Detailed proposal checklist:

1. Topic Area
Children and the media (focus on youth cultures)
2. Proposed title, question, hypothesis
How do audiences respond to the representation of youth cultures in the news? (age focus)
4. Principle texts (if text based study)

things to concentrate on...

• stereotypes
• representations
• news values/processes
• effects theory- reception and consumption
• moral panics

5. Reason for choice

-Debatable and opinionated.
-Applying prior knowledge of the news to explore my case study.
-Personal interest/ opinions since I fall in this category (and oppose the common view)

6. Academic context for this study (similar research, relevant theory, named theorists)

• David Buckingham
• John Fiske
• Daniel Chandler
• Mary Whitehouse

7. Institutional context for this study (industry focus, other texts for comparison, named
practitioners, relevant theory, issues, questions)

• News institutions- news values (for reasons why it makes the news), circulation and figures (for how many people are influenced/'reached' by the press (website specific)), producers and publishers and the ownership of the exact papers im studying (for detailed referencing).
• effects theory (what the news create- e.g. hypodermic/negative effects/moral panics)

8. Identify the audience context for this study (audience profile, access to audience, potential
sample)

• Audience will be representative of society therefore Iwill use a cross-section.
• Sample could possibly include male and female in each age category.
• Audience will include Youths themselves as a direct study.

9. How will the 4 key concepts be relevant to your study (audience, institution, forms and conventions, representation)?

• Audience: -active versus. passive audiences (go with the norm or against common view).
• Institution: The newspapers ideologies are relevant to my study.
• Form & Conventions: Expectations of (youth) news, conventional news, stereotypes, audience habits?
• Representation: The repres of youths are the main concern. Positive or negative repres of youths and why.

10 Potential research sources (secondary): secondary academic books and websites, secondary industry books and websites, secondary popular criticism. Please identify specific examples you have come across.

• aber.ac.uk/media
• Understanding news- John Hartley 1982
• The known world of broadcast news- R.Wallis and S.Baranv 1990
• Crime and the Media (the post-modern spectacle)- D.Kidd-Hewitt and R.Osborne 1995
• Criminal Visions- Paul Mason 2003
• Reading Audiences- young people and the media- David Buckingham 1993
• Crime watching (Investigating Real Crime TV)- Deborah Jermyn 2007
• Not in front of the children -Marjorie Heins 2001
• News, Crime and Culture- Maggie Wykes 2001
• Image and Representation(key concepts in media)- Nick Lacey 1998
  

11. Potential research sources (primary): audience reception research, your own content/textual analysis etc

• Questionniare, -friends and family, film society members.
• 1-2-1 interivew, -not sure yet.
• focus group, -HOME: g.parents, parents, brothers/sisters, SCHOOL: media crew, yrs7-11, teachers?
• textual analysis, -news, content/freq analysis of news.

13. Potential limits/obstacles/problems?

• the sheer scope of the area 'representation' . there are many aspects i could focus on and so think whittling this down should be a focus.

14. Teacher concerns

• the scope and the fact that there are hundreds of news articles to choose from and need to be strict with my study.