Our Stories report

young peoplemedia

politicsaction

Our Stories

AuthorsAde Sofola and Nicola Harwood Support teamAndy Thornton and Chris Cavanaugh

Research internsSharna Worley and Max Miller

EditorTony Breslin

With special thanks to the Our Stories Young ResearchersAakash (14) Fatima (18) Kaja (15) Laura-Liz (18) Ashleigh (19) Michael (13)

Publishers

Citizenship Foundation63 Gee StreetLondon EC1V 3RS

Registered Charity Number: 801360www.citizenshipfoundation.org.uk

http://www.citizenshipfoundation.org.uk


Contents About Us 1 Foreword 2

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Purpose 3 Hypothesis and research questions 4

CHAPTER 2: BACKGROUND and METHODOLOGY Terminology 5 Research Outline 6

Data Analysis 9

CHAPTER 3: RESULTS 10Key findings 1: Young people in the news 10Key Findings 2: The relationship between young people and the media 13Key Findings 3: Participating in Social Action 15Key Findings 4: Interest in Politics 17

CHAPTER 4: conclusion and recommendations 19 Summary 19 Recommendations 21

APPENDIX A – Literature Review 22APPENDIX B - Borough profiles 24APPENDIX C – Survey Demographics 25APPENDIX D – Quantitative survey instrument 26APPENDIX E – Focus group protocol 31APPENDIX F - Citizenship Education in the UK 32

Copyright © Citizenship Foundation 2009 Our Stories: Portrayal or Betrayal?


The Citizenship Foundation www.citizenshipfoundation.org.uk

The Citizenship Foundation is an independent education and participation charity that aims to empower individuals to engage in the wider community through education about the law, democracy and society. Founded in 1989, we focus particularly on developing young people’s citizenship skills, knowledge and understanding. We are committed to three objectives: supporting the development of better citizenship education, effective participation and stronger communities.

We do this through the provision of resources for teachers and youth workers within and beyond the formal education system, through a range of active learning and participation and social action programmes in school, college and community settings. By supporting the delivery of the citizenship curriculum and related curricula in schools and colleges we are able to lobby to ensure that issues pertaining to citizenship, participation and community empowerment remain central in the policy agenda. The greater part of our work focuses on young people and is delivered within the UK, but we are committed to internationalist perspectives and to partnership working.

ABOUT US

Youth Act www.youthact.org.uk

Youth Act is a project of the Citizenship Foundation that trains young people aged 11-18 who have the potential to press for - and want to achieve - political or social change in their school, college, youth club or community. Through enabling participants to develop their campaigning skills, Youth Act fosters participants’ personal development, social understanding and political empowerment. Specifically, it develops skills in advocacy, negotiation, influencing, teamwork, media, communication and conflict resolution.

The Youth Act approach enables young people to develop their own voice in order to be heard and to work in partnership with decision-makers, thereby bringing to life the words of Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), which gives young people the right to say what they think should happen and have their opinions taken into account when adults are making decisions that affect them. Since 2004 Youth Act has been established in seventeen local authority areas - including a three-year pilot in London - and is now being rolled out nationally through a ‘train the trainers’ package available to all local authorities.

In 2007 Youth Act was one of a suite of projects that helped the Citizenship Foundation to win the prestigious Carl Bertelsmann Prize for its work in “promoting civic engagement as an educational goal”

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http://www.youthact.org.uk



ForewordA few months ago I made a citizens’ arrest of a young tear-away. A reporter saw it. The blizzard of media coverage of that mundane event exemplified just how oversensitive and unbalanced the publics’ perception of young people now is. If I had not been at pains to say that, no doubt, the malefactor and his chums were decent lads, in need nonetheless of some restraint, the coverage would have been far more alarmist.

This study, then, addresses a very live issue and heralds what we hope will be a wider, deeper and constructive exploration by others of the links between overall media representation of young citizens and their self-perception and conduct. The Citizenship Foundation’s Youth Act project, launched so effectively by Carrie Supple and now led by Ade Sofola, has for five years sought to give young people a civic voice. As this research demonstrates they are ready to vent it and want to take part and to be listened to, especially within their own communities.

At the same time, it is evident that young people have low expectations for how, if at all, their actions will be reported. This presents a challenge to adults, from passive consumers of media all the way to Parliamentarians, to consider how young people are represented.

But, as readers will discover, there are bright spots and hopeful prospects in an otherwise fairly somber picture. As always at the Citizenship Foundation, we are optimistic and confident that a wider realisation of the issues canvassed in this report can only do good, for there is goodwill waiting to be tapped on all sides. With hard work, things can only get better, certainly as regards youth press relations!

Andrew Phillips(Lord Phillips of Sudbury)

President, Citizenship Foundation

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Chapter OneIntroductionChallengeConcerns about youth participation have grown in recent years. Sir Bernard Crick’s advisory group’s report, Education for Citizenship and the Teaching of Democracy in Schools (1998), the report of the Russell Commission (2004) and the Power Inquiry (2006) were all concerned with different manifestations of this challenge. More broadly, the various education and participation programmes of the Citizenship Foundation - including Youth Act - are focused on just these issues: promoting and enabling active and effective citizenship so as to develop strong, inclusive and cohesive communities.

There is a perception that young people are less likely than adults to participate in a range of social and civic activities. They are less likely to vote, less likely to be involved actively in their local community and less likely to undertake formalised voluntary work.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper and the research that we detail here is twofold. First, we hope to refine our understanding of young people’s involvement in social and civic activities by examining the factors that might contribute to their confidence and interest in participation. Second, we will explore specifically whether there is a connection between the willingness of young people to participate in building strong and cohesive local communities - and in the broader political process - and the increasingly negative ‘image’ ascribed to young people (or to ‘youth’) in media reports.

Our interest in this issue has emerged as a result of the work that we have undertaken over the past five years with groups of young people in London and across the UK promoting political engagement through our active citizenship training programme, Youth Act. Our experience suggests that young people do have an interest in politics and social action, an interest further stimulated through participation in Youth Act, which then addresses both the drivers that develop their involvement and the barriers that prevent their participation in local communities.

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AudienceThis study will be of particular interest to all involved in Citizenship Education and to participation teams and organisations working with young people to get them involved in politics and social and community action. The study should provide some context for the work done with young people in areas where these professionals have been charged with the responsibility for increasing the percentage of young people who feel that they can make a difference to local decision-making (National Indicator 4; CLG, 2008).

Hypothesis and Research Questions We hypothesise that there is a link between young people’s portrayal in the media and their inclination to take social action in their communities, as well as their level of interest in politics. In testing this hypothesis, we propose to explore four research questions:

1. Do young people believe that they are portrayed negatively in the media?2. If yes, is this negative portrayal unfair in relation to young people’s actual behaviour?3. Are those young people who feel that the media’s negative portrayal is unfair less inclined to

participate in social action in their communities?4. Are those young people who feel that the media’s negative portrayal is unfair less interested in

politics?

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TerminologyIn our research we distinguished between ‘social’ participation and ‘civic’ participation. We set out what we mean by these two terms below.

Social participation✦ Number of cultural, leisure and social groups belonged to and the frequency and intensity of

involvement in these groups;✦ Engagement in formal volunteering and the frequency and intensity of involvement;✦ Religious activity and the frequency and intensity of involvement.

Civic participation✦ Ability to influence events (actual or perceived);✦ The extent to which young people are informed about local and national affairs;✦ Contact with public officials or political representatives;✦ Involvement with local groups involved in some form of ‘political’ action;✦ Propensity to vote.

Chapter TwoBACKGROUND & METHODOLOGY

How does the

media’s portrayal of young people affect young people’s image

of themselves and their participation in the political and social

realms?

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Research OutlineOur research was conducted in October and November 2008 through a two-tiered data collection process. This included:

1. An initial focus group phase through which we developed and honed the research questions set out earlier;

2. A three-borough survey of young people aged 13 – 15 in schools and youth clubs.

The survey responses were analysed for descriptive data exploring the relationships between four key variables:

1. Youth perception of media representation; 2. Current social action and participation levels; 3. Geographic (borough) distinctions; 4. Youth self-perception.

We detail below the steps employed to generate the data, the data analysis processes and the limitations that these methods necessarily place on our ability to generalise from these findings.

Research StrategyWe chose to focus on 13-15 year olds for our research as we identified these students as the most time-rich and socially confident group in Key Stages 3 and 4 respectively.

Phase A: The Three-Borough Survey

Population and SamplingAs this research is exploratory in nature, we chose not to invest the time and resources into selecting a random sample of youth drawn from across London or the UK, a move that would have allowed for more substantive generalisations to be drawn from the data. Instead, we chose to target our activities in three boroughs with different youth crime, socio-economic and youth populations. We provide full borough profiles in Appendix 1.

Within each borough, we contacted forty secondary schools and youth groups to assess their willingness to participate in the survey process. After careful negotiation, five schools and three youth clubs agreed to

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allow access to their age-appropriate student cohort in early November. The table below provides a breakdown of the schools and youth clubs and the number of respondents from each school or youth group, with tallies by borough. This demonstrates that sample sizes were approximately even across the three areas.

Phase B: The Focus Groups

To compliment the data collected in the questionnaires, Citizenship Foundation team members conducted three focus group sessions in each of the chosen boroughs, involving a total of forty six young people young people in London in early October 2008. For convenience, and due to time limitations, these sessions were conducted as an in-school and in-youth club exercise at two youth clubs and one school. Each of the focus groups followed an established investigation protocol which allowed the participants to explore, through discussion, aspects of youth perception of media representation, their perceived relationship to levels of social engagement/participation and potential interactions between the two based upon personal experience and individual profiles.

The results of these focus groups were then analysed so as to identify the key relationships that might be investigated through the three-borough survey.

Table 1: Sample Descriptives by Borough and School

Borough No of Respondents Borough Total

Haringey 100

Haringey Youth Council 8

Gladesmore School 65

Fortismere School 27

Southwark 83

Sacred Hearts RC School 47

Southwark Youth Council 8

St Saviours & St Olaves 28

Harrow 100

Bentley Wood School 90

Ignite Youth Club 10Appendix C provides a copy of the questionnaire used as the survey instrument.

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Based upon the initial focus group data, the Citizenship Foundation’s Youth Act team designed a 12-item, multi-indicator paper survey for distribution to the sample groups. The survey gathered a range of data about the following factors - factors that the focus group results suggested were of particular pertinence:

1. Geographic factors (borough)2. Personal factors (age, gender, ethnicity)3. School-related engagement levels (participation and achievement)4. Community engagement levels (current and anticipated)5. Exposure to media6. Personal political empowerment7. Perceptions of youth representation in the media8. Relationship to knife crime and perceptions of knife crime

The questions were posed so as to solicit quantitative data through categorical and continuous variables dependent upon the potential responses. No qualitative data was solicited through the paper survey.

Due to time and resource constraints, the paper surveys were not piloted to test validity and reliability prior to data collection. The Citizenship Foundation encourages future research, based upon the findings in this report, so as to explore the validity and reliability of this instrument in more depth prior to wider use.

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Data Analysis the technicalitiesThe collected data was distributed across thirty one variables to be included in the analysis, with a further two ancillary variables created through the recoding of categorical data into binary data for sorting and classification. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS Base 8.0.

A cursory overview of the data found approximately fifteen data entry errors, which were corrected prior to analysis. Missing data has been removed from the analysis presented in this report; hence, all results presented in this report are based upon valid responses. There were no noticeable data outliers that warranted further investigation.

As a piece of exploratory research, the data analysis focused around descriptive profiling as opposed to searches for statistical significance. Statistical significance tests were performed only where these were warranted by the descriptive breakdowns. Any statistically significant relationships presented in this report were established under the standard p<.05 threshold.

Limitations Two key factors limit the interpretation of this data: first, convenience sampling does not allow for wider generalisation to a larger population; second, the lack of pilot validity/reliability tests may require future researchers to refine the instrument and its questions in the future. Finally, it should be noted that a noticeable portion of the sample population (67 per cent) were female. The Citizenship Foundation encourages any party using the data and conclusions of this project to take note of this for transparency and appropriate interpretation.

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Chapter threeResultsWe present below the findings drawn from our Three-Borough Survey, concluding with key questions that arise and, where appropriate, suggesting next steps in terms of further research that might be taken.

Appendix B provides a summary of statistically outstanding items associated with each borough, including Metropolitan Police statistics relevant to youth and crime.

Key Findings 1:Young people in the news85 per cent of young people indicated overwhelmingly that they were more likely to see a “young people as trouble” story (Stories A and B) than a positive story about young people in their local newspaper.

When presented with Story A and Story B, 64 percent of young people felt that Story B – profiling the young as bravado-filled irritants – reflected most closely the way young people normally behave.

Ironically, young people in Harrow (where there is the least crime and where most young people expect to be in a ‘good news’ story) held a significantly higher perception that a story about young people in the local press would be negative. Here 38 per cent of young people expected to see the highly negative story in a paper (almost three times as many as in Haringey, where only 15 per cent expected to see a negative portrayal) and a similar percentage (41 per cent) said that this is the way that young people ‘normally behave’, against Haringey’s 11 per cent.

However, the vast majority of our respondents (71 per cent) indicated that they personally are likely to be part of a positive news story. This is at its highest in Harrow, at 85 per cent, and where a paradoxical 41 per cent indicated that negative behaviour is ‘normal’ amongst young people.

‘The media is scared of

young people’ Contributor,

Haringey Focus group.

When thinking about the positive news story:

15% said they were likely to see this type of story in newspaper;

71% said they were likely to be part of this type of story;7% said this type of story reflected the way young people

behave.

This positive view of their own behaviour is quite striking and suggests that the largest proportion of young people would only expect to see themselves in the kind of news story that wouldn’t get in to the papers. This is particularly noticeable in Southwark, where 61 per cent of respondents would expect to see themselves in good news stories, but only 5 per cent thought that such a story would appear.

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What does this tell us?The majority of young people believe that their behaviour is more positive than what is reported in the stories that they read - and expect to read - in the media. This suggests that, individually, young people may regularly exempt themselves from the generic reporting of young people, feeling that their own good or positive behaviour is somehow abnormal when compared to other young people.

In so doing, these young people may be buying into negative stereotypes just as much as adults do. This was validated in our focus groups, where young people in all three areas made reference to a perception that problem behaviour occurred elsewhere but not in their area. This is interesting considering the variations in crime figures for each of the three areas.

Curiously, the figures for Harrow exemplify this the most, indicating a potential “myth” of the troublesome youth that is willingly perpetuated over and against the apparent benign reality. Perhaps the local paper is a willing conspirator in the “thankfully, I’m not like them”, or “beware the outsider” game.

Interestingly, young people in Haringey seem to go against one trend: they don’t expect to see as many negative stories about young people. This might be due to the fact that so many young people in Haringey had been in a news story. In fact, young people in Haringey were almost twice more likely to have been part of a news story than young people in Harrow or Southwark and this might influence their expectations of news stories

Borough No Yes

Haringey 26.90% 46.20%

Southwark 31% 25.60%

Harrow 42.10% 28.20%

Have you ever been part of a news story in the local press?

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Key Questions:

✦ Do young people show their ‘worst face’ to each other, and does the press representation of young people exacerbate this ‘face-showing’?

✦ Is the stereotype perpetuated because of the media’s portrayal or because of what they experience when they interact with other young people?

✦ Is this mixture of media and inter-personal portrayal a contributor to anti-social behaviour and criminal activities amongst young people?

✦ If we expect the worst of people, particularly in relation to acts of violence, do situations escalate out of control more readily?

We suggest that a further study should focus on the numbers of stories about young people in each of the three boroughs so as to examine the type of stories that are run about young people.

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Key Findings 2: The relationship between young people and the media ✦ 76 per cent of young people said that the press portrayed

young people in a bad light;✦ 43 per cent of young people said that this press portrayal was

unfair because it was not based on young people’s actual behaviour.

Young people in Southwark were more likely to say that the press portrayed young people in a bad light than young people from Haringey or Harrow.

“Old people think they are the most vulnerable

but actually young people are more

affected by crime than old people, so we are

the most vulnerable but the media doesn’t show

that.” Young person, Haringey

0

22.5

45.0

67.5

90.0

Good Light Bad Light

HaringeySouthwarkHarrow

Does the media portray young people in a good light or a bad light?

One of the most common topics for current stories about young people relates to knife crime. 29 per cent of young people felt that the press exaggerate the extent of such crimes. In our focus groups, young people believed that the media hyper-sensitises adults to knife crime amongst young people.

Young people felt that the media’s obsession with youth-involved knife crime in London was often sensationalised because “it sells stories”, yet 61 per cent of young people enjoyed reading the negative stories (Story A and Story B) more than they enjoyed reading the positive one in our paper clippings (Story C). “…But the way the stories in the paper go on about knife

crime, it’s like it is going to happen to everyone but it doesn’t affect me! I am not in a gang and I am not going to be stabbed for no reason, it’s just stupid!”Young person, Harrow

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What does this tell us?Young people have an ambiguous relationship with the media. They are confused as to whether to believe the stories that they read or not, perceiving elements of truth and hype to varying degrees.

This is particularly interesting as they overwhelmingly claim that, as individual respondents, they are more likely to feature in a positive news story. Some of this unease might be based on the fact that young people in all of our focus groups told us that they were ‘unlikely’ to read more than the headline of any story and that they only delve into the more sensational stories.

They therefore might be self-selecting (or remembering) more extreme stories that don’t reflect the reality of their everyday experiences as young people.

Key Question:What should we be doing to build young people’s media literacy skills so that they are able to critically evaluate the information that is

presented to them in news stories?

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Key Findings 3: Participating in Social Action17 per cent of young people said that they were involved in their communities and would be willing to be further involved. The numbers claiming to be involved were highest in Haringey where more than twice as many (23 per cent) as in Harrow (11 per cent) said that they were locally engaged.

However, 46 per cent of young people in Harrow (by comparison with 33 per cent in each of the other boroughs) said that they would help out more locally, but didn’t know how to. This is buoyed by a common perception that their area is “great” and “requires no improvement” (27 per cent by comparison with 19 per cent in other areas).

Across the board, only a relatively small number (11 per cent) thought that their area was “rubbish, but there is nothing we can do about it” and surprisingly this perception was highest in Harrow at 15 per cent (and lowest in Haringey at 5 per cent, with Southwark at 14 per cent).

In general, young people who were already involved locally indicated that they were happy to do more and those who were not willing to participate tended to see their community as “someone else’s problem” while they “hung out with friends”.

Contrary to our opening thesis, we found no direct statistical relationship between young people’s involvement in their communities and their expectation of seeing positive or negative stories about young people in the local media. Nor, in general, was there any relationship between their willingness to be involved and whether or not they thought that the portrayal of young people in the media was positive or negative.

“there is so much for

young kids to do and then all this stuff for 16

year olds but what about us? When I asked my teacher about that volunteering concert thing with Busta Rymes, she said it

was for over 16s - it happens all the time... like they don’t want

us to do anything!!Young person, Haringey

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What does this tell us?The quantitative research indicates that there is no perceivable connection between the way the media portrays young people and their willingness to help out. However, the focus groups did see a different but related connection. They believed that negative media portrayals were affecting the adults in their orbit, who then treated them differently. It is worth noting, however, that these connections were made indirectly and not in response to the direct questions we were asking about the media and its portrayal of young people.

The data suggests that many young people, particularly in Harrow, are upbeat about their area and that they are politically informed and positive about their own contributions to their communities. However, they are often not invited to participate. The exception is Haringey, where many young people are locally involved, where they have found themselves in local press stories and where the highest percentage of young people willingly joined in with school based participation activities.

It might be possible, as seen from other indicators, to conclude that young people do not take the common portrayal of youth in the media “personally”. Rather, they invariably see themselves as “exceptions”. As a result, their community activity does not predispose their expectations of a fair representation in the media.

Key QuestionTo what extent might young people maintain their willingness to become socially engaged in later life if they see themselves on a life path that is focused on developing professional

skills?

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Key Findings 4: Interest in PoliticsYoung people showed a greater belief that they could contribute to local matters than national affairs. Although a confident 80 per cent thought “if I ran the country, I know how I’d make it a better place to live”, this did not translate into a general trust that young people know better, with only 34 per cent agreeing with the statement “if young people ran the country, they’d do as good a job as the adults”.

However, their confidence was higher locally: 65 per cent thought “If young people ran our area, they’d do as good a job as the adults”.

Exceptionally, in Harrow they were relatively more confident of running the country than in other boroughs (47 per cent) and relatively less confident of running their areas (53 per cent).

We wanted to see if there was any relationship between young people’s perceptions of their portrayal in the media and subsequent confidence to be politically involved, but no correlation was evident.

The young people surveyed also seemed aware of politics, with only 14 per cent stating that they “never follow politics on the telly or watch the news”. 25 per cent were clear on who the next Prime Minister should be, a particularly high percentage considering they won’t be able to vote at the next election.

Local Voice: 65 per cent of young people thought they would do as good a job as the adults if they ran their local area

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What does this tell us?Our study shows that many young people are interested in politics and have realistic expectations about their involvement in the political dialogue with local and national politicians. Given the investment in increasing participation at a local level, young people seem to be responding to the fact that they are able to influence change in their local area – more so than in the national arena. In Haringey and Southwark, young people were twice as likely to say that they could do a better job locally than nationally. However, in Harrow the difference was less dramatic. It would be interesting to return to Harrow to try and find out why.

These findings raise some interesting questions about how involved young people should be in local decision-making processes and the extent to which they should be encouraged to reach beyond a consideration of young people’s issues.

Key Questions:✦ To what extent do young people hold the key to creating better communities?✦ Should we think about how we can further encourage young people to become joint decision-makers (with adults) on local issues – and not just young people’s issues?✦ Using their enthusiasm for local engagement as a platform, can we create activities and opportunities for young people that develop their confidence to engage in national decision-making processes?✦ How do we get young people to believe that they are able to influence change nationally?✦ Is their pessimism – on making an impact nationally and “making the world a better place” – linked to views that they have gained from their parents, teachers or the media?

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Conclusions and recommendations

Chapter four Our research hypothesis was that young people are influenced by their (largely negative) portrayal in the media and that there is a link between their social action in their communities and interest in politics and this portrayal. Our survey data does not support this hypothesis although there was some support for it among the focus groups.

However, our research has thrown up some interesting questions for educationalists, youth and participation workers and other providers of services to young people. Rather than the relatively straight-forward connection that our hypothesis had suggested, the research exercise described here suggests a subtler and more complex connection that needs to be teased out by a further (and more detailed) investigation.

In this context, our evidence suggests that the majority of young people simply don’t recognise themselves in the column inches that get their attention and yet are also seem incapable of assessing whether or not these memorable stories are typical of young people in general or not.

Many young people do feel that they are portrayed unfairly by the media, sensing some perennial betrayal by those who use their youthful energy to provoke reader-reaction. They are quite aware that there is a disconnection between the images and stories of young people and their own experience. As a young girl in one of focus groups put it:

“…anything about young people in the paper is about how they cause trouble, it will never be something about how someone has won an award or something, it’s always bad and when I look at myself and my friends we are not bad…”

Most young people, despite the media’s negative stereotypes, are interested in their community and in politics in some way, but have little expectation of seeing their pro-social activities finding space in the media. As another focus group participant remarked:

“It (the image) affects how I behave definitely – when I see people cross the road when I am walking, it makes me think that I shouldn’t really be helpful”.

Whilst a large proportion of our sample were media-savvy enough to know that the press have a job to do and that bad news stories sell papers, there is no way of knowing how a turn-around in the stereotype towards portraying young people as the upbeat and helpful participants that the majority claim to be would impact on society. It could engender an infectious expectation of helpful involvement that would have positive repercussions for our communities, encouraging increased community cohesion and cross-generational understanding. Unfortunately for those supporters of young people who could make the case for young people’s willingness to participate in society, they have little control over what stories get reported.

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“anything about young people in the paper is about how they cause trouble, it will never be

something about how someone has won an award or something, it’s always bad and when I look at myself and my

friends we are not bad…”

We have seen some evidence that the investment in young people’s participation and media image in Haringey has yielded results, but have not teased out any relation between the fall in youth crime statistics and media portrayals in that borough. This remains in stark contrast to the low-crime borough of Harrow. In Harrow, there appears to be little investment to aid the development of young people’s positive participation, perhaps because they are not a “problem”. These young people seem to have the least knowledge about what really is “typical” youth behaviour; they just believe that they do not exhibit it. It begs the question ‘why do they think that they are the exception?’ And further, are their perceptions of other young people’s behaviour related to seeing negative youth stories and willingly identifying them as “normal”? Perhaps the Harrow results suggest another political implication of the negative portrayal of young people: the potential to exacerbate the division between those who see themselves as ‘exceptional’ and those they believe to be “typical”. Sustained media fear-arousal might ensure that the two parties never actually meet.

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"Young people should be at the forefront of global change and innovation. Empowered, they can be key agents for development and peace. If, however, they are left on society's margins, all of us will be impoverished. Let us ensure that all young people have every opportunity to participate fully in the lives of their societies." Kofi Annan, Nobel Laureate for Peace 2001

RecommendationsAgainst this background, we make three recommendations:

✦ Further research is needed to tease out the relationship between the media portrayal’s of young people on adults’ perceptions and opinions and the subsequent impact this has on young people. This would help to illuminate whether media portrayals have a more subtle – but substantive – impact on young people’s willingness to be socially involved than we can illustrate from the data under consideration here.

✦ Practitioners and parents should note the highly positive self-images that most young people maintain – in spite of the broader media stereotyping that they contend with. In particular, adults should note their willingness to participate positively in their community and in wider society. They seldom interpret the media representation of ‘young people’ (generically) to be a reference to their behaviour (personally), and have perhaps more systematically exempted themselves without knowing what the wider truth is. On an individual basis, many young people aged 13 –16 are asking for more to do, and are happy to contribute much more to their communities.

✦ We need to build a new relationship between the local press and young people. This could help to dispel the stereotype of the anti-social young person and might lead to an environment in which the local media serves the surrounding community rather than feeding-off a minority of deviants.

We recognise that higher impact eye-catching, attention-grabbing ‘bad news’ stories may be a timeless reality, a classic articulation of “news values” as sociologists and media studies specialists might put it. It is perhaps not surprising that young people find such stories more interesting (in the same way that negative playground stories circulate much more rapidly than positive ones). What could be more supportive to their developmental needs and future citizen-involvement, though, is a more sophisticated method of debriefing the anomalous nature of these portrayals. A sustained campaign to illustrate the many meanings behind a general perception of ‘that’s not me’ could untangle some of the impacts of stereotyping.

Against this background, practitioners of every kind – teachers, youth workers, community leaders – might weigh up their contribution as myth-busters in a productive and long overdue fight-back against the negative portrayal – and betrayal – of our young people.

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Appendix A“Respect – The Voice behind the Hood” Authors: Lucja Wisniewska, Lucie Harris, Clare Oliver YouthNet and British Youth Council (2006)The report is based on a nationwide survey undertaken by YouthNet. The survey was taken by young people aged between 12-25 and the questions were based around how the media represents young people and how those representations in turn effect how they are treated. The report starts with how a lot of the public perceives youth crime and anti social behaviour to be a growing problem when crime committed by youths had actually decreased. 51% of respondents said the media’s portrayal always or often bothered them. The report itself outlines a list of recommendations from young people, including suggestions for journalists to curb the negative portrayal of young people.

“Adolescence and Media” Author: Maria Mastronardi Journal of Language and Social Psychology (2003)This article focuses on four areas: how heavy media consumption affects young people and how violence, body issues and gender issues are portrayed in the media to young people. Rather than a discussion on how young people are portrayed, this article looks at what young people take away from the media as it is (as claimed in the article) young people’s primary cultural resource. This article comes to the conclusion that there are certain media forms and advertising that should be banned from young people’s media.

“Young People, Violence and Media” Author: Greg Philip Speech at BFI, London on 07/12/07 - Glasgow University Media Group http://www.gla.ac.uk/centres/mediagroupThis article takes a more in depth look at changes in society and changes in young people. It discusses how not only the media but younger people’s behaviour has declined through factors such as cheaper, more easily available alcohol; dissatisfaction with school, and the ‘winners and losers’ social mindset. It concludes by stating that the media does not invent the negative stories about young people but the stories are also not exclusive to this generation of young people.

“Television News and the Symbolic Criminalisation of Young People” Author: Mike Wayne, Lesley Henderson, Craig Murray, Julian Petley, Journalism Studies (2008)The report looks at how young people are portrayed in news media by analysing six television news programmes. The news stories are coded into a database to achieve percentages of young people-related stories. The focus of this report is the stories/news outlets themselves, rather than young people or the effect the stories have on young people. The findings are, unsurprisingly, that a high percentage of news stories about young people are about crime or sport (young celebrity footballers), therefore showing young people as criminals, victims or sportsmen.

“The Media and Young People: hyping up the new folk devils”Author: Mike Wayne In: Socialist Worker (2007)This article discusses the representation of young people over time and in relation to changes in society. It looks at how the representation of negative teenagers has shifted from particular subcultures to the negative representation of all youth. It then uses news media examples to illustrate the recent link between young people and violence.

“Violence in schools and representations of young people” Author: Audrey Osler, Hugh Starkey In: Oxford Review of Education (2005)This piece looks at how the media represents young people in Britain and France and how those representations affect policies within both countries. The article focuses on this in relation to students trying to re-enter the education system and it discusses the media’s prejudice against minorities. It concludes with how both countries make public claims about inclusion of all school students but in reality outsiders are set up for failure and exclusion.

“Bashing Youth: Media myths about teenagers” Author: Mike Male In FAIR, March/April 1994The images of young people in the news media, be it newspapers, television, radio, or internet-based news providers seem to be very negative (Males 1994). “Today's media portrayals of teens employ the same stereotypes once openly applied to unpopular racial and ethnic groups: violent, reckless, hypersexed, welfare-draining, obnoxious, ignorant”. The author also gives examples of news agencies that blatantly make up facts and figures to create a more scandalous image of young people.

Literature Review

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http://www.gla.ac.uk/centres/mediagroup

http://www.gla.ac.uk/centres/mediagroup


“Young ambassadors to combat negative images in charity drive” Author: Joe Lepper In: Youth Work News (03 Sept 2008) The author notes that " If we keep telling young people that they are layabouts, losers and junkies, there is a real danger that they will believe they can't do anything different.”

“Young People, Politics and News Media” Author: David Buckinghamin: Oxford review of Education (1999) This article looks at young people’s disaffection with politics and how the media contributes to that. It discusses young people’s declining interest, as well as young people’s exclusion from politics, as a warranted response to something that they cannot affect. The author then goes into his own research about how young people interpret the news.

“Media Use as Predictors of Political Behaviour: The Case of Japan” Author: Ofer Feldman & Kazuhisa Kawakami In: Political Psychology, Vol 12, No 1, March 1991, pp 65-80The authors carried out a survey of Japanese students, looking at whether stories about politics in the media affect young people’s interest in politics. The report concludes that the way that political issues are represented in the media predicts how engaged in politics as a whole young people will be.

“Moving Experiences: media effects and beyond” Author: David Gauntlett 2nd ed, 2006 (John Libby & Co)The author in this book about the media and its effects on people’s behaviour noted that there isn’t enough evidence to prove that there is a link between media and people’s behaviour. Having worked and published with Ofer Feldman, the author felt that Feldman’s work lacks a comprehensive perspective on the possible other factors that could affect the trends he found between media’s portrayal of political and social matters and young people’s willingness to engage with them. The author concludes by stating that we shouldn’t dismiss or accept the fact that there is a link between behaviour and the media, but there should be more and better research; especially research looking at a possible link between the media and youth behaviour from a fresh angle.

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Appendix B Borough profile

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Appendix CSurvey demographics

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appendix dquantitative survey instrument

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b

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Copyright © Citizenship Foundation 2009 Our Stories: Portrayal or Betrayal? 28




appendix efocus group protocol

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appendix fcitizenship education in the uk

Citizenship EducationIn August 2002, “Citizenship” became a Foundation (and, therefore, statutory) subject of the National Curriculum in secondary schools at both Key Stages 3 and 4 (years 7, 8 and 9 and years 10 and 11 respectively). For a decade preceding this, “Education for Citizenship” had been designated one of a number of “Cross-curricular Themes” but had not been widely or purposefully adopted, being described in the Citizenship Foundation’s submission to a recent Select Committee investigation as being “everywhere but nowhere” (Citizenship Foundation, 2005) and acknowledged as such in the committee’s report. A revised curriculum was launched in August 2007, building on the original but having a stronger focus on issues of identity and diversity following the publication of a review led by Sir Keith Ajegbo eighteen months earlier (DfES, 2007).

In primary schools Citizenship was not accorded statutory status but did become a part of a new joint non-statutory framework for PSHE and Citizenship. The Citizenship Foundation continues to campaign for the according of statutory status to both PSHE and Citizenship in primary schools and welcomes recent developments in this area (Rose, 2008).

Citizenship Education aims to ensure that students:✦ Know their rights and responsibilities;✦ Analyse and discuss significant social, political, legal and economic issues;✦ Understand how society works;✦ Play an active role in society and in their communities.

ReferencesEducation for citizenship and the teaching of democracy in schools: Final report of the Advisory Group on Citizenship, QCA, (1998)

Russell Commission Report: a national framework for youth action and engagement, Ian M Rusell (2005)

Power Inquiry: Power to the People (2006)

See annotated Literature Review for further references (Appendix A)

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