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TELEVISION NEWS AND THE SYMBOLIC CRIMINALISATION OF YOUNG PEOPLE

2008; Routledge; Volume: 9; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14616700701768105

1469-9699

Mike Wayne, Lesley Henderson, Craig Murray, Julian Petley,

Gender, Feminism, and Media

Abstract This essay combines quantitative and qualitative analysis of six UK television news programmes. It seeks to analyse the representation of young people within broadcast news provision at a time when media representations, political discourse and policy making generally appear to be invoking young people as something of a folk devil or a locus for moral panics. The quantitative analysis examines the frequency with which young people appear as main actors across a range of different subjects and analyses the role of young people as news sources. It finds a strong correlation between young people and violent crime. A qualitative analysis of four "special reports" or backgrounders on channel Five's Five News explores the representation of young people in more detail, paying attention to contradictions and tensions in the reports, the role of statistics in crime reporting, the role of victims of crime and the tensions between conflicting news frames. Keywords: crimeframesideologypublic spheretelevision newsyoung people Acknowledgements This research is part of a larger project, "Television News and Young People: the problem of 'disconnection'", a three-year study funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Notes 1. We did code any stories that dealt with sport but not simply with results. 2. Age-bracket specifications for "young people" are various. While 16–24 is a common conceptualisation (e.g. Electoral Commission, BBC, BARB), we opted for the broader 14–25 bracket so as to capture a wider range of youth representations. 3. This figure of 96 domestic stories excludes one item about YP and violent crime in the United States. The figure of 127 domestic crime stories excludes seven stories about YP and crime internationally. 4. This analysis includes all stories involving YP and violent crime in our sample, almost all of which were domestic stories. 5. The victim's ethnicity was identified in contemporaneous newspaper and online news sources. 6. Includes one story about knife crime in the United States. 7. According to ITV News, ITV1, 22:30, 30 May 2006.