Young, Dumb and Full of Lies: The News Media's Construction of Youth Culture

Jason Sternberg's fascinating article focuses on the new media's construction of youth culture. Sternberg points out that young people have a complex and 'multifaceted' relationship with the media; they are simultaneously consumers, producers and objects of media discourse. He lists the binary oppositions occupying an ambiguous space between childhood and adulthood ('problem' and 'fun', for instance), and continues his investigation examining young people's negative profile in the news media. Sternberg maps out the historical developments in the construction and representation of young people, and suggests that these representations embody a high degree of symbolic resonance, and moral panic that serves to justify the invasion of human rights.