Age

• Media representations of children

  Children are often represented as vulnerable and as being in need of adult protection, which ties in with the way in which childhood is socially constructed in contemporary society.

  The advertising industry represents children as consumers, possibly deliberately to socialise them into becoming consumers in later life, and to increase peer-pressure demand for their products.
• Media representations of children - Youth and Children’s Work

  Youth and Children’s Work has suggested that there are five major types of youth stereotype

  Irritating/ annoying

  Binge drinking/ drug addicted

  The drain on society

  The entrepreneurial go-getter

  The exceptional super achiever.
• Media representations of youth

  Young people are largely represented in terms of lifestyle and identity, with much of the music and fashion industries aiming their products at young people.

  Young people (teenagers especially) are also disproportionately likely to be represented as a problem – with a considerable amount of news coverage being devoted to youth gangs, crime and antisocial behaviour, rather than the challenges facing teenagers or the positive things young people do.
• Moral Panics of the Youth

  Historically, youth subcultures have been the focus of media led moral panics, which have tended to exaggerate the deviance of young people and sometimes increased public panic about youth subcultures, as Stan Cohen found in his classic study of the Mods and Rockers
• Charlotte Kelly (2018)


  Charlotte Kelly (2018) has conducted research on the language used by journalists to describe young people who come into contact with the law and found there are three major types of representation:

  Young people are dangerous

  Young people are in need of protection

  Young people are immature.
• Media representations of old age - Age Concern (2000) 


  Age Concern (2000) identified three key media stereotypes of the elderly. Old people were disproportionately represented as:

  A burden

  Mentally challenged

  Grumpy