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”.