Young people are continuously the focus of what are often misplaced anxieties and âmoral panicsâ and as Austin and Willard (1998: 1) assert, this is often heighted during times of âperceived ⌠changeâ:
âYouthâ becomes a metaphor for perceived social change and its projected consequences, and ⌠is an enduring locus for displaced social anxieties. Pronouncements such as âthe problems of youth todayâ, [are] used as a scapegoat for larger social concerns.
Northern Ireland is a society emerging from 30 years of conflict. In negotiating the impact of change and transition, children and young people living in marginalised and segregated communities in Northern Ireland, continue to experience the legacy of the Conflict and âpersistent economic disadvantageâ (see McAlister et al. 2009: 147). This monograph focuses on the role of the print media1 in creating negative representations and maintaining negative ideological constructions of children and young people, in particular those who are the most marginalised, those considered anti-social within their communities and those in conflict with the law.2 Contextually, the devolution of criminal justice decision-making powers in April 2010, following a period of 38 years of direct rule, the appointment of a local Minister for Justice, as well as the commencement of a Youth Justice Review ,3 provided a unique setting for the empirical study upon which this book is based. Thus, the empirical research covers a unique period in exploring justice and punishment in the context of real change and transition.
While Northern Ireland has experienced the impact of a Peace Process heralding the beginnings of transition from several generations of conflict, a wider body of literature focuses on the assumed deviant behaviour of children and young people. Historical analyses demonstrate that this process of packaging and repackaging the concept of problem youth is not new (Pearson 1983; Brown 1998; Jewkes 2009). For example, in the 1960s following a period of economic austerity, Mods and Rockers were viewed as having been corrupted by a new teenage prosperity (Cohen 1972), while a decade prior teddy boys were represented as the product of wartime childhoods, adversely affected by absent fathers (Wilkins 1960). The same repeated ârigidly immovable vocabularyâ and âcomplaintsâ about youth in media and political discourses are part of âthis ages-old tapestryâ and notably, such âproblemsâ are often âheld up as something entirely new and unprecedentedâ (Bessant and Watts 1998: 7).
Bessant and Hil (1997: 4) argue that contemporary distress about young people is linked to a popular uncertainty about the future. Thus, representations based on current pessimistic portrayals of young people as âbad, troubling and troublesomeâ often âreveal more about the apprehensions, fantasies and anxietiesâ of adults or in the case of the media, âthose doing the reportingâ, than they do about the young people they are portraying (Bessant and Hil 1997: 4).4 Derived in Beckerâs (1963) work, several criminological studies demonstrate how the identification and treatment of individuals or social groups as outsiders, typically the targets of stereotypical media portrayals, are relegated to the margins of society and blamed for a range of social ills. Curran (2002: 109) asserts that this âdeflect[s] wider social conflict and reinforce[s] dominant social and political normsâ.
Reflecting critically on popular discourse and political debate, this monograph critically addresses the prominence of negative media representations, the maintenance of negative ideological constructions and government responses directed towards children and young people. Significantly, the empirical research was timely, beginning in October 2008, at the time of the publication of the United Kingdomâs (UK) Concluding Observations of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC). In its Concluding Observations, the CRC strongly emphasised the existence of:
[A] general climate of intolerance and negative public attitudes towards children, especially adolescents, which appears to exist in the State party, including in the media, may be often the underlying cause of further infringements of their rights. (CRC, October 2008: para 24)
The Committee also criticised the Government for not taking âsufficient measures to protect children, notably, from negative media representation and public ânaming and shamingââ (CRC, October 2008: para 36). Thus, internationally concerns exist surrounding both media representations of children and young people and the lack of appropriate responses from the state and state agencies.
While such concerns have been raised locally, nationally and internationally, there has been no academic research analysing media content, to unpack how the media in Northern Ireland represent children and young people and to assess the impact of negative media content on public perceptions and political responses. In addressing the gap in the academic literature, the empirical chapters present a critical analysis of newspaper content over an extended period and establish how children and young people in Northern Ireland are represented in media discourse.
In societies that have experienced conflict and violence followed by transition to peace, the legacy of conflict presents particular challenges (see OâRawe 2011). While transition from the Conflict and the ensuing peace process in Northern Ireland are marked particularly by the power-sharing arrangement within the Assembly, in communities the unaddressed issues of the Conflictâs legacy continue to impact on the lives and experiences of children, young people and their families (see McAlister et al. 2009). The timing of the study upon which this monograph is based, provides the first opportunity to consider whether the UK Governmentâs legacy regarding criminal justice and youth justice legislation, policy and practice, has been inherited or contested by the devolved administration in Northern Ireland. Thus, the research timing is opportune for structural changes to be considered and implemented in the field of youth justice and within the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland.
There is an extensive body of academic research exploring the complex relationships between crime, deviance, criminal justice, the media and popular culture (see for example: Young 1971; Cohen 1972; Chibnall 1973, 1977; Hall et al. 1978; Cohen and Young 1981; Schlesinger and Tumber 1994; Durham et al. 1995; Aggleton 1987; Surette 1998; Wykes 2001; Reiner 2002). Within Northern Ireland the existing literature on the media has focused mainly on the representation of the Conflict and violence, as the Conflict or Troubles5 have dominated much of Northern Irelandâs past (see Schlesinger et al. 1983; Rolston 1991; Miller 1993; Rolston and Miller 1996). An exception is Greerâs (2003) research into the mediaâs representation of sex offending in Northern Ireland and contemporary comparative studies, such as Wolfsfeldâs (2004) research that has focused on the mediaâs role in peace-keeping. While valuable, the literature has neglected the mediaâs representation of social groups, particularly individuals and groups experiencing marginalisation and social exclusion.
As a social group, children and young people have been the focus of numerous studies on media representation produced by national and international scholars (see for example: Franklin and Petley 1996; Bessant and Hil 1997; Crane 1997; Davies 1997; McMahon 1997; Schissel 1997; Simpson 1997; Tait et al. 1997; Wearing 1997; Collins et al. 2000; Holland 2004; Poynting et al. 2004; Andersson and Lundstrom 2007; Green 2008a, 2008b; Lumsden 2009). There are existing analyses of media representations of children and young people during the Conflict in Northern Ireland. For example, Cairns (1987) describes how British media images and accounts of the civil rights âriotsâ in Belfast and Derry/Londonderry6 in 1969, âvividly portrayed ⌠youths and children fightingâ. Similarly Brocklehurst (2006: 100; see also Holland 2004) states that, âchild stone-throwers and petrol bombers in the front line attracted a great deal of front-page coverage and shocked commentâ. Such research however was not based on print media content analysis over an extended period. Further, research has not considered the mediaâs representation of children and young people in Northern Ireland and the impact of negative ideological...