what she’s done in her past. On the other hand the article does mention the effects of ‘eyeballing’ which could possible deter people being eager to try it. Although article one has pin pointed activities such as these just to students it doesn’t mean to say that all students do this it also doesn’t make clear that other people of older ages may also being ‘eyeballing’ but yet again teenagers are portrayed negatively.
Article 2 starts with more of an accusing title, again stereotyping teenagers but this time with a piece of clothing! Although the title states ‘teenagers’ the articles seems to refer mainly to boys who wear their hoods up, teenage boys. Relating their choice of clothing to crime. This kind of stereotype has stuck with teenagers as not only do we see gangs in films all with their hoods up but also on the news when they are targeting teenagers, take the riots for example all the ‘yobs’ had their hoods in order to hide their identification. The article mentions that teenagers are scared of one another, which to an extend could be true but in a lot of cases it could also be an interpretation/exaggerated truth of youth today. The article says how the press have caused the nation to believe that “the country is awash with yobs, thugs, sick, feral, hoodies, louts and heartless, evil, frightening scum.” Not only is this not true for a large majority of teenagers but it is also very self demeaning for many, as the article mentions the news never makes a big deal out of the positive things teenagers do such as ‘Duke of Edinburgh’. This fits in well with Stan Cohen’s theory of the mass media labelling young people, telling them how to behave therefore their behaviour is a response to being unjustly labelled.
The third article is about how children, ‘pre-teens’, are now over sexualised. In contrast with the other articles this doesn’t seem to be attacking teenagers yet the retailers and parents who are involved with this “corporate paedophilia”. The article seems to be protecting ‘pre-teens’ and creating sympathy for them portraying the adults who ‘groom’ their children and dress them in ‘vulgar’ clothing to be irresponsible. This provides us, as the audience, with a clear vision as to why teenagers now days are growing up so quickly and behaving so inappropriately and it seems to be all down to the parents. By being sexualised at a very young age and being open to explicit imagery such as films and games totally ignoring the provided rating.
In conclusion the negative view the press have on teenagers in this day as age isn’t kept a secret, yet they are very open about it making it prone for people’s opinions to be easily changed because of the extremely negative media involving crime and disorderly behaviour meaning the representation applies to all youths. This puts frights into the public making them unable to trusts teenagers as well as always expecting the worst.
