This document provides guidance on exam questions for a collective identity unit and how to answer them well. It outlines four potential exam questions focusing on how media represents different groups, comparisons between past and present representations, the social implications of representations, and the extent to which identity is mediated. For each question, it provides examples and theorists to draw from to thoroughly answer the questions.

1. Media and Collective Identity
Answering the exam question

2. This presentation will give you guidance on possible exam
questions and how you can use what we have studied in
class to get the best possible mark.

3. Any ideas why this might be important for the Collective Identity unit?

5. Media and Collective Identity: Exam Questions

6. How do contemporary media represent different
collective groups in different ways?
• focus today: young people
• diverse representations including fiction, non-fiction and self-representation
• for the exam, your own examples from the group you are studying will gain you
marks

7. How does contemporary representation
compare with that of the past?
• today: young people on TV/online and in film- mainly contemporary
• examples needed for similarity and difference (Eden Lake, Misfits and Harry
Brown)
• examples from the past (Quadrophenia and Press Gang)
• Fan cultures from the past (e.g. Star Trek fans creating films, fanzine culture of
the 1980s, representations of rave culture of the 1990s)

8. What are the social implications of different
media representations of groups of people?
• stereotyping: what is its impact?
• what power does the audience have to ‘resist’?
• how do we ‘measure’ the representations we encounter?
• Richard Dyer: ‘Typography of Representation’
• Social Media and Social Action: The Arab Spring, The Harry Potter Alliance –
groups that use social media for political and social action. How do these
groups defy the top-down nature of traditional media ownership?

9. To what extent is human identity increasingly ‘mediated’ ?
• increasing media = increasing mediation?
• re-presentation by others/by selves
• Facebook study: personal identity and the perfomative nature of Facebook photos
and updates