Explain the role played by media in the construction of collective identity.

Media plays a huge part in the construction of collective identity; for example youth are represented through the media a various different types of ways such as the movie kidulthood, this shows youth in a bad stereotypical manner, therefore this  plays a huge part in society. Furthermore Youth are also represented in a negative manner for example if a youth is wearing a hoodie they would automatically stereotyped because of there collective identity and how they are portrayed in the media. Therefore this shows media plays a huge role on how society takes particulate thing.

However youths are not always portrayed negatively in the media, sometimes they do tend to show the better side of them; for instance when the results are there; if the younger generation which attend school do pass the news picks up on and say a positive things.

Media can be useful, and change the view of a type of group such as, The disability; the reason why i chose that particular group is because of the para Olympics, this actually showed a positive way in how us as a society view the disability. It showed them to be strong no vulnerable and enthusiastic; wear as as a society as a whole the disability was viewed in a different manner quite opposite to what i said above. therefore this shows media can put a light on a subject.

on the other hand media can do the complete opposite and create a stereotype  on a particular group such as 'Muslims', for example after the 9/11 Muslims were on the news for quite some while and were in most negative manner, this created quite a big stereotype about this particular group. They were mostly in the news which society tends to watch and this made the 'Muslims' quite an easy stereotype. I personally believe that media can make society change there mind very fast. I also believe media can control peoples mind because it is the only place where we get our news.

Media is not all negative; because without it we would not know what is going on around the world. Media can help people for example 'YouTube' 'Kony' this was quite recently made and people knew about it in just in a few days it got millions of views and it raised awareness about what is going on. 


Coming back to the youths collective identity is played in the media mostly in a negative way such as teenagers throughout the television is usually negative- with violence, drugs and sex. i thing the more you see these types of TV shows/films come on the more you actually fall in the trap. Of (stereotype). 
Also, you could say that TV shows could be the reason why they go through this particular gender, because they think its ok since it is on there TV everyday. TV shows such as Bad education, Misfits and many more shows aggression and a negative outline in teenagers them selves, it has students bullying teachers. and students bullying other students; this could show kids that its OK to bully people. there fore what i am trying to argue is that collective identity plays a huge part in society and media. and negative TV shows can make it seem OK when it is not.




To conclude, i think that media plays a huge role in collective identity. And in particular groups such as Teenagers, religions/race/skin and the disability all are affected by the negative and positive in the media. I personally think it is mostly negative because society as a whole want entrainment, so that is what media does; it entertains the viewing public.