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    ‘Teenage traumas’ The discursive construction of young people as a ‘problem’ in an Irish radio documentary


    Devlin, Maurice (2005) ‘Teenage traumas’ The discursive construction of young people as a ‘problem’ in an Irish radio documentary. Young: Nordic Journal of Youth Research, 13. pp. 167-184. ISSN 1103-3088

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    Abstract

    Previous research has shown that media representations of young people consistently portray them as in one way or another ‘problematic’, but little such research has focused specifically on the medium of radio. This article contains a detailed case study of a radio documentary series broadcast in Ireland called The Teenage Years. It explores the editorial, rhetorical and narrative devices used to construct and sustain a mainstream clinical-psychological discourse of adolescence, one which effectively ‘pathologizes’ the teenage years. It also ‘homogenizes’ them, privileging age as an explanatory factor in shaping identity and development and thereby systematically ignoring other aspects of social inequality and stratification. It is argued that this is an important ideological dimension of the discourse expressed and enacted by the series.

    Item Type: Article
    Keywords: adolescence; discourse; ideology; media studies; representations of youth;
    Academic Unit: Faculty of Social Sciences > Applied Social Studies
    Item ID: 8399
    Depositing User: Maurice Devlin
    Date Deposited: 04 Jul 2017 11:22
    Journal or Publication Title: Young: Nordic Journal of Youth Research
    Publisher: SAGE Publications
    Refereed: Yes
    URI:
    Use Licence: This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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