Youth Culture Theories 1.

I have learnt that there are several theories put forth by different people about youth culture and how they are effected as well as the effect they have on society, these people are: Giroux, Acland, Hebdige, Cohen, Gramsci, Greg Phil and Gerbner.

Firstly, Giroux theory is about how the youth are mistreated within the media. Describing them as an 'empty category' explains that adults do not really understand what it is like to be a youth in this generation. Therefore they just put their own ideas into the empty space of what they believe the representation of young youth is.

The effects of this representation is the media involving just adults, therefore greatly effects these representations of young people. The adults do not want their generation to look bad therefore use teenagers as a scapegoat to place the blame on.By looking at this theory we are able to see that the representation of youth is moulded together through what adults think and believe. This then leads to uprising of stereotypes through the media and also cause moral panics. When all of this has just been created through hegemony and the media raining their ideas down onto adults.


Acland is another theorist who put his theory forward on youth culture.  His theory is about media representations on delinquent youths. The idea that the media's representation of young people allows the state to control them. This is known as 'Ideology of protection' the idea that youths need to be constantly watched and how youth is the time where young people learn about social roles and values and that the state needs to confirm these values.

This therefore effects the representations as the adults see all youths as being bad and reckless and they have to keep enforcing that these actions are bad. This is to enforce the hegemony of how they should not behave when they reach adulthood. This means that there will be more negative stories in the media. By looking at this theory we are able to see that adults believe that it is necessary to show youths in such a disastrous way. This is so that they can tell youths how to act anyhow not to act so they can enforce middle class hegemony.