Media and Collective Identity

“Identity is complicated- everybody thinks they’ve got one”

David GauntlettDavid Gauntlett

“A focus on Identity requires us to pay closer attentionto the ways in which media and technologies are used in everyday life and their consequences for social groups”

David BuckinghamDavid Buckingham

Task with neighbour

•Make a list of all the ‘stars’ created by internet videos such as ‘Star Wars Kid’

Internet Stars

What do you need for the exam?

• A Social group as a case study (such as “The Working Class”)

• Examples of various representations

• Refer to at least two different media

• Examples: Film and Newspapers; TV Drama and Magazines; Internet and TV Documentary; TV News and Newspapers etc.

• Understanding of and reference to theory / cultural critics

• Stan Cohen; Owen Jones; David Buckingham; David Gauntlett

• Realism; Representation; Audience; Institution; Ideology; Stereotyping; Moral Panic; “Folk Devils” etc.

• Your own voice! But don’t forget to show both Perspective and Context

Michael Wesch

•Ethnography of YouTube

•Analysis of the community

•Analysis of cultural phenomenon

Henry Jenkins

• Interpretive communities

•Fans as ‘cultural producers’

•Cultural identity

- something in which we actively participate

•Cultural convergence

• Is this incident concerned with the representation of Sesame Street

• Or the representation of Osama Bin Laden

• Or both?

What is ‘Collective Identity’?

•Representation: the way reality is ‘mediated’ or ‘re-presented’ to us

•Collective Identity: the individual’s sense of belonging to a group (part of personal identity)

•A level

A level Media Specification

How do contemporary media represent different collective groups in different ways?

•Our focus : The Working Class

•Research:

•Diverse representations including fiction, non-fiction and self-representation

•For the exam, your own examples from the group you are studying will gain you marks

How does contemporary representation compare with that of the past?

•Contemporary Examples: The Working Class on TV / online, in The Press and in film

•Examples needed for similarity and difference

•Examples from the past: Film, The Press and TV are the most easily accesible

what are the social implications of different media representations of groups of people?

•Stereotyping: what is its impact on The Working Class and on the Public’s perception of The Working Class?

•What power does the audience have to ‘resist’? What about ‘Self Representation’

•How do we ‘measure’ the representations we encounter?

to what extent is human identity increasingly ‘mediated’ ?

•Does an increasing media lead to increasing mediation in terms of representations?

•What about re-presentation by others / by selves?

David Gauntlett

•Other ways of reading ‘Identity’

•Gauntlett’s lego project

Identity Online

Identity OnlineIdentity online- The end of privacy?

Community online- collective thought

Memes

• Definition online:

“A catchphrase or concept that spreads quickly from person to person via the

Internet”

“Gingers”

•Group: people with red hair

•Representation: ‘Gingers’

How might we interpret this representation?

Dr Who

News coverage and moral panics: dual concerns:

• The Working (Under) Class as ‘deviant threat’

• Benefit Scroungers

• Marauding ‘Chavs’

• Uneducated

• Violent

• Single Mothers

Representations of The Working Class in The News

The “New Right”

•How would “The New Right” respond to this list of deviant threats?

Moral panics: Representations of The Working Class in the past

• Fiction Film:

•“Brief Encounter”

•“It Always Rains on Sunday”

•“Saturday Night and Sunday Morning”

• Television

•“Coronation Street”

•“Upstairs Downstairs” (Original series)

Martin Barker

•Work on history of moral panics

•Challenges news coverage’s simplistic view

A Haunt of Fears• 18th Century theatre

• 19th century ‘penny dreadfuls’

• Music Halls 1890s

• Silent movie crime films

• Horror Comics 1950s

• Rock and Roll

• Video Nasties 1980s

DO these Sound familiar?

• They wore peaked caps, neck scarves, bell-bottom trousers, and a hairstyle cropped close to the scalp, with a "donkey fringe" over the forehead.

• There were pitched battles between rival gangs, armed with iron bars, knives, powerful catapults, and even guns. They patrolled their neighbourhoods shouting obscenities and pushing people down.

The first ‘hooligans’ riots in Aug 1898

Report: ‘The Needs of Youth’

• "Relaxation of parental control, decline of religious influence, and the movement of masses of young people to housing estates where there is little scope for recreation and plenty for trouble ... The problem is a serious challenge, the difficulty of which is intensified by the extension of freedom which, for better or worse, has been given to youth in the last generation."

This quote comes from 1939 and represents working class youths

Contemporary moral panics

Can you think of more recent examples of Moral Panics of any sort?

Contemporary moral panics

•The hoodie and youth as threat

•Hip hop/gangsta rap

• Islamic ‘terrorists’

•Videogame violence

•Sexualisation of children

Recent Report

Alison Mcleod

Angela McRobbie

•Researches young women and subculture

•Feminist approach questioning ideas about representation and identity

Representations of The Working Class on TV

•“The Jeremy Kyle Show”

•“Ladette to Lady”

•EastEnders

•“Benidorm”

“The Jeremy Kyle Show”

•What issues in the representations of The Working Class does ‘The Jeremy Kyle’ Show’ raise?

•Who watches it?

• For what ‘pleasures’

•How do different audiences respond to it?

Benidorm

•Which cultural stereotypes are used in “Benidorm”?

•What is the purpose of this programme (beyond simply being ‘entertainment’?

Different audience responses

• How would the following audiences respond to either programme?

•A Teacher

•A building site laborer

•A Psychologist

•A TV Producer

•A Bank Manager

• Do we simply make the meaning we want to make from texts?

• Interpretive communities

Summarywhat ‘Collective Identity’can mean

•Not just representations by mainstream media

•Remember the use of self-construction by users of the media

•Youtube, Facebook etc.

•Communities formed from shared identity: age, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, cultural values, political ideas etc

Tackling exam questions

1

•What does the question mean?

•What can you use for the answer?

•How can you ‘meet the rubric’ of two media and past, present and future?

2

•SELECT your examples

•ORDER your argument

•PLAN your response

Advice on answers

• Know your case study

• Keep hunting out your own examples

• Adapt them to the question

• Look at both sides of any argument

• Refer to critics / theorists

Analyse the ways in which the media represent one group of people you have studied

• Case study of The Working Class

• Two or more media for examples:

• TV drama and news, or Film and The Press etc.

• News and moral panics (past and present)- Barker / McRobbie

• TV sympathetic portrayal but still ‘constructed’ (present)

• Facebook, Youtube and self representation- Wesch (future?)

• To what purpose are all these images constructed and for what audiences?

“the media do not construct collective identity, they merely reflect it” Discuss.

• What does collective identity mean?

• What’s the difference between construction and reflection: Mediation

• Two or more media: Film (past), TV and online

• Case study examples: Construction of ‘The Working Class’ from “The Jeremy Kyle Show” and other TV through memes (present). Draw upon Wesch

• Audience understandings constructing meaning: ‘Interpretive Communities’

• Use Jenkins’ ideas on active audiences throughout (future?) and Gauntlett on identity

Mark Scheme

• 20 marks for Explanation, analysis, argument

• 20 marks for use of examples

• 10 marks for terminology (including ‘theory’)