Analyse one of your media productions in relation to representation.

In my second year of media studies the brief was to create a music promo package including a music video. I created a video for the song "No sleep tonight" by enter shikari. The song and video was of rock genre with a hybrid sub genre of post hardcore, trance-core and metal-core. I will discuss this production in relation to representation and the theorists James Baker, Richard Dyer, Dick Hebdidge and Jean Baudrillard.

Theorist James Baker says that media productions are mediated to represent particular meanings in certain ways. He explained that the mediation of these works in 3 ways, which are often used alongside each other in steps to create the final product. The first "Step" is selection. The producers select what they wish to end up on the screen, a lot of irrelevant material, or things the producer does not agree with will be left out of the final video. This can be applied to our production as we chose the storyline that we wanted to include in the video, leaving out a lot of things that could have important impact on both the narrative and how the people in the video were represented to make our video simple enough to understand in the short amount of time that music tracks allow. The second step or way of mediation is the organisation of content into a way which real life is not. Again this applies to our video, the best example would be that that we have band footage between main events in our video which would not be seen in real life but makes perfect sense in this particular type of media text, especially in this genre. The final step is focusing.  Mediation always ends up with the audience being encouraged to focus on a particular aspect of the narrative and deterred from reading into irrelevant topics related to the video. For example in our video we tried to have the audience focus on the life of a man, working for an oil company, who was unhappy and ended up drinking heavily and blacking out towards the end of the video. We did this using fast paced shots not leaving much time for the audience to consider off-screen aspects that we found irrelevant and chose not to represent in our video. This allowed our audience to focus on how we represented the main characters and his current state of mind, as well as the culture and genre of our band.

Richard Dyer explains how the image of particular social groups, alongside the "star image" of the band/performer in texts, create stereotypes that define who is "in" and who is not in a particular group of sub genre. This can be applied to our video. The lead singer of our band in the video gets the most screen time and is one of the main characters in both the narrative and the non-narrative sequences within the text. We created an audience profile and decided to represent our star in similar ways, we got him to wear the same style clothing and the same hair and looks as our audience. This conforms to Richard Dyer's idea as our star  is reflecting the image of a particular social group, by doing so he is "in" with that group. This also links in to another theory of Dyer's, saying that music videos create a star image that is followed and often looked up to by the social groups and sub genres of the video and often looked at negatively by opposing or mainstream genres. This reflects our video as those of the correct sub genre will understand it and likely take from our star's style whereas people from other genres and groups may look at it in a negative light, possibly seeing through the narrative to the alcohol and greed themed background story of the video.

This leads on to the next theory. Dick hebdidge wrote that sub cultures represented in media texts can be and are often perceived as negative due to their nature of criticism to the dominant standard. In relation to our video this means our band, star and fans could be seen as a negative group because they dress act and look different to the dominant standard or the "Mainstream". Hebdidge also argued that sub-cultures bring together likeminded individuals who feel neglected or outside of the standard social groups and allow them to develop a separate sense of identity. These groups are represented differently than the main groups in texts, often going against the mainstream views. For example a mainstream society view could be that it is a good thing to have a steady job in an office working for a large firm, whereas in our video that view is represented negatively and our social group is united against such views, whereas other sub genres and groups may look at it differently.

Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to narrative.

I chose to analyse my A2 level music video for this question. My brief at A2 was to create a music promo package with focus on the music video. My video was for the song "No sleep Tonight" by Enter Shikari. The genre for this video was Rock with a hybrid sub-genre of Post Hardcore, Trance-core and Metal-core.

The narrative for my video was based around a man who works for some type of oil company. He wakes up, gets dressed and goes to work, through the day he starts to hallucinate and become stressed, he sees the lead singer from our band (although that is not important to the narrative) in his hallucinations. He heads home after being briefly scared by the man he keeps seeing. As the video progresses he drinks heavily and eventually stumbles out into his garden and collapses, the video then ends. Our narrative does not have a solid storyline or a conclusive ending but holds messages for certain audiences.

 It does however stick to a structure voiced by Russian theorist Todorov. Todorov says that the traditional Hollywood structure of texts consists of an equilibrium, a disruption, an act against the disequilibrium and then ends with another equilibrium. If we apply this theory to my video we can see it meets most of the criteria. At the start of the film the character gets ready and heads to work. This pint could be seen as the equilibrium as there isn't much wrong. While at work the character types, files and answers the phone, these are general things the audience will understand as being part of a job. The character then starts seeing a man and becomes unstable and stressed. This was shown through camera movements (such as steadicam) and fast editing. In Todorov's theory this would be the disruption, causing a state of disequilibrium. According to this theory there should next be an action taken to try and resolve the problem however in our video there isn't one shown clearly. If we looked into it more deeply i could argue that the character drinking alcohol could be an attempt to solve the situation as it was his way of dealing with it, but that wouldn't be clear to the audience. The final stage of this theory is the resolution, or a return to the state of equilibrium. Again this isn't shown clearly in our video as the character dies (implied), but as with previous stages it could be argued that the death of the character is the final step as it partially solves his problem and reinstates the equilibrium. This point links with the theory of Andrew Goodwin, saying that narratives are complex and are open to different interpretations by people form different groups or who have different understandings of society for example the point i made about the oil broker being the villain, this would likely only be picked up on by someone who supports that point.

A theory i found interesting to relate to my media text was that of Claude Lèvi-Strauss. This theorist suggested that narratives have clear opposites, often good and bad, or a protagonist and antagonist. I found this interesting because my video did not have a clear protagonist and antagonist as both characters involved were almost neutral to the audience, but opposing each other. At the end of the video we see the lead band member covering the camera implying that the death of the main character was partially his doing, this could be seen as a negative action making him the antagonist however as he is the main band member and is seen throughout the music video lip synching and performing it would be hard for the audience to see him as an antagonist. Equally we did not see the main character (the businessman) do anything wrong to provoke negative feelings towards him in the video so it would be hard to see him as an antagonist however there is one point where we show an over the shoulder shot of the character's computer with statistics relating to oil on the screen. Due to recent events and the general opinion of lower and middle class groups, those who deal with oil or work as oil brokers are identified as the bad or "villain" characters. This could vaguely show that character as the "bad guy", which is the subtle message i wanted to create when filming my video.

Another theory that does apply to our video is Goodwin's theory that media texts create a star persona. Our video opens with our star (the lead singer from our band) lip synching to our chosen track. Throughout the video we use our star in various performances including him as an actor in the narrative, this helps to create our star persona making him an icon in the video.

Analyse one of your coursework productions in relation to Genre.

Theorist Daniel Chandler identifies genre as a distinctive type or class of text with its own characteristics. Almost all genres have sub genres with their own characteristics and styles. In my A2 coursework i had to create a music video for a genre of my choice. I will evaluate this coursework in relation to the genres and theories surrounding it. The genre of our video was rock, with a hybrid sub-genre of Post-Hardcore rock, Trance-core and Metal-core.

Jason Mittel, says that industries use genres to sell products and efficiently target their respective audience using genre. They likely do this using particular conventions, which we tried to employ in our product. We researched into our genre and found some of the main conventions that are used in rock videos, we found that they almost always have shots of the band or performers playing/performing their song. I opted to conform to this major convention in my music video and included a lot of lip synching by the lead singer, and a lot of band footage in the sequence. I believe that based on Mittel's theory this should help my video to correctly target the identified genre audience. Another convention i identified rom my research is that videos of this genre usually have fast paced cuts and thought beats. Again we used these conventions in the video and have a lot of thought beats, fast cuts and overall a fast paced video. One convention that we chose not to use was having concert footage in our video. We did not use this because it would be costly, and likely of low quality with some other obvious reasons.

Describe how you developed your post production skills for media production and evaluate how these skills informed your creative media practice. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills developed over time.

Over the last two years in my media coursework I have used a lot of post production methods and technologies. For AS I had to create a two minute long film opening including titles. In my second year I had to create a music promo package including a music video, advert and digipack.


The bulk of the post production work in my opinion was the editing. At AS level I tried to create a well polished sequence using my editing skills however as it was the first time i had ever had to edit professionally I had a limited knowledge of the software and editing process, however we did shoot a preliminary task video to gain a feel for the equipment and software. This limited me in terms of what I could create and the overall quality of my final product. The software I used for editing in my first year was iMovie.


 The software also limited what i could do with my sequence as it lacked many of the features i used at a higher level. iMovie had basic features which we did try to make good use of for example the cut tool and the ability to view sound-waves to match our soundtrack and effects up to the sequence correctly, however the software we opted to use at A2 was much more advanced. Another drawback of using iMovie was that it had extremely long render times, which were made worse by the low spec E-macs we did our work on which had low processing power and low RAM. This meant we had to spend a long time waiting for the sequence to render to preview the sequence, then if it turned out we did not like a particular cut we had to render the whole thing again. This was a very time consuming process.


At AS level (due to our brief) we also spent some time creating a soundtrack for our sequence using Garageband. Garageband was a useful program however had some limitations, for example due to everyone in our group using similar (or the same) software with a limited number of loops and effects it turned out that all of the soundtracks sounded very similar. Another big drawback of using Garageband was that we had to watch the video and listen to the track at the same time to ensure we edited it correctly because it would have taken too long to render our video and import it into Garageband, plus once we imported it into Garageband we could no longer edit the sequence.


At A2 level I improved upon the majority of the techniques i picked up from AS and was much more confident in using the media technologies. We had shot our AS preliminary task as well as our entire AS coursework giving us a much better understanding of what goes into sequences so that we got better shots, making post production much easier.When it came to editing I had edited many times before over the course of AS and had a wider knowledge of the whole process.


The hardware we had in the second year was also much better and allowed us to spend less time rendering. The college had recently upgraded from the old e-macs to iMacs which had more processing power and RAM. While the Macs are not ideal (and i would have preferred a windows based system) they were much better than the hardware we used in the first year.


My experiences at AS level also told me it would be wise to choose different software to work with at A2. We moved away from the basic tools of iMovie and looked at other software. Final Cut seemed to be a good option and I used it for a while towards the start of the year, then I eventually moved on to edit on a windows based system using Sony Vegas Pro. I chose to use this software because it rendered almost instantly, had a lot of extra features and effects and worked on a windows 7 based system which I know well. 


The project was saved onto a HDD hard drive so we could edit on both Macs and PCs, making the best of both software and hardware packages. I found editing a lot easier on Sony Vegas, I found the software had effects such as motion blur, bloom and over 20 others which we went on to incorporate into our video. The basic Cut & move tools were much easier to use and the program allowed us to edit on an unlimited number of tracks. Another very useful feature was that we could place markers on the sequence and music track, this came in very handy because at A2 level there was a lot of lip syncing that had to be done which should be done much more 
easily when we made good use of the markers.


The experience i gained through lessons and practical work as well as the upgraded software and hardware allowed me to be much more creative and efficient in post-production at A2 level than i was in the first year and i think i have came a long way since AS.

Creativity Mind Map

Describe how you developed your skills in the use of digital technology for media production and evaluate how these skills contributed to your decision making. Refer to a range of examples in your answer to show how these skills developed over time.

Over the last two years in my media coursework I have used a lot of different digital technologies. For AS I had to create a two minute long film opening including titles. In my second year I had to create a music promo package including a music video, advert and digipak.

In my first year we used blogger (web 2.0) to collate our research and planning, and to present our final product. From starting at AS i improved my overall understanding of how to use the blogging site and became more efficient in using it. In a2 i used the website again to collate my pre-production work and present the final product, but i feel that i have progressed a lot and can use blogger a lot better than last year. In the second year i learnt how to do things such as using inline frames and embedding different objects to make my blog more attractive and easier to use, as well as using HTML editing to modify the theme and layout of my blog.

In pre production at AS level we used a DRM85 Flash Mike to record a voiceover for our animatic, we did this quite well but the voiceover wasn't clear or well rehearsed. In A2 I improved upon this area and recorded another animatic. In our second animatic we did not record a voiceover and used music instead, along with iMovie, to make our animatic more effective. We did use the Flash Mike later in post production as part of our evaluation and the results were much better than first year because we positioned the mike much better and rehearsed the voiceover.

In the production of my AS video, my group used a Sony digital Handycam and a Cannon XL2 camera. These were ok cameras and we got good use out of them, I learnt a lot about filming that i did not have a clue about when i first started the course. In the second year however we became more effective in the use of cameras and filming. I learnt how to effectively use different camera techniques a lot more than in AS and opted to use a better Sony camera with more HD capabilities and an overall better picture than the ones we used in AS.

Another thing we used in AS was the Trycaster Studio 2.5 MS and multiple Sony HD cameras. In AS we were less confident with this technology and only used it in postproduction, however at A2 level we gained confidence using the studio and opted to use it in production. We recorded our band playing in front of a green-screen and used the studio's features along with some camera abilities to make a well-finished and effective sequence. This was a big improvement on the knowledge I had on studio hardware (and software) when I first started at AS and I now know a lot more about this type of technology.

In postproduction I have also improved a lot from AS. To edit and finish our video at AS level we used iMovie, this was a easy to use program that allowed us to easily edit our project and helped us easily gain editing experience. However iMovie lacked some of the abilities that we wanted to use in A2, so we tried various different editing programs and eventually settled on using Sony Vegas Pro for our A2 editing. Sony Vegas allowed us to do everything you can on iMovie and final cut but with extra effects and features, allowing us to be much more creative. Also because it is a windows based program it allowed us to do editing outside of the classroom. The combination of all of the skills I have gained in AS and improved upon in A2 allow me to be much more creative with my media work.

SKET - Characters

Kayla - A younger Jordie girl trying to fit in. Moved to London from newcastle with her sister, she has no mother and is disconnected from her dad. From her actions in the film it looks as though she just wants to fit in, which is how she becomes involved with the other girls. At the start of the film, close ups on Kayla's face show her being scared of men who are harassing her on the street, showing she is not the strongest of characters and not the most violent. As the film progresses we see her picking up some of the lingo the other girls use such as "sket" and "shank". She also becomes more agressive in order to fit in, it almost seems like a struggle for survival. This point was also brought up when another character explained that you have to be like them (meaning men) in order to survive. The film shows Kayla's transformation from a sy jordie girl to being part of a small gang and voilent acts.


Danielle - A slightly older girl who is already regularly involved with gangs, drugs and violence. Danielle is probably the main reason why Kaya got involved with the other girls, because she sticks up for her and almost protects her from certain people, such as the guys ont he bus at the start. Danielle is the most masculine of the female characters, having pinned back hair and a more masculine dress sense and posture. This fits with the title of the film, "SKET" which usually refers to a masculine female with no regard for looks or dignity, although the origins of the word have more to do with prostitution. In the film Danielle seems to be very aggressive and feel very negatively towards men in general. She surrounds herself with girls and doesn't seem like the sort of person to settle down with a boyfriend, she often hints towards one of the other girls' boyfriends saying "next time it will be him" meaning the other girl is likely to get hurt by her boyfriend. This negative outlook on men could be due to her being forced into sex and violence by Trey which we find out later in the film. Danielle's general attitude is to act like a man to survive.


Shaks - Seems to be the oldest (but is never stated). Shaks is involved with Trey who is the leader of a bigger gang of "drug lords". Shaks acted defensive throughout the film for herself, Kayla and Kalya's sister. This could be due to the fact she is pregnant which might change peoples attitudes towards others, especially when violence is involved. While she is an active part of the gang, she often hints or states that she wants out. She asks Trey multiple times to "take the gear and move up north". Shaks isn't as masculine as Danielle but is a stronger character who can look after herself, she seems to be a very powerful person in the gang.

"SKET" Poster

The poster shows the 4 girls from the film on a black background with a pink/red filter. They seem to be hitting & kicking someone on the floor, strongly suggesting the violence in the film. As well as this we can see the front girl of the poster is hitting the person with a pole. The image is overlaid by the word "SKET" in large white letters in the lower middle of the poster. In the top left, behind the girls, there are some reviewers comments in red & white text. They read: "Raw, Gritty, and insanely powerful" and "Gripping, Hard Hitting, Intense, Electrifying... A must see.".


 The poster instantly suggests violence throughout the film, as well as showing the sort of people the girls are. Their clothes and expressions suggest the more "chavy" type, which fits with the name of the film which we would associate with that particular social group. Individually the characters look quite different, the girl at the front has long, untied hair and a hoodie suggesting she is more feminine, the girl to her right is a little more masculine wearing a coat and hair back in a pony tail. Behind her is another girl who we cannot see much of. To the right of the page there is one more girl who looks a lot different from the others. She has tightly pinned hair and a masculine anger expression with a hoodie and coat. She looks a lot more masculine than the others. This girl could be the one more represented by the title of the film as the word "SKET" is often used to describe someone more masculine, with no regard of dignity or grace. The poster suggests that the story will envolved around these main girls and violence, and will likely be set in a n estate judging by the representation of the characters involved.


This poster contrasts greatly with how girls and women are usually shown on posters, magazines and films. For example if we look at the poster below for recently released "This means war", we can see that women are usually represented in a much more positive way. Often wearing makeup, dresses, with long hair and a much less violent look, "SKET" completely disregards these stereotypes and creates a whole different image of the girls in the film.

Plan B - The voice of a Generation

Below is a profile of "Plan B" by the independent. 

Few songs arrive accompanied by a statement of intent, but Ben Drew believes his latest single requires clarification. Its subject is the riots that erupted across England last summer. The news, says Drew, moved on so fast – from street fights in Tottenham to the battle for Tripoli – that they were never properly examined. And as the 28-year-old songwriter, singer, rapper, film-maker and actor better known as Plan B explains on his website: "The point being made in my song 'Ill Manors' is that society needs to take some responsibility for the cause of these riots. Why are there so many kids in this country that don't feel they have a future, or care about having a criminal record?"

Drew posits at least one theory himself: that underprivileged young people, living on urban estates, suspect society doesn't much care about them – and thus care little for society. They're casually branded "chavs: council housed and violent", a term no better in Drew's eyes than those used to discriminate along racial and gender lines. "If you're born into a family that has enough money to educate you properly," he goes on, "you are privileged. You're not better than anyone else. You're just lucky. Certain sectors of middle England, not all of them, but the ignorant ones, need to wake up and realise that... and stop ridiculing the poor and less fortunate. That is what this song is about."

Already, the right people are beginning to take notice. After it was posted on YouTube a week ago, Labour's shadow health minister, Jamie Reed, tweeted that "Ill Manors", in substance if not in style, reminded him of Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On". "The risk of any lefty politician being pilloried for praising the new Plan B track is really pretty high," Reed admitted. "That said, it's excellent." In a blog, music writer Dorian Lynskey called it "the first great mainstream protest song in years", comparing it to Public Enemy and The Clash.

Effective protest songs are rare nowadays, the form weighed down with cynicism. But on "Ill Manors", Drew swerves the clichés. His shouted chorus is confrontational: "Oi! I said Oi! What you looking at, you little rich boy?" Yet the rapped verses – strapped to a thrilling, Prodigy-like track – are witty and complex: "We got an eco-friendly government/ They preserve our natural habitat/ Built an entire Olympic village/ around where we live, without pulling down any flats." Integral to its impact is the video by Yann Demange, director of the recent Channel 4 drama Top Boy. Demange's promo is laced with real footage from the riots, and expressly designed to be discomfiting to Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells.

"I'm not trying to condone what happened during the riots," Drew told BBC 1Xtra DJ MistaJam in an interview. "It disgusted me... it saddened me more than anything, because those kids who were rioting and looting have just made life 10 times harder for themselves. They've just played into the hands of what certain sectors of middle England think about them." The single is just the first part of a bigger plan for tackling that mindset; in May, Drew is releasing a feature film, which he wrote, directed and soundtracked. Ill Manors is a "hip-hop musical" made up of six intersecting east London stories, starring Riz Ahmed and Natalie Press.

All this may come as a shock to those who first encountered Drew on his previous LP. The Defamation of Strickland Banks (2010) was an accomplished Motown pastiche, a coffee-tablish concept album about a sharp-suited soul singer locked up for a crime he didn't commit. To those who were fans of his 2006 debut, however, it's a welcome return to hip-hop. Who Needs Actions When You Got Words was released mere days after David Cameron, then the leader of the opposition, became the latest politician to condemn hip-hop for encouraging violence. Drew's first album gave the lie to such claims, with its nuanced first-person portrayals of street crime, poverty, addiction and underage sex.

When Drew turned his back on such things, Sam Wolfson, reviewing Strickland Banks in the NME, expressed disappointment. Now, however, he sees brilliance in the decision. "Lots of people who'd want to do something like 'Ill Manors' just don't have the profile in middle England that Plan B does," says Wolfson. "Strickland Banks was hugely successful with a super-mainstream, Radio 2 crowd. To most people, he was a bad-boy-done-good soul singer, not all that dissimilar to an X Factor contestant. That makes the force of this single so much greater, because it comes from such a mainstream place."

Drew was born in 1983 and brought up in Forest Gate, east London, where Ill Manors is set. His father, Paul Ballance, a former punk musician, left home when Drew was five months old, and dropped out of the boy's life altogether when he was six. He sent his son a congratulatory text when Strickland Banks went to No 1, but Drew deleted it and the two haven't spoken since. His mother, "a saint", was a local-authority architect. "We weren't working class but we weren't middle class," Drew has said. "We were in the void in between."

As a young teenager, Drew taught himself guitar, aping Britpop acts and penning romantic soul numbers. Only later did he take up rapping, his "Plan B" shifting his songwriting focus to his mother's unsuitable boyfriends, his father's failings, his tough school life. He was expelled for fighting more than once. He threw chairs and verbally abused his teachers, and at 15 was sent to the pupil referral unit that he later claimed had turned his life around. He regressed once, in 2007, when he received a suspended sentence for threatening a stranger, kicking a bin and swearing at police. He subsequently spent time in therapy and swore off drugs.

Who Needs Actions was not a huge hit, reaching a modest No 30 in the charts despite its five-star reviews. But Strickland Banks went triple platinum, winning Drew three Ivor Novello awards and a Brit for Best British Male. His inadvertently prescient performance at the 2011 Brits ceremony featured a staged prison riot. Musical success also helped him to develop an acting career, with roles in Adulthood (2008), Harry Brown (2009) and 4.3.2.1 (2010). This year he'll star in the big-screen remake of The Sweeney alongside Ray Winstone.

Meanwhile, Drew's been trying to make a name behind the camera. A music video for electro duo Chase & Status in 2008 was followed by a grim short, Michelle, which now forms one of the narrative strands in Ill Manors. No production company was interested in funding the feature film, so he raised the budget independently, starting with £4,000 of his own savings. His favourite movie, he says, is Forrest Gump.

Assuming his latest project has the broad impact that he's aiming for, Drew has expressed a wish to establish a charity to fund and empower those individuals in troubled and underprivileged communities that he calls "vigilante social workers". There is a danger, though, says Wolfson, in holding him up as "Plan B, Voice of Britain's Feral Youth", adding: "What's been interesting about the youth resistance, with the student protest and the riots, is the total avoidance of leaders. But because there's a vacuum, there's a natural media tendency to search for some kind of spokesperson. It's that Newsnight thing of bringing Dizzee Rascal on to talk about the presidential election."

Nevertheless, Drew's ambitions are considerable. "I started to write an album that would try to reach out to these kids and, in some ways, to be a father to these kids, because they were parentless," he told a TED conference last week. And, in his 1Xtra interview, he suggested that mission was lifelong. "A lot of these kids come from family environments where they're told they're no good and will never amount to anything, and when they walk out of their front door, society tells them the same thing... But you can change that... That was the motive behind my first record, and will probably be the motive behind any hip-hop music I'm ever going to make, until we change the issue – and then I can start making pop music."

A Life In Brief

Born: Benjamin Paul Ballance-Drew, 22 October 1983, in east London.

Family: Mother worked for the local authority. Father left when Ben was five months old.

Education: Anglo-European School, Ingatestone, Essex; Tom Hood School, Leytonstone.

Career: First album in 2006: Who Needs Actions When You Got Words. First major film role in Adulthood (2008). Second album, The Defamation of Strickland Banks (2010). Directed the film Ill Manors.

He says: "If anybody wants to talk to me about how I think we can change these things I'm ready."

They say: "With less talent, or worse luck, Drew could have been among the rioters." Dorian Lynskey, writer

This profile paints a good picture of what Ben Drew hopes to achieve through his album/track.

He says: "If anybody wants to talk to me about how I think we can change these things I'm ready."

They say: "With less talent, or worse luck, Drew could have been among the rioters." Dorian Lynskey, writer

Plan B - Ill Mannors (Music Video)

London Riots Study - Response

• What was the context of the riots? (reasons for riots)
  
  The riots had a lot of different reasons and a complicated context when it happened. The "Main" or outstanding reason for the cause of the protests which sparked the riots was a man being shot and killed by the police without arrest. On top if this there were a lot of underlying problems that had not been addressed and that many people felt angry over, contributing to the stress that was around at the time of the riots. The guardian said for example that the country has been unhappy since the coalition, which was reflected by multiple student protests, and the riots in discussion as well as the crash of trade unions, loss of jobs and scandals within the government and press. One man, when being interviewed by the BBC, said "This has been coming for a long time.", showing that the incident with the police is quite clearly not the only problem that the rioters were thinking about. I think the main contexts of the riots where as follows; the shooting of the man without arrest, the student cuts, raising unemployment, and tax payers money being spent elsewhere. Even those who do not feel for these causes may have joined in due to their own reasons for example one man made a comment about immigration levels when being asked why he supported the riots.

• Why were youths involved in the riots?
  
  There were many reasons why youths may have been involved in the riots,   their motives ranged from the student cuts and political standings, to simply wanting free loot. A good reason that i thought about was the social exclusion of those involved. Youths who are not rich, or intellectual  may feel excluded from society due to the lack of material items that consume us today. Many of the youths involved could be seen as lower class, or minorities. The riots could have been both a way for them to take a stand against the consumerism, as well as to gain some of the items that the majorities can afford.
  .
• Where the youths given a fair representation in the press coverage of the riots?
  
  I dont think they were. Most of the pictures of the riots show the police, and not the youths. The whole press coverage of the riots forgot about its "protest" beginnings and instead turned to blame the young of britain for everything that was happening. Using sensationalist words such as "Mob" and "Voilent" the press controlled what the public where thinking at the time of the incidents, clearly pointing the blame at youths. It could also be worth noting that over a quarter of the arrests made during the london riots were of over 25's, at least half of those being over 30, yet it was very rare to see any of them in the news.
• How can the coverage of the london riots be understood in relation to the ideas of stanley cohen?
  
  Stan Cohen says that events like these cause "Moral Panic" and they are blamed on the "Folk Devils" who had disrupted society. In this case the folk devils were "the youths" as painted by the mass media, and the disruption would be the riots. The moral panic was caused by the amplification of the events by the media. It would be unfair to say the riots were "hyped up" as they were quite serious however the media did group together images from different locations giving te feel that there were riots everywhere. But more importantly they used a lot of sensationalist words such as "Thugs", "Riot", "Violence" and "Mob" setting a tone of panic and moral discomfort around the country. 
• To what extent was the collective identity of the youths constructed by the press?
  
  The press played a bigger part in constructing the identity of those involved than they did themselves. The mass media are generally "in charge" of how people are represented in all aspects of our lives, due to a lot of our leisure activities and work being media related. During the riots the youths were portrayed as being violent thieves and had a very negative constructed identity despite a lot of the country not taking part in the riots, with many youths being involved in the cleanup of the riots being ignored by the press.  Again, the press used a lot of sensationalist words such as "Thugs", "Riot", "Violence" and "Mob" to paint youths in a negative light.

The Guardian - Context Quote

When looking to find more background information on the context of the riots, i found a quote from the guardian website that i think summarizes it up nicely.

Since the coalition came to power just over a year ago, the country has seen multiple student protests, occupations of dozens of universities, several strikes, a half-a-million-strong trade union march and now unrest on the streets of the capital (preceded by clashes with Bristol police in Stokes Croft earlier in the year). Each of these events was sparked by a different cause, yet all take place against a backdrop of brutal cuts and enforced austerity measures. The government knows very well that it is taking a gamble, and that its policies run the risk of sparking mass unrest on a scale we haven't seen since the early 1980s. With people taking to the streets of Tottenham, Edmonton, Brixton and elsewhere over the past few nights, we could be about to see the government enter a sustained and serious losing streak.

I kept this as i thought it would be useful.

London Riots Study

• What was the context of the riots? (reasons for riots)
• Why were youths involved in the riots?
• Where the youths given a fair representation in the press coverage of the riots?
• How can the coverage of the london riots be understood in relation to the ideas of stanley cohen?
• To what extent was the collective identity of the youths constructed by the press?

Press Coverage - London Riots

Youths In The News (Newspaper Analysis)

Mob of 200 youths pelt police with bricks and smash up shops 'in anger at on-going sex grooming trial (Link)








This article is about some events that happened a week or two ago involving youths. The text looks at youths in a very bad light, using "Mob" in the title which instantly paints a bad image of those involved in the events. Using sensationalist words such as "Mob" and "Rampage" will instantly make the readers feel a certain way towards the matters described, in this case it makes them feel negative towards the youths in the story. A good example of this would be when the  It was also interesting to see that in the title it said 'in anger at on-going sex grooming trial', with the line inside apostrophes possibly suggesting the youths' reasoning for the violence was not justified. The pictures with the article don't show youths, just pictures of policemen after the incidents. Overall the article describes youths in a very bad light and does not address the motives behind the abuse given by the teens.

My Identity

Useful Theories

Collective Identity

• Antonio Gramsci - Hegemony Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci (1881-1937). He emphasised that the control of society by one group or one set of political ideas was not necessarily achieved by force or control of arms, but by persuasion and ‘consent’ – the basis of democracy. The rulers manage to convince the mass of the population that they are ‘better off’ accepting current government policies. Maintaining hegemonic control is thus a process of constantly reinforcing the message and developing the argument.
  
  The concept of hegemony allows for substantial change in ideas over time, even though the same groups remain in power. These groups constantly adjust their ideas and find new ways to gain the consent of those they dominate.In media terms the Mass Media both perpetuate cultural hegemony and are a cultural hegemony in themselves in that a relatively small number of big companies, e.g. News Corp., The BBC, Time Warner, Sony etc., control most of the world’s media, and this in turn allows them to control most of what we see, hear and know. This, in turn, allows them to control what we think, selecting only ideas that serve its interests, i.e. bourgeois capitalism. This is known as a ‘Top Down’ model of dominant ideologies.
• David Buckingham“A focus on identity requires us to pay close attention to the diverse ways in which media and technologies are used in everyday life, and their consequences for both individuals and for social groups”
• Mikhail Bakhtin The Russian philosopher Bakhtin believed that individual people cannot be finalized, completely understood, known or labeled. He saw identity as the unfinalised self meaning a person is never fully revealed or known. This ties in with the idea that identity is a fluid concept, a life-long project that is never complete.
• Stan Cohen Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972)
• David Gauntlett 'Identities are not 'given' but are constructed and negotiated.'
• Michel Foucault (French thinker 1926-1984) For Foucault, people do not have a 'real' identity within themselves; that's just a way of talking about the self -- a discourse. An 'identity' is communicated to others in your interactions with them, but this is not a fixed thing within a person. It is a shifting, temporary construction.
  
  Power is something which can be used and deployed by particular people in specific situations, which itself will produce other reactions and resistances; and isn't tied to specific groups or identities. Power outcomes are not inevitable and can be resisted.(The power in our instance would be MASS MEDIA) 

Media Production

-Genre

• Daniel Chandler (2001) details that the word genre comes from the word for 'kind' or 'class'. The term is widely used in rhetoric, literary theory, media theory to refer to a distinctive type of text.

• Jason Mittell (2001) argues that industries use genre to sell products to audiences. Media producers use familiar codes and conventions  that very often make references to their audience knowledge of society, other texts.

• Christian Metz (1974) argued that genres go through a typical cycle of changes during their lifetime. 

• David Buckingham (1993) argues that 'genre is not... Simply "given" by the culture: rather, it is in a constant process of negotiation and change’.

• Steve Neale (1995) “genres are processes of systemisation” – they change over time.

• Nicholas Abercrombie (1996) suggests that “the boundaries between genres are shifting and becoming more permeable”. (Hybrids?)