Text one, the metro newspaper headlines ‘The YouTube gangsters’ in a bold white font against a black background, which highlights the headline. Also as YouTube is a website that is a phenomenon and is used by almost everyone on a global scale, the story is more identifiable to the readers. The main adjective used to describe the teenagers is ‘gangsters’ which connotes crime, bad behaviour and violence. This makes the readers of the metro to view teenagers as barbaric groups of people who are becoming more of a danger for society.
The image of the gun is captioned with “threat: A revolver favoured by London’s gangs”, by saying that the gun is a threat and as they associate the teenagers with the gun, the metro is trying to represent teenagers as a threat. However it is not all teenagers, predominantly, their portrayals of teenagers being wild and criminals are of the males. There is also a secondary image on the front cover, of a black male holding a gun near his face. Therefore the representation of black males is negative and they are seen as the main ‘gangsters’. In the introduction, the teenagers are said to be ‘thugs’ and ‘armed’. Though the newspaper is trying to inform their readers about the issue of teenage crime, they are also conforming to the reader’s stereotypical expectations by inferring that most of these gangsters are black teen males.
In contrast to this, the daily mail article represents teenagers to still be a concern but rather than just targeting the black males, the primary image on the article is of a group of white teenagers. This is an alternative representation of teenagers compared to that of the metro, as the daily mail is collectively suggesting that most if not all teenagers of other ethnic groups are thugs and gangsters. The article also explains that teenagers are yobs rather than gangsters, which makes them, seem like a nuisance rather than criminals.
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