Critical investigation: Tutorial

• Your issue is absolutely outstanding and brilliantly contemporary. It’s also important and there should be plenty of research out there that looks at political and media engagement. The issue is twofold: what is your text going to be? And can we avoid making the investigation focused on new/digital media – as this is prohibited due to it being an exam topic.

• Potential texts: EU referendum BBC Question Time. This would potentially work really well. Another option: News and current affairs television during the 2016 EU Referendum campaign. Be aware that 2,000 words isn’t much – don’t take on too much to analyse (in this regard, Question Time would be an easier approach).

• Your research plan is going to be brilliant – especially when I tell you about all the new books I’m ordering. Particularly look at Media power and politics – academics like Curran, Seaton, Shirky, Jenkins, Freedman, Fenton.

• One critical part is your title or question – work on this and we’ll go over it at the next tutorial. 

• Linked production – TV documentary (Newsnight style) on impact of cuts on young people. Sounds perfect.

• Next steps: finish project proposal and start building a comprehensive research plan.

• Post this to your blog with a brief plan for what you will work on in the next 10 days.

PLAN

• Work on and finish project proposal
• Find more relevant media texts online to analyse
• Read relevant sources, especially books
• Contact people for linked production before hand rather than nearer the time of the deadline

Critical investigation: Project proposal

Project proposal

Working title

To what extent did the media coverage of the EU referendum affect the engagement of young people in politics?

Angle

The angle that I want to focus on is how the people in power in the media industry stereotype and what kind of connotations they make about the young people. How would this then affect the way young people engage in politics? The main angle I would focus on is that young people are negatively shown to everyone and this makes young people very disinterested in politics which in turn doesn't make for an accurately representative election or a democratic turnout.

Hypothesis

The youthful population was vastly misrepresented, generally dismissed and not listened to. This essentially affected the engagement of young people in a negative manner as a majority of them didn't vote and adopted a defeatist attitude. 

Linked production piece

Documentary that focuses on the recent Ealing Council cuts in the youth sector. Interviews with various management in Ealing Council, e.g. Leader of the Council, local councillor. Also interviews with people from BYC regarding their work with young people during the EU referendum. Finally, interviews of young people that were part of the youth service and also youth workers that worked with the young people in said projects.

MIGRAIN

Media Language/Form

The coverage is being broadcast for almost 24 hours and since it's being broadcast on a national level, all the presenters and guests are very formal in their suits and business attire. This shows the level of professionalism and the serious aspect of the event. The settings of the interviews and broadcast are mainly the BBC studios which again help with the brand identity but also show the level of professionalism. 

There were the usage of different medium shots for the various presenters and interviewers. It's interesting to note however that for the interviews, the guest is always in one half of the frame and the half where the guest is looking out of frame towards is always empty. This is a convention that is often used to stimulate the visual idea of an off screen interviewee and creates this sense of dialogue between the two. 

Institution

The institutions for the texts are a variety of different sources. The main texts for analysis are the BBC for their coverage of the EU referendum whilst many of the other texts are from various media articles and interviews. The BBC is a public service institution which is good in the sense that their public remit means that they are required to be neutral in everything that they report and must always be following their remit which is to educate, inform and entertain. The text has been distributed through a majority of different mediums, from television to print to e-media. The institution is essentially controlled the public through the TV license fee and therefore is for the public in its entirety which is huge factor in the institution's neutral perspective in all things political.

Genre

The text belongs to the genre of television broadcast. It has many different conventions, such as the BBC logo to invoke brand identity and also the stereotypical conventions of a political broadcast such as the interviews of different guests and also the lower third ticker which displays urgent information about the event. There are also the use of different graphics in two separate contrasting colours to show the vote for and against which help to make viewing easier for the viewers as it boils down hard data into simple graphs and visuals. 

It also has a presenter, David Dimbleby, who is well known in the political current affairs broadcast but more importantly he was one of the presenters for the BBC in the previous EU referendum. There are also the correspondents who are located around the UK at different places but mainly at the headquarters of the polling announcements which is Manchester. 

Representation

Youth and young people are being represented. They are represented in a negative way by those in power. 

This is in accordance to Richard Dyer's theory of power and how those with power stereotype those with less power. Adults in society have more power and so they tend to look down upon those without power, in this case, the youth. This idea of the people in power in media institutions suggest that many of the representations of young people in the media today is mediated and constructed in a way to create dominant preferred readings which paint the youth in a negative light.

In a way the representation is accurate as it is definitely one that you see in some areas of London, which are what films like Ill Manors, Kidulthood/Adulthood are based on. This however also means that the representation is pretty much always negative in a way that it shows them using the same stereotypical views. This essentially creates this generalised negative perspective of youth which is then deeply placed into society and is eventually taken as a fact rather than in some cases an opinion. These case studies essentially try to challenge stereotypes by showing the audience and society of how things are but it can be argued that they end up reinforcing stereotypes.

Audience

The target audience are the voting populace of the country. However in terms of demographics, it would be targeted at the educated but working class. In terms of psychographics it would be targeted at the mainstreamers, aspirers, succeeders and possibly explorers. 

The primary audience for the media texts I am studying would be the voting populace of the country. As it was a huge politcal event, everyone was involved in the coverage and was staying up to date with every little piece of information. The secondary audience would be analysts or experts that would be focusing on the information for purposes other than to decide on what to vote on, they would be focusing a lot more on the data and predictions. 

In terms of the target audience, the age would be anyone of the voting regardless of any gender or ethnicity. It would be targeted at the working and educated class, yet in terms of psycho graphics would target the mainstreamers, aspirers, succeeders and possible explorers.

This is because it would be addressed to an audience that would want to see their country succeed and feel as if their vote is counting towards democracy. However, seeing from a youth's perspective this text would not entirely be targeted towards the youth. This again enforces the idea that young people are looked down upon and shouldn't concern themselves in politics. In the question time debates, many of the questions from young people are actually not answered in full by the politicians and are dismissed quite a lot. However the BBC coverage aims to show the involvement of young people through different means such as the young people volunteering with ballot counting in the background shots.

Ideology/values

The EU referendum itself as well as the coverage had a lot of mixed values and ideologies. The BBC coverage remained true to it's form of neutral perspectives and had a positive ideology of which was  educate, to inform, to create sympathy, to encourage social or political change. 

Yet many other platforms chose to focus a lot more on smear campaigning, having racist or xenophobic values with the intention to fear monger society in to voting for their campaign. These bigoted values and views on society were balanced out with other liberal views that promoted multiculturalism amongst society. 

Narrative

A linear narrative is used in the coverage as it is recounting the dates and information about an event chronologically, regardless there doesn't seem to be a general narrative during the BBC broadcasts as the politicians are presented in a neutral perspective. However, in most debates, there is arguably a binary opposition between the Brexit and Remain camps. 

However, in the articles there are quite a few different ways how the narrative is structured. The politicians such as Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Tony Blair are considered to be the stereotypical villains in terms of Propp's character theory. 

There are also other different perspectives in the sense that Brian May of Queen is defending young people in his interview and he could be seen as a helper in terms of character theories as he is essentially promoting the opposite image of young people of what society thinks of them. He subverts stereotypes and reinforces a positive outlook rather than a negative one. 

SHEP

Social

• Engagement of young people in society
• How the elderly views the younger population
• Representation, stereotypes, discrimination, ageism
• The EU referendum would also impact migration which is a social factor

Historical

• EU Referendum is arguably a very historic event
• 1973 the country joined the EU
• It was to keep peace in 1973

Economical

• The EU referendum has had a huge impact on the Pound Sterling, decrease
• Future long term impact in terms of trade with other countries
• Migration will be affected which in turn affects the economy

Political

• A huge political debate, people on the same political parties had different opinions and were on different camps for the EU referendum
• Smear campaigns, personal attacks, huge game changer with the murder of Jo Cox
• Political debates were heavily criticised to be flat out lies and essentially put a negative light on politicians from a young person's perspective

Issues/Debates

• Representation and stereotyping - Representations of young people and the way they are stereotyped
• Media effects - How the media affects and influences young people in their engagement of politics and generally society
• News Values - How news is structured and made with certain preferred and dominational readings
• Moral Panics - How moral panic against young people such as student/London riots affects they way they are seen by society
• Ownership and control - The way ownership and control of different media institutions affects the way stereotypes and representations are made about young people.

Theories

• Marxism
• Audience theories
• Genre theories

Ignite presentations: Learner response

Feedback

Content - 4/5
Clarity - 3/5
Presentation - 5/5

Total : 12/15

• Brilliant, powerful, thumping opening. Immediately engaging and passionate
• Lovely use of humour, images in the presentation and examples
• Excellent theory - News values, moral panic and absolutely appropriate to topic
• This is excellent for media issue/debate - but no sign as yet of a primary text.. only get to media coverage of EU half way through
• The link between first half (violent/lazy etc) and the EU topic is not particularly strong. They are both interesting issues but are they related?
• Getting better - linking to an explanation that the media are not interested in representing young people accurately. But why?
• Passionate ending - just as it started. But the journey in between needs a bit more clarity (a bit like the Remain campaign?)
• Q+A - good opening question on youth engagement - brilliant, passionate and knowledgeable response. Clear authority on the issue + answers comprehensively
• Excellent second question on whether 16 year olds have enough knowledge/experience to vote. Again, a strong, passionate and critically autonomous response. Good references too - Scottish referendum

WWW: Good opening and ending, with passion and authority on the topic. Knowledgeable and experienced responses to questions.

EBI: The middle link between theories, representations and the political aspect such as the EU coverage was weak. This could be expanded a lot more.

The majority of my work from my presentation will be included into my actual critical investigation. There will be a greater focus on current stereotypes and representations of young people in the media today, this will also relate to the different theories such as news values, moral panic, Richard Dyer's power theory. I will also include the focus on the political aspect of my debate. However, I will then see if the representations and stereotypes currently present are also present in young politics. One of my greatest focus was the Votes at 16 campaign for the British Youth Council, and the EU referendum coverage, I would use these to see how the media covered the engagement of young people and then as a result how that affected the turn outs.

Critical investigation research

MIGRAIN key concept research

To what extent did the media coverage of the EU referendum affect the engagement of young people in politics?

Research links and things to include:

• 2015 election, 2014 Scottish Referendum
• Politician expense scandal, distrust in politicians
• Student tuition fees increase riots
• EMA 
• London riots
• Chilcot report, Iraq war started things going
• Media generally sidelines

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-28600677

"But the Daily Telegraph's Tim Stanley explained that those who try to begin their political career at a young age are "immature" and "think they have all the answers"."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/07/tony-blair-war-iraq-british-politics-chilcot-report

"Tony Blair’s war destroyed Iraq. It also broke young people’s trust in politicians"

"Too young to remember the “good” Blair years of the late 90s, my generation associate his name only with unfathomable death; voting for his ideological successors is pure anathema"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNtoFgxztME

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11149578/Generation-Z-think-they-know-it-all.-Theyre-so-wrong.html


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukVd_kreUZM

Kidulthood - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435680/

Adulthood - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1126596/

Brotherhood - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5193784/

EU Coverage part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwIFWAaV4i0

EU Coverage part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZSzvuXMpoc

EU ITV Debate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAzMktzipRc

Youth in Media
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hoodies-louts-scum-how-media-demonises-teenagers-1643964.html
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/oct/12/pressandpublishing.broadcasting

Media Representations 

Youth and young people are being represented. They are represented in a negative way by those in power. 

This is in accordance to Richard Dyer's theory of power and how those with power stereotype those with less power. Adults in society have more power and so they tend to look down upon those without power, in this case, the youth.

In a way the representation is accurate as it is definitely one that you see in some areas of London, which are what films like Ill Manors, Kidulthood/Adulthood are based on. This however also means that the representation is pretty much always negative in a way that it shows them using the same stereotypical views. This essentially creates this generalised negative perspective of youth which is then deeply placed into society and is eventually taken as a fact rather than in some cases an opinion.

Media Languages and Forms 

The coverage is being broadcasted for almost 24 hours and since it's being broadcasted, all the presenters and guests are very formal in their suits and business attire. This shows the level of professionalism and the serious aspect of the event. The settings of the interviews and broadcast are mainly the BBC studios which again help with the brand identity but also show the level of professionalism. 

There were the usage of different medium shots for the various presenters and interviewers. It's interesting to note however that for the interviews, the guest is always in one half of the frame and the half where the guest is looking out of frame towards is always empty. This is a convention that is often used to stimulate the visual idea of an off screen interviewee and creates this sense of dialogue between the two. 

Narrative 

There doesn't seem to be a general narrative during the BBC broadcasts as the politicians  are presented in a neutral perspective. However, in the articles there are quite a few different ways how the narrative is structured. The politicians such as Tony Blair are considered to be the stereotypical villains in terms of Propp's character theory. There are also other different perspectives in the sense that Brian May of Queen is defending young people in his interview and he could be seen as a helper in terms of character theories as he is essentially promoting the opposite image of young people of what society thinks of them. He subverts stereotypes and reinforces a positive outlook rather than a negative one. 

Genre 

The text belongs to the genre of television broadcast. It has many different conventions, such as the BBC logo to invoke brand identity and also the stereotypical conventions of a political broadcast such as the interviews of different guests and also the lower third ticker which displays urgent information about the event. There are also the use of different graphics in two separate contrasting colours to show the vote for and against which help to make viewing easier for the viewers as it boils down hard data into simple graphs and visuals. It also has a presenter, David Dimbleby, who is well known in the political current affairs broadcast but more importantly he was one of the presenters for the BBC in the previous EU referendum. There are also the correspondents who are located around the UK at different places but mainly at the headquarters of the polling announcements which is Manchester. 

Media Institutions 

The institutions for the texts are a variety of different sources. The main texts for analysis are the BBC for their coverage of the EU referendum whilst many of the other texts are from various media articles and interviews. The BBC is a public service institution which is good in the sense that their public remit means that they are required to be neutral in everything that they report and must always be following their remit which is to educate, inform and entertain. The text has been distributed through a majority of different mediums, from television to print to e-media. The institution is essentially controlled the public through the TV license fee and therefore is for the public in its entirety which is huge factor in the institution's neutral perspective in all things political.

Media Values and Ideology 

The major assumptions when it comes to youth and young people are the ideas that they are violent, lazy and troublemakers. This essentially creates a negative perspective and representation of young people and by doing so it shows the young people that they are not valued. This would then in turn affect their engagement in subjects such as politics and community engagement. 

The content selected focuses a lot more on the engagement of young people in politics but also in different aspects. It also shows what young people think of politics, but also what people in power think about young people, whether their views reinforce or subvert already enforced stereotypes.

Media Audiences 

The target audience are the voting populace of the country. However in terms of demographics, it would be targeted at the educated but working class. In terms of psychographics it would be targeted at the mainstreamers, aspirers, succeeders and possibly explorers. This is because it would be addressed to an audience that would want to see their country succeed and feel as if their vote is counting towards democracy. However, seeing from a youth's perspective this text would not entirely be targeted towards the youth. This again enforces the idea that young people are looked down upon and shouldn't concern themselves in politics. In the question time debates, many of the questions from young people are actually not answered in full by the politicians and are dismissed quite a lot. However the BBC coverage aims to show the involvement of young people through different means such as the young people volunteering with ballot counting in the background shots.