• Collective Identity - A sense of 'one ness'. A membership in a social group that is a collective and has a sense of togetherness.
• David Gauntless - ' Identity is complicated - everybody thinks they've got one'... 'The power relationship between the media & the audience involves a bit of both, or to be more precise, a lot of both. The media sends out a huge number of messages about identity & acceptable forms of self - expression, gender, sexuality and lifestyle. At the same time the public have their own even more robust set of diverse feelings on the iddies. The media's suggestions may be seductive but can never simply overpower contrary feelings in the audience'
• David Buckingham - A focus on identity requires us to pay closer attention to the ways in which media & techniqies are used in every day life & their consequences for social groups'
• Ideology - a set of ideas
• Portrayal - The way in which something is presented
• Stereotype - A typical representation
• Readings: Dominant - how the  creator wants the audience to view the text
                 Opposition - when the audience rejects the preferrred reading, and creates their own
                                     meaning of the text
                Negotiated - a comprimise between the dominant and opposition readings where the
                                   audience acceps parts of the director's views, but has their own views aswell. 
• Subculture - A different social group within society
• Construction - how things are put together
• Conform - goes with the norm
• Subvert - goes against the norm
• Dissonance - two conflicting ideas
• Archetypal - something something that is typical
• Subservient - hierarchy 
• Richard Jenkins - Suggests that we need to interract with others in order to form our identity
• Stuart Hall - ' the media appera to reflect reality, when in fact they construct it'
• Jacques Lacan -  theory of the mirror stage, that a child copies what they see in order to develop their identity.
• Hemegony - the dominant view
• Intertextuality - The reference of media text inside another
• Marxism - theory started by Karl Marx which determines that all members of society will be governed by work and in a class less system. All members of society must follow the same rules and hold a common perception of each other.
• Neo-marxism - The view that class divisions under capitalism are more important than gender divisions or issues of race and ethnicity.
• Merleau Ponty - anything in which we use our bodies to create new things builds our identity i.e. creating a blog
• Michael Foucault - Believes that we are born with a basic structure of our inner identity but it adapts and changes for who we meet and through discourse. He argues that surveillance in society is obtrusive
• Richard Dyer - His 'star' theory suggests that stars are a construction of what record labels want them to be in order to sell records. The dramatisation of their life becomes their USP and music isn't important.
• Post-modernism - The belief that many realities are only social constructs, and that it is not race, gender and so on... that brings collective identity but mutual interests
• Moral panic - When the media creates a sense of fear
• Web 2.0 - User centered information sharing i.e. twitter, facebook etc...
• Enigma - a sense of mystery or the unknown
• Iconography - Visuals associated with a person, can be part of their persona.
• Mediated - A persons understanding of a media text

Web 2.0 - Viral and Online Press

How does the internet provide an enormous challenge for regulators?  The internet moves at a faster rate than the rate at which a board of regulators could move because it is global and is updated billions of times every second. Regulations come in the forms of consent pop ups on 4oD for example but are easily surpassed with a click of a mouse leaving almost any site open to people of all ages around the world.
 In the 2011 London riots, communication was viral due to the use of Twitter and Blackberry Messenger which are both accessible and free.  An Ofcom survey revealed that 37% of youth aged 12-24 favoured Blackberry and its almost free BBM service. Messages sent on BBM are private to those who aren’t on the network and connected by ‘pin’ but can still be sent quickly via a broadcast to everyone on a contact list. 
 Untraceable messages such as "Everyone from all sides of London meet up at the heart of London (central) OXFORD CIRCUS!!, Bare SHOPS are gonna get smashed up so come get some (free stuff!!!) f**k the feds we will send them back with OUR riot! >:O Dead the ends and colour war for now so if you see a brother... SALUT! if you see a fed... SHOOT!", taken from The Guardian website, were spread in seconds which contributed to the levels of violence seen in the riots.   
Although the widespread failure of regulation is favoured by many including youth as it goes against Marxist society, it is debatable that more regulation is needed to ironically, protect the youth. An example of this is Angie Verona who became an internet sex symbol at the age of 14 when her photobucket account was hacked and personal photos leaked. None of the provocative pictures have been taken down and is a burden on her life. For cases like this regulation is needed to protect the youth.  

BBM

How does web 2.0 present a change for rioters since the Brixton riots?

The actions of rioters over time have changed from the 1981 Brixton riots to the 2011 London riots. In 1981, the riot was caused by serious social and economic problems which had consequences of bad relationships between the police and local communities. It could be argued that this was also the case with the 2011 riots, dissatisfaction with the police and government but the difference was that the original spark was the death of Mark Duggan, who was killed by the police. The original march was in Tottenham but it is argued that the use of different forms of Web 2.0 such as Twitter and BBM left the protest open to opportunists who relished in the violence and stealing aspects of it.



Twitter



How Are Teenagers and Young People in the Media Portrayed?

With some exception, young people in the media are traditionally portrayed in a negative light through TV programmes, films and news articles. Some of these portrayals tend to be inaccurate which changes the way older and younger generations view the youth as a whole.

The posed image with  the Daily Mail article

For example,  the Daily Mail in 2008 published an article entitled " Decade-long £650m push to cut youth crime has had 'no measurable impact' " which gives the reader information on just how ineffective the government have been at cutting the number of young offenders in the UK. The picture with the article, although posed by models, depicts 3 boys of around 12 years old standing next to a derelict wall and drinking alcohol dressed in a stereotypical 'chavvy' way. This negative image is what most of the audience will see before even reading the article and it is a very negative view of British youth, a portrayal that the Daily Mail have deliberately constructed.  The article goes on to use facts, figures and other statistics from highly academic sources such as Kings College to further support their points which makes the research appear to be more trusted to the target audience. With this negative portrayal, it categorises all youth into a collective identity of offenders and with the vast amount of articles written in this light, the general representation of youth is distorted so much that it almost becomes a reality for those in other generations who know no different and in some ways glamourises the criminal lifestyle because of the attention it receives. This may urge other youngsters to get involved with the 'in group' because they can see that the rate of young offenders is rising and the government haven't yet found an effective way of dealing with them. Theorist Stuart Hall once said 'the media appear to reflect reality whilst in fact they construct it' and this is true regarding this article.

Chris Miles (right)

On the other hand, youth can be portrayed in a different light which is more accurate than the constant one as a group of delinquents. For example, in the popular TV drama 'Skins' there is a character called Chris Miles. He is initially shown in a negative light to just 'smoke/screw/rob/snort anything' and not succeed in life but as the series continues different aspects of his personality are revealed which in a sense counteracts his initial stereotype as a 'hedonistic skater'.  The creators of the show make the audience feel that his reckless behaviour is justified because of the way his character developed as being kind, gentle, welcoming with a positive attitude towards friends and relationships. This is a juxtaposition and it shows the audience that the less favourable actions don't ultimately make people who they are.

'Henri Tajfel's greatest contribution to psychology was social identity theory.
Social identity is a person’s sense of who they are based on their group membership(s).
Tajfel proposed that the groups (e.g. social class, family, football team etc.) which people belonged to were an important source of pride and self-esteem.  Groups give us a sense of social identity: a sense of belonging to the social world.

In order to increase our self-image we enhance the status of the group to which we belong. We can also increase our self-image by discriminating and being prejudice against the out group.

Therefore we divided the world into “them” and “us” based through a process of social categorisation (i.e. we put people into social groups).

This is known as in-group (us) and out-group (them).  Social identity theory states that the in-group will discriminate against the out-group to enhance their self-image.

The central hypothesis of social identity theory is that group members of an in-group will seek to find negative aspects of an out-group, thus enhancing their self-image.'

Staurt Hall is a cultural theorist who devised Hall's theory of dominant (how the creator wants the audience to view the text), opposition (when the audience rejects the preferred reading and creates their own meaning of the text) and negotiated (a compromise between the dominant and opposition readings by the audience accepts parts ofthe directors views, but has their own views on parts as well) reactions to a media text.

He has written many books on cultural studies (such as Representation: cultural representations and signifying practices) and also stated that 'the media appear to reflect reality, whilst in fact they construct it'

Dr Caroline Howarth is Caroline Howarth is a British lecturer in social psychology at the Institute of Social Psychology at the London School of Economics. She is noted for her social studies on the Brixton Riots and the struggle for recognition and esteem in  a stigmatised community. The article examines how the struggle for recognition and esteem permeates everyday experiences in the context of young people growing up in Brixton. The first section illustrates how identity is constructed through and against the representations held by others within particular social contexts. Focusing on the varying strategies that different young people adopt in constructing a positive identity reveals the salience of racist representations in the social construction of Brixton. The second section examines the effects this can have on the self-image and self-esteem of many in the study, looking in particular at strategies used to contest negative versions of blackness. This points to the racializing and gendering within the production of local youth identities. The concluding section illustrates how some young people collaboratively develop the social and psychological resources to protect themselves against the prejudices of others. Together, this material reveals how social relationships and institutional cultures empower/disempower Brixton's youth in their collaborative struggle for recognition and esteem. This allows us to consider how new multicultures address, incorporate and resist new racisms and prejudices towards a locality.