Media and Collective Identity

'Identity is complicated - everybody thinks they've got one' David Gauntlett

'A focus on identity requires us to play closer attention to the ways in which media and technologies are used in everyday life and theories consequences for social groups' David Buckingham

David Buckingham - he classifies identity as an ambiguous and 'slippery' term:

• Identity is something unique to each of us but also implies a relationship with a broader group.
• Identity can change according to our circumstances.
• Identify is fluid and is affected by broader changes - cultural imperialism, American influence.
• Identity becomes more important to us if we feel it is threatened - social mobility, immigration.

David Gauntlett

• Identity is complicated, however, everybody feels that they have one.
• Religion and national identities are at the heart of major international conflict.
• The average teenager can create numerous identities in a short space of time - the Internet and social networking sites.
• We like to think we are unique but Gauntlett questions whether this is an illusion and we are all much more similar than we think.

5 Key Themes

1. Creativity as a process - emotions and experience.
2. Making and Sharing - in order to feel alive and to participate in a community.
3. Happiness - through creativity and being part of a community.
4. Creativity as a social glue - middle layer between individuals and society.
5. Making your mark - putting your stamp on the world.

Collective Identity: the individuals sense of belonging to a group as part of personal identity.

Media Use in Identity Construction: Katherine Hamley

In society today the construction of a personal identity can be seen to be somewhat problematic and difficult. Young people are surrounded by influential imagery, especially that of popular media. It is no longer possible for an identity to be constructed merely in a small community and only be influenced by family. Nowadays, arguably everything concerning our lives is seen to be ‘media-saturated’. Therefore, it is obvious that in constructing an identity young people would make use of imagery derived from the popular media.
However, it is fair to say that in some instances the freedom of exploring the web could be limited depending on the choice of the parents or teachers. So, if young people have such frequent access and an interest in the media, it is fair to say that their behaviour and their sense of ‘self’ will be influenced to some degree by what they see, read, hear or discover for themselves. Such an influence may include a particular way of behaving or dressing to the kind of music a person chooses to listen to. These are all aspects which go towards constructing a person’s own personal identity.
Firstly, it is important to establish what constitutes an identity, especially in young people. The dictionary definition states the following:

“State of being a specified person or thing: individuality or personality…” (Collins Gem English Dictionary. 1991).

The mass media provide a wide-ranging source of cultural opinions and standards to young people as well as differing examples of identity. Young people would be able to look at these and decide which they found most favourable and also to what they would like to aspire to be. The meanings that are gathered from the media do not have to be final but are open to reshaping and refashioning to suit an individual’s personal needs and consequently, identity. It is said that young people:

“…use media and the cultural insights provided by them to see both who they might be and how others have constructed or reconstructed themselves… individual adolescents…struggle with the dilemma of living out all the "possible selves" (Markus & Nurius, 1986), they can imagine.” (Brown et al. 1994, 814).

When considering how much time adolescents are in contact with the popular media, be it television, magazines, advertising, music or the Internet, it is clear to see that it is bound to have a marked effect on an individual’s construction of their identity. This is especially the case when the medium itself is concerned with the idea of identity and the self; self-preservation, self-understanding and self-celebration.

 “With a simple flip of the television channel or radio station, or a turn of the newspaper or magazine page, we have at our disposal an enormous array of possible identity models.” (Grodin & Lindlof 1996)

I believe the Internet is an especially interesting medium for young people to use in order to construct their identities. Not only can they make use of the imagery derived from the Internet, but also it provides a perfect backdrop for the presentation of the self, notably with personal home pages. By surfing the World Wide Web adolescents are able to gain information from the limitless sites which may interest them but they can also create sites for themselves, specifically home pages. Constructing a home page can enable someone to put all the imagery they have derived from the popular media into practice. For example:

“…constructing a personal home page can be seen as shaping not only the materials but also (in part through manipulating the various materials) one’s identity.” (Chandler 1998)

This is particularly important as not only are young people able to access such an interesting and wide ranging medium, but they are also able to utilise it to construct their own identity. In doing this, people are able to interact with others on the Internet just as they could present their identities in real life and interact with others on a day to day basis.
In conclusion it can be seen that the popular media permeates everything that we do. Consequently, the imagery in the media is bound to infiltrate into young people’s lives. This is especially the case when young people are in the process of constructing their identities. Through television, magazines, advertising, music and the Internet adolescents have a great deal of resources available to them in order for them to choose how they would like to present their ‘selves’. However, just as web pages are constantly seen to be 'under construction’, so can the identities of young people. These will change as their tastes in media change and develop. There is no such thing as one fixed identity; it is negotiable and is sometimes possible to have multiple identities. The self we present to our friends and family could be somewhat different from the self we would present on the Internet, for example. By using certain imagery portrayed in the media, be it slim fashion models, a character in a television drama or a lyric from a popular song, young people and even adults are able to construct an identity for themselves. This identity will allow them to fit in with the pressures placed on us by society, yet allow them to still be fundamentally different from the next person.


________________________________________________________________________________

Young people are surrounded by influential imagery – popular media
With television programmes such as The Only Way Is Essex it can be compared to magazines showing glamour models, providing impact upon women on how they are supposed to look. Young people are constantly involved with media products that each advertise and reveal different identities which young people look to aspire to be or take ideas to influence their own personal identity.


It is no longer possible for an identity to just be constructed in a small community and influenced by a family


Everything concerning our lives is ‘media saturated’ (What does this mean?)

Online Media

 

Keeping in touch with long distance friends relatives.
Promote yourself in a positive light, advertising/promoting
Knowledge. Entertainment.

Bullying. Stalking
Addictive. Lack of privacy.

What new forms of social interaction have media technologies enabled?

• globalisation
• sharing of information
• development of self identity/self presentation
• collective intelligence
• recirculate messages
• increased voice on influencing society/business
• awareness - band/skills
• user generated content
• increased diversity within cultures
• online media focus - identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation and groups. Kietzmann et al (2011)

'Online media are especially suitable to construct and develop several identities of self' Turkle, 1998.

Digital identity

• a person has not just one stable and homogenous idenity
• idenioty consists of several fragments that permanently change
• multiple, but coharent (Turkle, 1998)
• a live long developing and new conceptualized patchwork (Doring, 1999)

Social Class: Reinforcing Cultural Hegemony/Dominant Ideologies

Working class British youths are generally represented as being violent, brutal, unapologetic criminals - Harry Brown, Kidulthood, Quadrophenia and Eden Lake.
VS
Middle class British youths are generally represented as being more law abiding, conscience citizens - The Inbetweeners

• Antagonists are always the working class youths and middle class adults are positioned to be the protagonists.

Media Effect Theories

Hypodermic model

The media injecting their ideas into the consumers. Suggests we as consumers have no power in how the media influences us, passive consumers like robots believing everything we hear in the media.

Cultivation Theory

If you see enough violence and criminal behaviour among youth, the more likely you are to believe that it is realistic and occurs in society at that level.

Copy Cat Theory

Influenced by what you see in the media and copy the actions within films, TV etc. Puts an idea into youths causing them to go out and do the same.

Moral Panic

Actions within the media puts fear into society that these events happen in reality. Puts British youths as the antagonists and the public services as the hero.

Contemporary Social Realism

• Social realist films attempt to portray issues facing ordinary people in their social situations.
• try to show that society and the capitalist system leads the exploitation or the poor.
• These groups are shown as victims of the system rather than being totally responsible for their own bad behaviour.

'These places represent everywhere in Britain, where relationships are broken down and where people have isolated and disconnected. Their Britishness is their culturally specific address to audiences at home' (Murray, 2008)

Audience

• Social realist films which address social problems in this country offer a different version of 'collective identity' than British films which are also aimed at American audience. Films like Notting Hill and Love Actually reach a bigger audience than the lower budget social realist films.
• If more people see the more commercial films, consider which version of our collective identity is more powerful or has more impact.

Analysing Representation of Collective Identity

When comparing how British and our collective identity is represented in films consider these:

• Who is being represented?
• Who is representing them?
• How they are represented?
• What seems to be the intentions of these representations?
• What is the dominant discourse?
• What range of readings are there?

The media contributes to our sense of 'collective identity' but there are many different versions that change over time. Representations can cause problems for the groups represented because marginalised groups have little control over their representation/stereotyping. The social context in which the film/TV programme is made, influences the dominant discourse of the film.

Active Audience Theory
Encoding - Decoding (Stuart Hall, 1980) 

• Encoding - Decoding is an active audience theory developed by Stuart Hall which examines the relationship between a text and its audience.
• Encoding is the process by which a text is constructed by its producers.
• Decoding is the process by which the audience reads, understands and interprets a text.
• Hall states that texts are polysemic, meaning they may be read differently by different people depending on their identity, cultural knowledge and opinions.

 Preferred Reading/Dominant Hegemonic

When an audience interprets the message as it was meant to be understood, they are operating in the dominant code. The position of professional broadcasters and media producers is that messages are already signified within the hegemonic manner to which they are accustomed. Professional codes for media organisations serve to contribute to this type of industrial psychology. The producers and the audience are in harmony, understanding, communicating, and sharing mediated signs in the established mindset of framing.

 Negotiated Reading

Not all audiences may understand what media producers take for granted. There may be some acknowledgement of differences in understanding:

• Decoding within the negotiated version contains a mixture of adaptive and oppositional elements: it acknowledges the legitimacy of the hegemonic definitions to make the grand significations (abstract), while, at a more restricted, situational (situated) level, it makes its own ground rules - it operates with exceptions to the rule.
• While the hegemonic view and dominant definitions will tie events to; 'grand totalizations'; as Hall calls them, negotiated positions are the result of the audience struggling to understand the dominant position or experiencing dissonance (conflict) with those views.

Oppositional Reading/ 'counter-hegemonic'

• When media consumers understand the contextual and literary inflections of a text yet decode the message by a completely oppositional means, this is the globally contrary position/oppositional reading.
• The de-totalization of that text enables them to rework it to their preferred meaning. This requires operating with an oppositional code which can understand dominant hegemonic positions while finding frameworks to refute them. Hall feels that this position is necessary to begin a struggle in discourse or the 'politics of signification'. (communication, the way in which meaning is given through signs and signifiers)

Any representation is a mixture of:
1. The thing itself.
2. The opinions of the people doing the representation.
3. The reaction of the individual to the representation.
4. The context of the society in which the representation is taking place.

Stereotyping

The fact that we naturally see the world in this kind of shorthand way, with connections between different character traits, allows the media to create simplistic representations which we find believable. Implicit personality theory explains this process…

• As humans we use our own unique storehouse of knowledge about people when we judge them.
• Our past experience is more important than the true features of the actual personality that we are judging — traits exist more in the eye of the beholder than in reality.
• We have each a system of rules that tells us which characteristics go with other characteristics.
• We categorise people into types (e.g. workaholic, feminist etc.) to simplify the task of person perception.
• Once we have in our minds a set of linked traits which seem to us to go together, they form a pattern of connections that can be called a prototype. In other words the mix of traits that we may consider “typical” of feminists are a prototype of what a feminist is like to us.
• If we encounter someone in reality or in the media who seems to fit neatly into a prototype, we feel reassured. It confirms our stereotyped view — we do not need to think further.
• Also once a few of the traits seem to fit our prototype, we will immediately bundle onto the person the rest of the traits from the prototype even if we do not know if they fit them in reality.
• Research has shown that if we find people who do not fit into our prototypes, we will form very strong often impressions of them — it is surprising to us and disconcerting — it forces us to think more deeply.
• On the other hand, if it is at all possible, we will try to twist the truth to fit in with our prototype, often ignoring traits which do not fit into our neatly imagined pattern of characteristics. This will particularly happen as time passes and we have time to forget things that do not fit in. This can lead to enormous differences between our perceptions of people and the reality.
• All of this distortion happens naturally in our minds before the media have had their chance to simplify and distort. We do a lot of the business of stereotyping ourselves. It is almost as if we conspire with the media to misunderstand the world.

Dominant Ideology of young people

Eastenders: Martin Fowler
First character to be born in the programme. Stereotypical youth from many news stories. Anti-social behaviour with gangs. Teenage, unmarried father. Prison sentence for manslaughter. Continued criminal behaviour upon release.

Moral panic

Stanley Cohen (1972)Studied youth groups in 1960s.A moral panic occurs when society sees itself threatened by the values and activities of a group who are stigmatised as deviant and seen as threatening to mainstream society’s values, ideologies and /or way of life.Mods & Rockers (1960s), football hooligans, muggers, vandals, mobile-phone snatchers...
Working class males: Represented as yobs. Stuart Hall (1978) argues that the negative representation of young people is deliberate as it justifies social control by authority figures such as the police and government. The media has a key role in this ‘social production’ of news.
From media text to legislation: Occurrence of deviant act or social phenomenon. Act or problem widely reported in media: news outlets; internet chat rooms; fictional narratives; video games…Call for government control either from legislation/policy initiatives or the more vigilant operation of already existing social controls.
Jamie Bulger No evidence was presented that either boy had watched ‘Child’s Play 3’. The judge made the connection and this was picked up by the tabloid press. It led to a change in the law so the BBFC now has to take into account ‘the influence’ of videos as well as their content.

FISH TANK (2009)

Directed: Andrea Arnold

• Stereotypical look of the working class, with the colloquial language.
• The area in which they live is concrete, shows a sense of escapism to the country, seeing water.
• Female protagonist, fighting against males and the formality that her mother represents of single parents with an exchange of males in her life.
• Outspoken female, confidence and the ability to fight back, the background in which she lives 'dog eat dog world'.
• Represents young people in a 'broken Britain' sympathetic as she didn't choose the environment she was brought into, cultivated this identity.
• Is less exaggerated than Harry Brown, social realism with no torturing etc.
• Can reach to middle and working class, so that an understanding can be made and similarities in defending the life of the working class.
• reflect middle class anxiety, threat to working class to their hegemonic dominance. Main adult characters are seen as working class.

THE INBETWEENERS (2011)

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

How are British youth represented in both Quadrophenia and Harry Brown?

How are British youth represented in both Quadrophenia and Harry Brown?

In the films of Quadrophenia and Harry Brown we look at the issues within youth subcultures, with a universal outlook even though taken from different eras in time, as Quadrophenia set in the 1960’s and Harry Brown the 21^st century, a close link can still be shown. We see a high sense of rebellion and violent acts as the youth population become more dominant as seen in Harry Brown, requesting more say in social matters or creating their own social constructs as shown in Quadrophenia with the Mods and Rockers. All youth subcultures that are depicted in these films challenges the upper/middle class, choosing to object to capitalist approach to society and not conforming to the norm, creating what they think is a unique social group. The fall of these subcultures are shown in both Harry Brown and Quadrophenia, as ‘justice’ is made, destroying the youth’s perception of freedom.

The gang ideologies (peace, Rebellion against parents, Radicalism -reactions against the post war,

Conformity and rebellion, attitude to capitalism and consumerism).

Discuss identity in both films

What role does the parent play in both films?

Have the representations changed? Discuss similarities and differences