Youth Newspaper- Analysis

Context




















Planning

• The above papers suggest the way in which youth can be violent and aggressive.  
• They are presented as rebellious "YOB"s and founders of "Anarchy".  
• This is not an accurate repersetnaion of youth and supports Cohen's Moral Panic Code which leads to negative events creating a lasting stereotype.

Essay

The newspapers above are examples of youth displayed as public villains by media outlets.  The purpose of these newspaper articles is to display youth a dangerous and rebellious which sparks Cohen's Moral Panic Theory in which one events used to spark hatred to an individual cultural subgroup.  

Both of the newspapers featured above are guided by right-wing views however are in fact targeted to the working classes whom are generally left-wing supporters.  This is an example of the hypodermic syringe theory in which the public are "injected" injected with views which they may not normally support, through media consumption.

The Sun has a front page created predominately from image opposed with limited information.  This design is employed to spark interest in the article without actually providing extensive detail in order to make the reader make a snap judgement without knowing all of the facts.  This kind of snap judgement is important to note as it leads to a mob mentality against an entire race and is a prime example of Cohen's Moral Panic Theory, this states that a stereotype about a culture or subgroup is formed from the media coverage of single shocking event.  The fact that "ANARCHY" is shown as the main title of the piece with a large level of contrast between the white of the text and black and red of the fire draws the reader in and imprints the idea that youth are dangerous and anarchists (ideas which are supported by theorist Ann Gould).

The second Newspaper article from the Daily Mirror has a busier front page however roughly 1/3 of the page space is again taken up by an image of flames and chaos with youth's silhouetted against the flames.  The symbolism of this image shows youth as being dark and chaotic due to the connotations between hell and sining and flames.  This symbolism implants the idea that youth are dangerous before the reader has started to delve deeper into the story and again the title "YOB RULE" (a play on words of mob rule) is shown with high levels of contrast in order to make it stand out.  The use of "YOB" shows the fact that youth are viewed as an angry mob which links to Ann Gould's theory of youth as rebellious and the artificial tribe.

For the reasons listed above both newspapers are attacking youth and shaping them into folk devils who are to blame for the riots however youths were not the only people to blame for the 2011 riots.