Identities and the Media: Reading the riots
1) How did the language and selection of images in the coverage create a particular representation of young people? Language and words such as ‘riots’ rather than, for example, ‘civil disturbances’ or ‘unrest’ – or even ‘uprisings’ or ‘protests’ – immediately defines the meaning of the events in particular ways. The word riot suggests something wild and unrestrained, something fundamentally irrational that cannot be explained. The riots, we were told, were simply an ‘orgy of brutality’, in which people appeared to lose all rational control. In particular, it’s interesting to look at how the participants were described. In most of the tabloid media coverage, the rioters were consistently and repeatedly identified as young people. These were the ‘feral youth’, the ‘hoodies’ and ‘yobs’ who apparently rampage uncontrolled in our cities, bent simply on destruction for its own sake. This was reinforced by the selection of images – and perhaps...