“Media representations are complex, not simple and straightforward” How far do you agree with this statement in relation to the collective group that you have studied?

  “Media representations are complex, not simple and straightforward”- Stuart hall argues that the media appears to reflect reality but rather they construct it.

Take for example the London riots, with the space of three weeks tabloids and broadsheets portrayed teenagers, especially working class boys as reckless, thugs who downgrade society and we would be better without. This led to a negative and stereotypical view of teenagers; further the news articles don’t consider the majority of teenagers that actually don’t do anything bad, but rather amplify the negatives in order that the portrayal of teenagers can become more widely associated. Due to this portrayal of young boys in the media it has led many young boys to be more wary of other teenagers causing the amount of the knife crimes to increase according to new research.

The London riots further caused a moral panic to take place in Britain as people were threatened by news reports, “parents had to carry children out of burning homes, leaving a lifetime of possessions behind to be destroyed" this quote on The Independent. As the news showed varies clips of teenagers destroying properties and starting fires, this caused the media and society to construct a stereotype of teenager’s collective identities.

But at the same there were few news reports of teenagers actually doing some good therefore leading the news to create a binary opposition.

The media further demonstrate a hegemonic view in that audiences reflect what they are viewing, what I mean by this is that they follow the trends and personality of someone they relate to and interact with. Take for example Richard dyers star theory. Nicki Minaj where she constructs an image of being the perfect human being that can be copied through her dress and grooming and attitude.  Through her music videos she highlights that she is the focal point and should always be the focal point where she continues to be objectified and being presented as a sex object, she subverts the stereotypical view of women having less dominance in a relationship. Many fans of Nicki Minaj have created a subculture in that they follow the way she exaggerates the image of sex appeal and femininity and the same time creates an image that she is innocent, which her fans follow.

Youths following it also create a negative collective identity in that a counter culture is created and a moral panic can be caused towards their parents.

Nicki Minaj through the media create an ideology that she is a “Barbie doll”.i.e. the perfect image at the same time she demonstrates that she is dominant through her lyrics and persona, this creates a binary opposition and also a confusion to the her target audience because they are confused to what she is actually selling but as a business it means they can actually sell more. Therefore, it states that stars are allowed to create and construct their representations in the media through many different things that are seen to be influential to others.

By this then youths interact with the media in order to create their collective identity, Richard Jenkins, says that we need to interact in order to form our identity. So with the increase of negative portrayal of youths in the media no wonder why they develop negatives collective identities, if there was more positive representations then it might lead to youths having more of a positive identity, this leads to the complexity of media representation. But it has been highlighted that youths don’t like media, by the guardian editor John Naughton “Young people don’t like us. Who can blame them”. This means that youths are now using web 2.0 more as a means to interact with each other and develop their collective identity. Henry Jenkins says “Teens are constantly updating and customizing their profiles online, adding photos and songs and posting to each other’s walls” while this can be interpreted as just playing around these activities can be a means for teens to construct their and experiment with their identity.

Though this can be a means for youths to use the winship notion of complexity, media still continues to find a means to exploit and portray a negative image; for example, during the London Riots, many youths used Web 2.0 to communicate with each other about the riots, and due to some comments that may have been sent through twitter and Facebook that linked with the London Riots, youths had got prison sentences from it and overall blame the use of web 2.0 as the cause for the London riots.

The hypodermic needle model and the two step floe suggest that most of the times youths accepts these negative messages and actually decide to imitate them.

Therefore I agree with the statement of “Media representations are complex, not simple and straightforward” as there is a lot of negative and positive representations of the youths and it all comes down to how somebody mediates the message that they are receiving.

-By Graham Oddoye

Theorist

Michael Foucault –   says we are born with a basic identity but we develop our collective identity when with others. however focault believes that it can be a limtiting for what is actually develooped is a stereotypical group and then people start assumptions.

Jeff Shanz- Belives in the living Anarchy

Richard Jenkins- We need to interact in order to form our identity... with people or with identity . therefore partaking in an event (in reality or virtuallly with people with whom we feel affinity help us to form collective identity.

Coraline Howarth- Social representations, where the media constantly associate it with crime, violence and social deprivation.

Henry Tajifels's - Social identity theory assumes that individuals strive to improve their self image by trying to enhance their self esteems based on either personal identity or various social identites. this means that people can boost their self esteem through personal achievement or through succesful groups.

David gautlett- Believes that identity is complicated. Adolescents is a distinctive stage with a beggining and an endd a gradual progression to adulthood. The path is different for males and females and the dilemma is with what you will become.
So the an adolescences progression is about becoming rather than being.

Maurice Merlot – Ponty – We have embodied experiences and anything in which we use allows us to create and build our identity.

Jacques Lacan – “mirror stage” in which a child begins to develop an identity.

Richard Dyer (1979) – A star is an image constructed from a range of materials.

Stuart Hall - Media appears to reflect reality but rather they construct it. Stuart hall encoding and decoding challenges long held assumptions on how media messages are produced.

David Buckingham – A focus on identity requires us to play closer attention to the ways in which media and technologies are used in everyday life and their consequences for social groups. Adolescence is a distinctive stage with a beginning and an end, a gradual progression to adulthood. The past is different for males and females and the dilemma is with what you will become. An adolescences progression is about “becoming” rather than “being”. Adolescence is about what you will become – regarding future occupations and relationships.

To what extent do audiences use media to construct their own sense of collective identity?

“Collective identity is a sense of oneness, where you are a member in a social group that has a sense of togetherness”. So for example, subcultures amplify the term collective identity very well that many young youths are in; this could be through MODs, EMOs, etc. However is media to blame for the construction of these groups?

David Buckingham says that “A focus on identity requires us to pay closer attention to the ways in which media and technologies are used in everyday life and their consequences” and this is well accomplished by the analysis of web 2.0. The term refers to the web applications that facilitate participating information, sharing and user centred design. A good example of this would be the use of facebook where teens are constructing the collective identity by “constantly updating and customizing their profile online, adding photos and songs and posting to each other’s virtual walls. Whilst this could be interpreted as just playing around these activities can be a means for teens to construct and experiment with their identity.”-Henry Jenkins. Doing so allows them to find others with the same interest and disinterests as them, thereby building their collective identity.

Further due to new technologies and the media the world has become a global village, meaning the world has become so ‘small’ it is far easier to interact with one another. Richard Jenkins explains that we need to interact with each other in order to form our identity; does this just have to be through reality?, because according to postmodernism, what is reality?, are we really being social though it’s being produced on the web? ” in my opinion I would say yes because there is no difference from someone voicing out their opinion in a public setting, resulting in a interaction to the audience, from a person voicing out their opinion on a news article on the internet .

Take for example the London riots, previously the media the portrayal of youths have always been negative but when it came to the London riots this was the outcome of the news article’s at that time: “this brazen facebook user posted a picture of himself with suspected stolen goods” another says “the Tottenham riots were a grim reminder if any were needed of the level of anarchy that exists barely below the surface in some of our worst urban estates”. Here we see that a moral panic is formed, and that those reading the articles will build up a stereotype of youths and lower class, and we know this by such highlighted words as “Brazen facebook user”, “ worst urban estates” .

Strinati (1995) talked about this, how the mass media through popular culture can influence society to think a certain way and that they govern and shape all other forms of social relationships. Media images increasingly dominate or sense of reality, and the way we define ourselves in the world around us, a typical example of this is the stereotypical image of youth’s dressed up in hoodie, bandanna’s and bikes. Now reality can only be defined by surface reflections in a mirror.

Youths therefore through media is being formed a negative collective identity and they conform to this labelling because they see no other way of approaching the matter. For the example of the news article written by John Naughton- “Young people don’t like us. Who can blame them?”  He says: “just imagine for a moment that you are a British teenage boy. You’re struggling to grow up. To find out who you really are. Your parent’s marriage has broken up. Your dad’s long gone. You’re either under pressure to perform in school..... You get banned from shopping centres because you wear a hoodie. You carry a knife not because your violent, but because you’re scared witless. You find one of our newspapers on the pavement of that street and you start to read it, what do you find? You are likely to read spiteful, biased inaccurate factoid-based journalism that portrays you as hateful, terrifying anti-social, petty criminal that society would be better without.”  Therefore we can argue that because of the hypodermic needle model of a huge number of negative coverage of youths they have no choice but to follow the message and join that collective identity, because according to the quote above we doubt would find other’s going through the same problem.

Jacques Lacan mirror stage theory can support this because a person can form their collective identity through reflection, so a youth can see the reflection of other youths and follow suit, for the theory says audiences are able to form and develop their identity and change the way they see or recognise themselves according to the media portrayal.

Therefore to conclude I would say that audiences use the media to the fullest extent in order to form their collective identity.

-          By Graham Oddoye

Research on Online press and viral

Happy slap- Case Study – web 2.0

How does the internet provide an enormous challenge for regulators?

This case study provides a viewpoint of how this girl is a “viral villain”

Emily Nakanda in 2007 x factor contestant was pulled out of the competition due to the viral video of her happy slapping an innocent victim posted on the internet. The 15-year-old was seen punching and grabbing the girl by the hair in the video recorded on a mobile phone.

A spokeswoman for the show said as a result of their investigations Emily had chosen to pull out of the contest with immediate effect.

London riots

How does the internet provide an enormous challenge for regulators?

In the news there many video clips showing what young youths did during the riots. This shows that the media is stereotyping young youths as they show then stealing from stores such as game stores, footlocker, and mobile phone stores, therefore, giving a negative representation towards young youths of modern society. Also it would be an enormous challenge for regulators as they wouldn’t be able to control social networking as they may not have the rights to do so.

Is social networking a negative influence or positive one?

The internet provides a post-modern vision as technology has advanced over the years; therefore, the use of internet is more frequent for information and social networking. For example, social networking, allows people to form/ find their identity as the mass media has become more dominant over the years. Social networking such as facebook and twitter allows people to identify with one another, therefore, allowing them to create their identity and as an end result hopefully form a collective identity.

However it does change in accordance to the certain area or perimeter an individual will be; take for example china and the policy of internet censorship

Media does not construct collective identity but merely reflects it.

“Media does not construct collective identity but merely reflects it.” The relationship between collective identity and media representation is a complicated one. First let us consider what collective identity is; collective identity is defined to be an individual sense of belonging to a certain group, enabling that person to be form his personal identity, to construct a form of togetherness.

Marxist however would argue that through media  an individual will achieve collective identity due to the ideology that media provides to people in the day to day life, in order to shape their way of thinking. Therefore it will lead people to become more of a passive audience, this means that the users of media have no choice to what they watch and how they interpret it, leading them to develop a stereotypical mindset.

But then you can argue that collective identity is not just being represented by mainstream media but self-construction by users of the media and communities formed from shared identity i.e. age, gender, sex.

Therefore the way people interact with media influences them in the way they have an interaction with others, leading to a development of identity. Richard Jenkins alluded to, “We need to interact in order to form our identity …. with other people or with media.” Therefore partaking in an event (in reality or virtually) with people with whom we feel affinity helps us to form our collective identity.

But does this mean media in some form or way is the foundation to all personality and identity today?

Postmodernism is said to describe the emergence of social order where the importance of the power mass media and popular culture has to govern and shape all forms of social relationships. Meaning that media has dominated people’s way of thinking throughout the years.

An example of this would be the way media represents youths in general. The media is often giving a negative representation on youths therefore building a stereotype of how youths are. For example the recent London riots, a newspaper report quotes that the youngsters today are villains, hooligans and criminals, instilling  a stereotypical view in modern society to fear youths.

Therefore due to the gross mass of negative representation of youths on the news it leads that generation being labeled, and because of this many youngster accept it fulfill the lf fulfilling prophecy. This means that they live up to the label given to them, therefore they from their collective identity.

However you can argue that media perhaps is just reflecting something that was already there because youths in the modern society continuously behave in a negative way e.g. rioting, binge drinking, stealing, attacking etc.. So the media is just constructing a moral panic to alert society of the realities of life.

Stuart hall argues that media seem to reflect reality but really they actually construct it. This is done through encoding and decoding. For example an adult might see the film one day and automatically presume that youths nowadays are associated with drugs, theft and violence, from this encoding of the message through media, the adult may now identify groups of teenagers as thieves or trouble makers, as the adult decoded the message in that negative term.

So youths are reflected in a collective identity in negative terms.

But then maybe youths only behave like that to make a point. The news article produced by the guardian entitled “Young people don’t like us. Who can blame them?” takes into account the pressures that young people have today and how easy it is for them to fall into the stereotype especially those who live in a deprived area and then with all that pressure, the newspapers and media writes: “spiteful, biased, inaccurate factoid journalism that portrays youths as a hateful, terrifying, anti-social and a petty criminal that society would be better without”; All the while believing that youths will never read those types of articles, so they think it’s right to continue writing these harmful things.

All the while not considering the portion of youths that actually behave well and are a force of good to society, these youths barely get coverage on the news and if they do, it will only be for a brief moment of time.  Therefore, the media can be said to construct this negative collective identity towards youths. As adults have a respectable collective identity, they start get influenced by the media and see youths with negative collective identities.

But largely the media uses binary opposition. Where the media stereotype youths of ethnic backgrounds, for example the many articles and news nights that focuses on young black youths who are involved in gang culture and stabbings.

To conclude, after considering many arguments I believe that media does construct collective identity rather than reflecting it. Because of the huge influence it has on society it is inevitable for it not to construct collective identity.

Media Essay

Identity is complicated everybody thinks they’ve got one.”- David gauntlet. Here David Gauntlet is highlighting to fact that nobody believes that their identity is constructed but rather having influences determine who we are, we decide for ourselves, therefore rather being part of an collective identity we all ‘think’ we have an individual one. Hence, identity has become complicated; take for example what merleau ponty said towards us and having identity: “we have an embodied experience and anything in which we use our bodies to create new things builds our identity”. Thanks to advancement of new technologies people have created new things every day, this being through social networking.

Merleau, highlighted that “when we use or bodies to create new things”, our identity is formed, a typical example of this would be the creating of an online profile on facebook. By physically going out of our way to put subjects, topics and ourselves on the web, according to ponty we have begun to build our identity. But identity is complicated, because by creating a facebook account or twitter account we have decided to join an online community, where others share the same interests and disinterests as us, making us, the individual, to be part of a group thus forming our collective identity.

Collective identity can be defined as, “An individual’s sense of belonging to a group.”  New technologies and media can be a perfect place to experiment with their identity to fit with a certain group. Henry Jenkins alluded to it by saying, “teens are constantly updating and customizing their profile online, adding photos and songs and posting on each other’s virtual walls. While this could be interpreted as just playing around these activities can be a means for teens to construct and experiment with identity. In particular it can be a space for exploring gender.  Therefore young people in particular are adopting the winship notion of complexity by preparing themselves and finally recognising the ideal version of themselves so they might be able to fit in with their collective identity.

An example of collective identity would be the emos would only associate with the emos, or the popular people hang out with popular people, all the while each one believing they constructed their own identity.

But collective identity is not only constructed through others but mainstream media, and how the representation of a certain group influences our thinking. Take for example the latest new coverage of the riots, the news mainly focused on the negativity of the youths and blaming them for the increase of violence, leading youths into a stereotype. Richard Jenkins talks about that identity is formed by the way we interact with one another and media. So if a young person only sees’s media portraying youths to be instruments of violence, then sooner or later down the line that person will begin to conform to that stereotype building their identity and joining a collective one.

However some say that we can change our mediate our identity; Foucault believed this, he says; “we are born with a basic identity but we develop our collective identity when with others.” Therefore we as an individual’s change who really are when with others, but our basic identity is there we just mediate that personality for whom we meet. An example of this would by the way we speak to one another, so the way a student speaks to a teacher would be different to the way he would speak to his friends.

Foucault however believes that it can be limiting for what actually is developed is a stereotypical group and then people start to make assumptions.

 Therefore I concluded that after considering all this information I fully agree with the statement “identity is complicated everybody thinks they got one”.  

How far does the representation of a particular social group change over time?

Refer to at least two media texts in your answer.
The relationship between social groups and media representation is not straightforward. “A focus on identity requires us to pay closer attention to the ways in which media and technologies are used in everyday life and their consequences for social groups” – David Buckingham. Therefore the key things to look out for would be how the media would portray factors such as, gender, age, class and sexuality, especially in regards to youth social groups over time.

Let’s consider to media texts which both show representation of youth and compare to see the change over time.

First Rebel without a Cause directed by Nicolas Ray and distributed by Warner bros. The film centres on Jim stark played by James dean, a rebellious teen growing up in a middle class system. From the outset of the film it’s recognisable that “Jim Stark” has had a troublesome past and is about to enter into a new emotionally confused lifestyle where peers and friends await to influence him.  In the beginning of the film, we already see how the media portrays the outcome of the film, i.e. the opening credits being in red denoting, symbols of violence, blood etc, however collective identity is already demonstrated from the outset, James dean is in a police station for committing some sort of crime and slouching on the chair, highlighting his lack of respect for authority and total disregard to the situation. And seeing that he is from a middle class background it totally throws off his parents and the police officers who play the hegemony in the film.  Therefore media is portraying the typical social group of a well mannered background kid who ends up growing into a rebellious teen typical Hollywood.

Later on in the film James dean ends up going to a new school meets a girl, disobey his parents and causes contentions between himself and the school bullies. So as the film progresses we start to see the “in” and “out” group in regards to youths. Henri Tajfel talked about this in fact, he argued that there is a distinct ‘in’ group which is favouritism and the then there is the ‘out’ group which is then discrimination. Hence the reason why James dean character is consistently in trouble; however he subverts to the typical stereotype of a rebel for we clearly see dichotomous between dean’s characters.

For James dean is not the archetypal rebel, being that he doesn’t seem aggressive or out of control but rather is polite and looks out for people. But only seems to react towards his emotions of others more than his ambitions. Which further ties into Richard Jenkins theory of we need interaction in order that we from our collective identity.

But how has this ideology of youths changed over the years let’s take for example Kidulthood.

Kidulthood a British film based in the Y2K era focuses on the lives of a group of 15 year olds living around the streets of west London coming from mixed ethnic background. The story follows mainly the life of Trevor and his girlfriend Alisa who is pregnant by him. Immediately creating the ideology of teen pregnancy, very different to the one in rebel without a cause where ideology from the start in that film, was just misbehaving teens. But the character herself subverts the view of woman in that she protects herself and looks after herself when the man is not there.

Therefore if we compare the ideology from both outsets we can already see the massive change in social group.  For in the 1950s teenage pregnancy would of been unheard off, it wouldn’t of been an issue of being part of the “in” and “out” group, but rather this would have gone down to the core of morality among teenagers as a whole. Therefore such things like this wouldn’t have been part of rebel without a cause, but 50 years later media has continued to portrayed youths negatively and it continues to grow.

One thing that continues to remain the same though is violence, both in Kidulthood and rebel without a cause, violence runs a strong theme. However in rebel without a cause there is much close up shots or graphic scenes of actors being severely beaten up and portraying the realism towards such violence, it almost seems sugar coated to suit the audience. Yet, that time period though the violence was not in detail it still was frowned upon. Whereas again media has changed the way it represents youths; in Kidulthood there are many scenes where close ups are taken of the fights. So the violence in films has heightened in particular with youth culture displaying anarchy.

Still though both films have demonstrated that media still represents the relationship of a family at home to be in juxtaposition. For both youths in the two films have families that live comfortable lives, yet he children choose to live completely different lives. In Kidulthood we see that the girls in the film live in a middle class environment yet want to get and eventually do get drugs further they would be willing to degrade themselves by perform sex in order to get it, therefore also creating a binary opposition.

Over the years the most obvious change in the representation of youths is the language and race. In rebel without a cause, we see that the dominant cast is white, in Kidulthood there is a whole different mix of races all sharing the same type of roles. Speech has changed for in rebel without a cause, they use slang such as g-wizz to express their emotions to something “cool”. Whereas in Kidulthood we see that the youths their use foul language and swearing to express their feelings to a matter; therefore in comparison to rebel without a cause, the colloquialism found in Kidulthood would have never been used in film or television back then. However today society it is now considered the norm.

So now we see that over the years the media representation of youth over the years has changed dramatically and that it has just gone worse over the years.

-By Graham Oddoye

How do young people form their collective identity through reality TV?

“We need to interact in order to form our identity”- Richard Jenkins, therefore it can be argued that partaking in an event (in reality or virtually) with people with whom we feel affinity helps us to form our collective identity.

How would this relate to reality TV shows though, well looking at the perspective of interaction, we as youths interact with television more than face to face interaction. As highlighted in sociology the world has become a global village, which explains that due new technologies referring to mass media has made the world smaller and easier to interact.

Therefore us watching reality TV shows doesn’t make it any different from us being in the midst of those “stars” in a real life situation.

Take for example, many youths today have been watching the programme “Made in Chelsea”, which follows the lives of rich socialites youths whom have no sense of direction, partying constantly and partaking in immoral actions. Here’s a quote from the show’s opening scene from one of its characters Caggie Dunlop “You may have heard rumours that Chelsea is an exclusive world of royals, aristocrats and playboys. Where the gossip is as startling as the prices. Well it's all true, and I'd know. I'm Caggie Dunlop and this is my world. You might say that we've got it all, but having whatever you want can make choosing that much more tricky. In Chelsea the truth is more fabulous than fiction. This is our life.”

This quote leads to what Marxist would believe to be a false conscience; false conscience means that there is an illusion instilled into the working class (teenagers) that the capitalist system is fair for everyone in society. Therefore you would find many teenagers following blindly what they see in reality TV shows because they form their collective identity from there. Marxist and neo Marxist would say that this is what media does it portrays an ideological tool where people believe what they see relates to them and therefore they should interact with it.

But David Gauntlet says- ‘Identity is complicated, everybody thinks they have one’ because due to teenagers all having different taste in things, they all interact to different things in this global village.

The lifestyle in made in Chelsea has formed a collective identity for youth’ living in London is that through materialism and value and total disregard for their actions they will be able to get recognized from their peers.

Another way young people form their collective identity is through what Merleau Ponty said that we have an embodied experience and anything in which we use our bodies to create new things our identity. This can simply be done but imitating our favorite reality TV shows.

Another reality TV show that seems to have a collective identity is Geordie shore. This show focuses on the lives of 9 housemates living in Newcastle, who are working and primarily partying most of the time. The show has formed it own collective identity in that the “stars” have a constant appearance on the show wearing raunchy dresses that reveal perhaps a  bit too much, their crude and obnoxious personality demonstrate that they are in fact low middle class youths compared to the youths we see in Made in Chelsea.

The stars themselves have come to terms that they will not change and they have come to terms with identity Note what a member from Geordie shore had to say about Made in Chelsea Charlotte told the metro: “No one wants to watch fur coats, diamonds and pearls and stuck up posh people talking about Chanel and Gucci. People want to watch a group of lads and lasses.....”

Here she directly lets us know that people want to relate with someone in order to interact with them and form a collective identity from them.

Michel Foucault therefore was correct believing that it can be limiting for youths to create an identity as it is actually developed into a collective identity with a stereotypical group and people will then automatically make assumptions to that specific identity. So basically nothing that youths do it will always be viewed in a stereotypical way and thus collective identity is born.

Theorist

Media Theorist

Caroline Howarth- Social representations in the media constantly associate with crime, drugs, violence and social deprivation. Many people from Brixton contain all these elements; many people who live in the area experience social exclusion.

Social Exclusion: “Social exclusion is a multidimensional process of progressive social rupture, detaching groups and individuals from social relations and institutions and preventing them from full participation in the normal, normatively prescribed...”
(Source: wikipedia)

Media images of Brixton for example portray the area and those who live there as threatening, aggressive and criminal. However she says Brixton is a vibrant community, proud of a multicultural past and present.
“The problematic relationship between how we see ourselves and how others see us becomes a central concern.” (Jenkins 1996, 67)

She ran 8 focus groups with a total of 44 teenagers between the ages of 12 and 16, with an average of 5 participants in each group.
She did this in to investigate what they thought about how the media represents youth in Brixton, she came to the conclusion that children growing up just conform to the media therefore have no real identity in which they themselves form for their selves.

Stuart Hall- Said that media appear to reflect reality but really construct it.
He came up with the theory of encoding and decoding which is a theory of reception theory.
According to the theory, audiences can have three different reactions to a media text, whether it is a film, documentary or newspaper:
1. Dominant, or Preferred, Reading - how the director/creator wants the audience to view the media text;
2. Opposition Reading - when the audience rejects the preferred reading, and creates their own meaning of the text;
3. Negotiated Reading - a compromise between the dominant and opposition readings, where the audience accepts parts of the director's views, but has their own views on parts as well.
Henri Tajfel’s social identity theory assumes that individuals strive to improve their self-esteem based on either personal identity or various social identities. This means that people can boost their self esteem through personal achievement or through successful groups.

Tajfel argues that there is a distinct in-group and an out group. This is developed “in group” favouritism and “out group” discrimination. The individuals self –esteem is maintaining by being part of the in group.