A Bit of the ‘Other’: Media Representations of Young People's Sexuality

Abstract

Media representations of young people are an important part of society's ongoing discussion with itself about ‘the state of its youth’. This article sets out to explore how the Irish media address the issue of young people and sexuality. Adopting a broadly social constructionist perspective, it presents qualitative case studies of the verbal and visual content of selected feature items in the press and concludes that, at least where sexuality is at issue, young people are envisaged and presented as ‘Other’, as something puzzling and mysterious. The tabloid and broadsheet press employ similar sets of rhetorical devices to construct this representation and to ‘make a spectacle’ of the young, often with marked gender differences. There is a consistent ‘metaphor of discovery’: the ‘lifting of a lid’ on what young people are ‘getting up to’, unknown to their parents. There is a pervasive sense of alarm, dismay, of loss and even (ambivalently) of betrayal. It is suggested that in consistently treating young people as ‘Other’, as predominantly different and difficult, these media representations may themselves be helping to construct and sustain the ‘problem’ of intergenerational relations.