Media Flashcards
Meads study (I and Me)
Mead looks at how the the media can affect the ‘I’ of someone and force them into an identity which the affects the ‘me’ and becomes their genuine internal identity.
What is a moral panic?
An exaggerated over-reaction by society to a perceived problem - usually associated with a deviation from the accepted norms and values of society. The problem is usually amplified by the media until it is out of proportion.
Stanley Cohen’s folk devils (study)
He found that young people are often presented as a problem by the media. They play a key role in sensationalizing and exaggerating the threat that they pose, they become ‘folk devils’ evil people who are threatening to our society. The medias moral panics can cause deviance amplification in which a real problem is created out of nothing.
Mods and Rockers on Brighton beach (example)
Cohen looked into the feud on Brighton and used qualitative research methods such as participant observation and interviews. He found that the police claimed there was a couple small fights but nothing much, this was in complete disproportion to what the media had claimed has been going on.
Jock Young (study)
He studied marijuana users in Notting Hill in the London in the late 1960’s. He found that police perceptions of marijuana users were negative and this led to a crackdown on these groups. The labeling made users feel different, causing them to withdrawal from society and accentuating the traits that the police accused them of having.
Thornton and McRobbie (sociologists) AO3
They suggest that moral panics are less influential in contemporary society. Media saturation has led to elements of deviant behavior becoming part of the mainstream culture eg, drill rap, and rave music.
Alexander ‘The Asian Gang’ (study)
Studied 14-16 year old youths in Bengali during the 1960’s riots. The reality is that they did fight and have some loyalty to a group, but the groups shifted and changed a lot. She argues that there was a myth of the Asian Gang which was reinforced by the media + islam o phobia. Teachers picked up on the stereotypes who labeled Asian friends as a ‘gang’.
Brown, rave culture (study)
The media focused a lot of ecstasy and rave culture linked to wider concerns about youth cultural decline in values. News reports amplified rave culture because it publicized it and attracted more teens.
Fawbert, hoodies (Study)
He did content analysis about the news reporting on hoodies. He found that they were banned from some shopping centers and ‘hoody’ became a shorthand for deviant thugs wearing hoods. Public opinion thought that youth crime was increasing but that wasn’t true.
Abrams, (Sociologist)
Found that youth culture was maintained by the media because youths had more spending power and therefore businesses modeled themselves to apply to youths.
Abrams ‘Teenage consumer spending in 1959’ (Example)
He found that teenagers accounted for 5% of all consumer spending, 60% of male teens bought alcohol weekly, working class and middle class teens were economic equals (which meant that working class males actually spent more on average then middle class males).
Pearsons (Study)
His research found that in the 19th century, social concern about rowdy youths or ‘hooligans’ led to sensationalist newspaper headlines and campaigns denouncing their behavior as ‘alien’ and ‘un british’ and even blaming it on the hot weather on the August bank holiday in 1898. Many crimes related to violence were reported with the ‘hooligan’ tag, whether or not they were actually youth or gang related.
Young (Study)
Looked at the interactions between the police and hippies. Found that the police saw the hippies as scruffy idle ‘pot heads’. They brought these meanings to any interactions they had with the hippies which when became a central part of the hippies identity. Their deviancy had been amplified.
Young (Study)
Coined the concept ‘bulimic society’ and argues that society is unhealthy because we are socialized to worship money status and success by the media which leads to mass consumption, however many are excluded from achieving those things. This leads to an ‘intensity of exclusion’ by the underclass who may feel humiliation, anger, frustration, and deprivation.
Example to go with Young’s study of a ‘bulimic society’. (Example)
Many people in the underclass, or that are in poverty, may feel humiliation or frustration on christmas as they cannot afford to buy the cultural norm of gift giving, which may lead to exclusion. Furthermore, the pressure for women to buy beauty products may cause resentment and othering.
