The media habitually portrays young people in a negative way, some figures show young people (most of all boys) have been described in national newspapers as yobs (590 times) followed by thugs (250 times) and feral (96 times). These are just a few stereotypical words that the media choose to portray youth crime. People who read these words decode them into something negative and thus tend to label all young people the same. Labelling theorists suggest that acts are considered to be deviant only when society labels them as so. Media representations show youth crime as a moral panic that’s constant in society in order to stir and gain public attention.
In England and Wales, the minimum age of criminal responsibility is set at 10 years old, there are particularly high rates of youth custody. In 2009 the total cost of police and justice for youth offenders was approximately 4 billion pound. 70% of this spending was on policing the rest was on punishment. The total numbers of youths in custody in 2017 was around 870 this is a significant drop from 2040 in custody in 2012.
The socially constructed representation of youth’s today has somewhat acted as a catalyst to public an over-reaction. A study in Sweden by Anderson and Lundstrom (2007) focused on 2 national newspapers over a short period of time taking clippings youth crime articles. In these clippings teenage boys are typically shown as the perpetrator rather than a victim of crime. Other studies like this help to confirm that youth crime has always been a newsworthy topic (Faucher, 2009). It’s thought that form around the 1940’s onwards that adults perceive youths as having little or no morals and are causing significantly more trouble (Bostrom, 2001).
Although many claim that over 90% of crimes overall are committed by adults, adults fear becoming a victim of youth crime the most. Hallsworth and Young (2005) have looked at representation of youth crime, the term ‘gang culture’ was regularly used. They heavily criticised this term as newspapers who used it implied that it was growing problem without sufficient evidence that there was.
Following on from this the sociologists claimed that the public is fearful of youths who commits violent crimes. During this time, they argued that the recorded levels of crime differed. The Youth Justice Board showed in 2004 that there wasn’t an increase of youth crime since 2001. As the years have progressed in 2016/2017 the Youth Justice Board showed that almost 29,000 youths were either cautioned or convicted. This shows an impressive drop of 82% over the last 10 years, however, 42% of these youths end up reoffending. (Are they living up to their label as criminals?)
There is no doubt that the mass media have built a stereotypical image of youths, Stanley Cohen (2004) argues that from these youths have been labelled in a way to now be considered a sort of problematic subculture within society (Muncie, 2004).
However negative labelling hasn’t always been an issue, Faucher (2009) talks about how the discourse previously to describe deviant youths has altered from them being seen as ‘wayward’ to in recent years being labelled as ‘evil’. Cohen’s work of moral panics can contribute excessively to this. His work on the mods and rockers in the 1960’s shed light onto how 2 different conflicting youth subcultures sparked moral panic. Both groups were perceived as violent and troublemakers, every culture has adopted a set of values and rules. These rules and values help dictate how we are expected to act, however Henry (2009) says that behaving differently, looking different and thinking different in violation of societies norms can be seen as social deviance.
The Mods and Rockers both had their own sets of norms and values, the mods were focused on fashion and music dressing in clean cut outfits and listened to soul, ska and rhythm and blues music. The rockers opposed this as they had different tastes black leather jackets and black boots with common rock styled hair. Labelling theory suggests that acts are considered to deviant only when society labels them as such (Dotter, 2001: 3). In different cultures things may be considered normal but may be considered deviant in others.
In 1965 Cohen interviewed 2 pensioners who were visiting Brighton during holidays for 30 years. The 2 spoke about how people looked better off, few day-trippers, there were fewer young married couples, things had gotten much more expensive and of course there were more young people around (Cohen, 2011 :23). They described that the young people were easily visible on scooters, bikes, lying on beaches and camping in the cliffs. The eldery however, said that nothing had changed much. It seems from this interview that people who live in a environment are used to certain things that youths do compared to other towns etc.
Moral panics were first explored by Jock Young in 1971 the built upon by Cohen in 1972. Stanley Cohen had described it as an episode, person or group that became to be seen as a new phenomenon to the public eye, although these were threatening to society. The media take advantage of this new phenomenon by making negative stories etc. Poyting et al (2001) conducted a study of gangs in relation to ethnicity, media and moral panic framings proved newspapers with regular reports about these ‘gang problems’.
However, these newspapers treated the gangs as a new issue but youth fear and gang crimes are timeless issues. Essentially the media are constructing moral panics by giving original and unique twists on old stories (Welch et al, 2002). The label is then created through already stocked images and reported using dramatic headlines that reflect previous moral panics (Bartie, 2010: 319).
Because of negative media portrayal of youths when an act includes a bad reaction from society & the media the act is automatically viewed as deviant. Leading the individual(s) who committed the act to be labelled as such (Klein, 1986: 48). Labelling theorists note that are 2 different types of labelling, formal and informal. Formal labelling is produced through individuals of power, meaning that these are from people who make and enforce the law. Bernburg (2009) indentified police officers and politicians are the most common labellers because they have the power to prosecute deviant behaviours they observe. Informal labelling is made from individuals who have a close relationship with the victim, for example parents and friends.
In recent months however issues with gang in crime in London especially are prominently presented on the news, internet and newspapers. Sportswear fashion line Puma has in recent weeks been accused of glamourizing crime after hosting a gang and drug themed party in London during the recent gang related murders in Colindale. A London social worker raised that vulnerable young people are the most at risk of becoming victims of this type of violence are those associated with gangs and drugs (Telegraph Newspaper, 11/04/2018).
As a result of these types of exaggerated media portrayals of youth crime public opinion is very often distorted. The media in a sense create a demonised character that society can dislike and blame, even innocent youths have become a figure of public figure, anger and anxiety (Welch et al, 2002). A theory that seemed useful to support these ideas is the ‘Hypodermic Needle Theory’ and the ‘Decoding Approach’.
The hypodermic needle theory has implied that mass media has direct and powerful effects on its audience. The theory suggests that the mass media can influence a large group of people directly by injecting them with appropriate messages that are designed to trigger a desired response. In this case the media feed negative responses of youth crime. The media sees the audience as passive and that they end up thinking what they are told because there aren’t other sources of information telling them otherwise.
From a critical perspective of this theory though there is one main weakness. It is a very simplistic theory from the 1940s, changes to attitudes and beliefs are not always observable or easily measured. The audiences will not all interpret media the same some may think differently to others (Katz and Lazarfeld,1955). Also audiences in modern society are more sophisticated and are aware of how media construct their messages to be exaggerated and negative.
Following on from Katz and Lazarfeld’s point of thinking differently, Stuart Hall’s theory of encoding and decoding seems efficient. 3 different readers will take different thinking. Dominant reader: accepts the full reading, the person will fully accept what the author intended them to. Negotiated Reader: they will partly believe the reading but sometimes may modify in a way that reflects their own experiences and interests. Oppositional reader: the readers social position puts them completely opposite to the dominant readers, they completely reject the reading.
Hall was concerned with how much power the mass media had, it propagates some social values to then create dominant ideologies. It frames a public debate that surrounds certain issues. Hall also believes that the media create and define issues of public concern and interest through audience positioning.
Not only are youths in general labelled but their gender is labelled too especially teenage boys. A quantitative analysis conducted by Women in Journalism (WiJ) looked at the way teenage boys are portrayed in regional and national British newspaper stories 2008- 2009. 1000 teenage boys were interviewed about their perceptions of the way their age group is portrayed in the media (Cannon, 2011 :4). The main aim of this analysis was to dig deeper into why teenage boys had been branded as toxic and menaces and to identify how it had impact on the boys. Over 8000 news stories that involved teenage boys, over half of these had reported crime involvement. Out of all the boys involved with the research 85% of them believed that the media represented them in a bad light and 72% of them actually changed their behaviour as a consequence of the representation of them.
Interviews give a deeper insight into participants' construction of the social world. Bales (2001) used a focus group of participants fitting the criteria of being a parent and presented participants with a selection of newspaper articles all depicting youths in a positive light. Shockingly, several of the participants openly refuted the articles suggesting that the reporting was incorrect
The media no doubt has a lot of power over people as is accessable anywhere, they seem to act carelessly towards how they label youths and cause uneccesary moral panics. Adults felt the media had a strong influence on children. Children claimed that they were more influenced by their parents and families, adults claimed that children were more likely to believe the media and friends influenced them most.
There was some research conducted looking at how young people feel about the media, and about how they are represented. In 2006 the British Youth Council did a survey to find out young people’s views on how they are portrayed by the media. The survey had over seven hundred responses from 12-25 year olds (Clark et al). Amongst the key findings were that 98% felt that the media always, often or sometimes represents them as antisocial. More than four out of five thought that the media represents them as a group to be feared (Clark et al). The respondents felt this may cause older people to be fearful of them, and may alienate young people causing more antisocial behaviour.
Thus when the media publish stories of youth crime people with think differently and react differently to what they read. Some may empathize with how youths are being portrayed. As mentioned earlier audiences today know how the media exaggerate some issues. With regards to age also, different audience’s young adults in particular are more open minded than older people. They may have felt a victim of labelling themselves so they may choose to ignore implying the label upon youths.
Madge claims (2006:143) “Sensationalised images of youth predominate in the media and elsewhere, and display bias in the behaviour they report as well as the status of the children they depict. The well-behaved, well-adjusted ‘ordinary’ child may not be newsworthy but this does not explain the undue attention paid to negative messages about youth”. This quote taken quickly raises questions of why the media represent youths in such a bad way.
It seems the public want negative stories. Hallsworth and Young (2005) claim that politicians use any mention of youth crime as an opportunity to demonstrate their toughness on crime. In addition, they argue that 24 hour news updates means that the public always want to hear the latest news, and also that the more sensational stories are repeated endlessly, perhaps increasing their impact.
Head of BBC News Richard Mosey has stated that the news has to reflect reality and one problem is that “25 people doing something good is not a story, while one person doing something bad is”. However, as his comments show, the media doesn’t completely represent reality, as particular news stories are selected over others for coverage.
Although positive factors of youth crime in crime is often ignored, for example an online article by the Guardian (13/02/2018) went into detail about how the mayor of London has pledged 15 million pound to tackle youth crime in London. Education, sport and other cultural activities are being improved for the capitals most disadvantaged youths in order to steer youths away from crime and violence. 7 million has already been put in place for anti-knife and gang crime projects, this article shed a lot of positive light on improving youth crime but unfortunately it did not make popular news so few people seen the article.
There has been vast amounts of research looking separately at media discourses, content analysis of media and interviews into people’s perception of youth and crime, there is a niche in the research which leads to the presentation of this research which aims to combine both media and participant discourse analysis and the mutual relationship between these sources of information, with regard to the social construction of the moral panic surrounding youths.
The government has however been combating youth crime for years, but the methods used often involve control and punishment. This has shown to often be ineffective when trying to create deterrence.
Social exclusion caused by labelling etc. can lead to further embedding into criminal and deviant groups. There is a likelihood of youths reoffending depending on the labels that are placed on them. Self-fulling prophecy is a major issue amoungst labelling. If they are labelled as a deviant person then they will live up to that expection. The media and society need to be mindful of labeling youths as it often leads to further deviance.