In summary, Garner's article in The Independent newspaper addresses the fact that young people are negatively represented in all news platforms/outlets, and that there are only two main situations in which young people don't receive bad press: in the event of a young persons early demise or in the event that a young person displays some kind of talent in television shows such as The X-Factor or Britain's Got Talent.
Garner provides figures that show that the words most commonly used to describe teenage boys in most articles about them are the words "yobs", "thugs", "sick" and "feral". The use of such terms promote Acland's (1995) Ideology of Protection theory as this negative representation of young males (which essentially dictates the collective identity of young people) feeds into the hegemonic idea that young people are delinquents who need to be "monitored" and "controlled". For instance, after viewing the film Eden Lake and seeing how the young people in the film behaved, you could argue that the young people were feral, nasty and dangerous and that they needed monitoring. However, Eden Lake only provides one representation of young people and that representation can't possibly make up the collective identity of all young people but such representations tend to be the only ideas that contribute towards hegemony - which according to research found (in regards to teenage boys and the news) is taking it's toll.
Read the article here.
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