Tag Archives: youth crime

The media, youth and crime updates

youth-cultureHopefully next years bunch of sick, feral, thuggish, hearltess, evil, inhuman,  hoodie scum A2 students will find this post useful. If you do you’ll have to let me know by email because I won’t be teaching any face to face lessons to the under 18s in future because, frankly, I find the thought of being in the same room as you terrifying.  

The research below is  relatively recent (meaning recent by the standards of the five text books I’ve looked at – including the otherwise excellent Criminology by Chris Hale et al) on the media, youth and crime –

Some Content analysis from 2004 that demonstrated that….. one in three youth-related articles were about crime, and young people were only quoted in 8% of stories.

Also, 32% of stories featuring young people were related to crime or antisocial behaviour. Only 8% of stories related to positive achievements by young people.

Research from 2009 demonstrating that More than half of the stories about teenage boys in national and regional newspapers in the past year were about crime.

The word most commonly used to describe them was “yobs” (591 times), followed by “thugs” (254 times), “sick” (119 times) and “feral” (96 times). ¡Other terms often used included “hoodie”, “louts”, “heartless”, “evil” “frightening”, “scum”, “monsters”, “inhuman” and “threatening”.

Research by Women in Journalism (2009) suggesting that… as a result of the negative press, many young people were now more wary of boys of their own age.

“It seems the endless diet of media reports about ‘yobs’ and ‘feral’ youths is making them fearful of other teens,” it said. “Nearly a third said they are ‘always’ or ‘often’ wary of teenage boys they don’t know. The most popular reason for their wariness, cited by 51 per cent was ‘media stories about teen boys’ compared with 40 per cent who said their wariness was based on their own or friends’ bad experiences of other teens.

Nearly three-quarters said they had changed their behaviour as a result of this wariness. The most common change, cited by 45.7 per cent, was boys avoiding places where teenagers hung around. Others included dressing differently (14.2 per cent), and changing who they were seen with (11.9 per cent). “For much of the press, there is no such thing as a good news story about teenagers,” it added.

Not that any of you are actually reading this, you’re probably out harassing the elderly for kicks.