Media and the online age - Definitions

Web 2.0 - The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Examples of web 2.0 sites include social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, blogging sites like blogger.com, and hosting services.

Participatory Culture - Participatory culture is a neologism in reference of, but opposite to a Consumer culture — in other words a culture in which the public do not act as consumers only, but also as contributors or producers. The term is most often applied to the production or creation of some type of published media.

Peering - Peering is the arrangement of traffic exchange between internet service providers (ISP's). Larger ISPs with their own backbone networks agree to allow traffic from other large ISPs in exchange for traffic on their backbones.

Digital Natives - A digital native is a young person who was born in or during the general introduction of digital technology, and by interacting with this technology at an early age, they stand a greater chance of understanding its concepts.

Democratisation - The action taken by a person or group of people to make something Democratic.


We - Think - Explores how the web is changing are world creating a culture in which more people than ever can participate, share and colaborate, ideas and information.

Interactivity - In computers, interactivity is the dialog that occurs between a human being (or possibly another live creature) and a computer program. On the World Wide Web, you not only interact with the browser (the Web application program) but also with the pages that the browser brings to you.


The Long Tail - This refers to the statistcal property than a larger share of population rests within the tail of the probability distribution than observed under a 'normal' distribution.

Wikinomics - Explores how some companys in the early 21st century have used mass collaboration and open source techonology to be successful.

Future Representations

Another key feature of your answer in the exam needs to be recognition of the future. How will this collective identity go on to be represented?





If representations of youth are not decoded as being seective representation, then it could result in creating or perpetuating stereotypes. this could then lead to creating distances between social groups. so adults will become afraid of todays youth, and also reluctant to engage with young people and demonise them instead. it can also create tension within social groups with young people becoming afraid of others.


Where are the representations of you? Where do you express yourself? (Facebook, personal blog, youtube, online worlds)









Facebook is a big part of the adolescence, today. We express and socialise using this media interface. The issue is, it makes it difficult to socialise outside the world of the internet. youth also use videos and blogs to express creativity, opinion and intelligence.

Who is currently in control of the modes of production for how young people are represented

There's plenty been written on how the media portrays politics. But what about the media representation of young people and their involvement in politics. Stovin Hayter is the editor of Children Now magazine. Here he talks about the damage the press is capable of when it comes public perceptions of young people.You could pick up a local newspaper in almost any part of Britain and see articles that use headlines and terms like: "Like a plague, the city seems to be in the grip of lawlessness among the young."- Peterborough Evening Telegraph

Use Buckingham's theory to extend your point further...

Buckingham express child innocence as being broken by being exposed to adult realms in the media.

What examples of young people being in control of the construction of the way in which their collective identity is represented can you find?


"Youtube" is a main source



What are the implications of this?


What could happen in the future in terms of who is in control of representations? What evidence can you find that this could develop?

Plan for contemporary representation question.

How does contemporary representation compare to different time periods?



Intro: List common representations of youth, for both time periods.

Para 1: My summer of love, contemporary, list micro elements, and how they relate to the representations of youth. Use 1 ideaolgy.

Para 2: An education, Contemporary representation of an previous representation. list micro elements, and how they relate to the representations of youth. Use 1 different or the same idealogy.

Para 3: St. Trinians, older generation, list micro elements, and how they relate to the representations of youth. use 1 different or the same idealogy.

Para 4: Comparing and contrasting the above representations, ideology's and summarise.

Unemployment rates:

1970 - Total jobless = 1,023,583

2009 - Total jobless =2.5 million

Crime rates:

1970 - 

2009 - 4.4 million

Political Situation:

1970 - Conservatives were in power.
               "The Tory Party consists of an upper class leadership seeking to implement capitalist policies with a middle class voting base reinforced by large numbers of backward workers."

2009 - Labour were in power.

Misfits, gives us the idea that crime rates are higher in modern day life. especially in rural areas, such as the location for the series. we get this impression because all of the characters are taking part in community service. The diversity between the characters gender and race implies that the group are part of a collective identity. The mix in characters from nationality, race, gender and ethnicity shows the diversity (I'm pretty smart but not as smart as usual)

Minder on the other hand gives us a negative perception on race and gender. This is because of the political climate at the time, which had a poor impression on black people. This clip represents black people in the 1970's. It shows that black people were dangerous and troublesome.

The diversity within the collective in Minder represents the clean contrast between the white hostages and the black terrorists.