This document analyzes a newspaper article about the 2011 London riots. It finds that the newspaper article uses emotive and sensationalist language to construct a negative representation of youth identity. Specifically, it escalates the situation, uses fear-mongering phrases, selectively chooses images and quotes to portray youths as a "mob" engaging in "mindless thuggery." The document concludes that youths are not given a fair voice and the newspaper article is biased in its coverage.

1. London Riots Newspaper Analysis
Analyse the images and sensationalist/emotive language used.
London riots escalate as police battle for control – The headline can instantly create
an impression in the readers head before they even start to read the article. This
headline escalates the size of the problem by using the word ‘battle’. This makes the
event sound like a war between the police and the youths. This creates a binary
opposite which creates a divide in the readers mind and portrays the police as ‘good’
and the youths as ‘bad’.
Full-scale alert – This phrase creates a moral panic as it creates a warning to
everyone and makes it seem that the full country should be alert. This is once again
making the matter escalated so that people will become worried, helping to create
attention for the story and helping to create a damaging reputation for young
people.
Image of person walking across road in front of burning
car – This image has been specifically selected as the
audience automatically assume that from the tracksuit
and mask that the person is young, conveying the
rebellious, frightening image of young people that they
want to show. The way the person is causally walking
across the road, totally oblivious to the burning car behind him, suggests that he
thinks this is normal behaviour and therefore a societal deviance.
Gangs of hooded and masked youths – The word gangs instantly implies that the
young people are in groups and that there is a lot of them. The word gangs can also
create an intimidating representation and this fear is built up further by the use of
the words hooded and masked. The term hooded and masked suggests that they are
all the same and creates an image of mob mentality. This creates fear and
contributes to the moral panic this article is trying to cause.
“My father is distraught at the moment. It's just mindless thuggery” – This is a
comment used in the article from a resident. Out of all of the interviews conducted
over the time of the riots, the press have decided to use this comment as it creates a
binary opposite of young vs. old. The article does not tell us how old the person
commenting is although from the word ‘distraught’ we can tell how the victim is
explaining how frightened his father is. This makes the readers feel sympathy for the
father of the man and the ‘mindless thuggery’ helps to convey how the youths who
are rioting are causing this man to be distraught.
"The mob were just standing there cheering and laughing – The use of the words
‘The mob’ reinforces this mob mentality and reinforces the youths are coming in
groups. The fact that they use the paper says ‘just standing there cheering and
laughing’ shows how they are trying to convey that the young people think this
behaviour is funny and clever and that they are social deviances.
– some as young as 14 – The paper had decided to highlight this fact as they want to
create this fear around young people and are using this fact to shock the audience.
This creates the idea that these young people are folk devils.

2. How does this article construct representation of youth identity?
This article uses a lot of emotive language to create a dramatic effect and to create fear
about the situation in London. In some parts of the article, it frequently creates a binary
opposite between young and old people. This is to contribute to the negative
representation of youth identity and to create this idea that the youths involved in the riots
are folk devils / societal deviances. However the language used does not specifically link to
those who were rioting and therefore creates a representation of young people in general.
The article also avoids using ages and showing how old the rioters were. The only age the
article shows is in the sentence, where it says ‘some as young as 14’. Since this is the only
age, the readers assume the article is based upon people of a similar age.
Are youths given a fair voice or is this article biased?
I don’t think that youths are given a fair voice in this article because of they are portrayed to
be dangerous and rebellious in the article. The article creates a binary opposite between the
police and youths at the beginning of the article and as the article continues, the article
expands on this by creating a binary opposite between the residents, older generation and
the youths.