Youth and Culture

What is Youth Culture ?

• A specific culture generated by and dispersed via

media artifacts and information technologies

• Specifically artifacts addressing, depicting, and

negotiating teenagers and young adults 14-25

• Novels, TV programs, music, fashion, films, games

etc.

All Media Products

have an Angle

Tech-savvy and

engaged

Increased purchasing power

Increasing product

sales and community

building

Industrialized Globalism

???

• Imperialism

• Ethnocentric

• Proponents of Diversity

• Hybridization

• Postmodern

Homogenous & Diverse

Where

When

A cultural Community…

• Is always based on access to the media artifacts

• Is/was bound by:

• Language

• Media access/exposure

• Policies and legislature

Anderson: “…nation-ness is the most universally

legitimate value in the (…) life of our time.”

A community is:

• Imagined: unknown boundaries/participants

• Limited: though intangible, they exist

• Sovereign: community generated and maintained

rules

• Language, signs, hierarchies

• Community sense of comradeship due to

community participation

• Origins of youth culture 1950s

• Shift in regulation/industry interest/prolonged

adolescents

• Good Kids and Bad Kids for whom and by whom

• More time and space to develop = rise in youth

culture

• Themes important to young adults take center stage

Studying Youth Culture

• Television Studies multidiscipline approach

• Industry, cultural context, content, audience, policies

• UK Skins Episodes 1 + 2