Page 603 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| Youth and Med a Use

rELEvanCy, LanguagE, anD Framing
When political messages are targeted at young voters, addressing the con-
cerns and issues specific to young people and speaking the language of the
youth, youth audiences are easily engaged. Young people can and do partici-
pate in politics and select news media if they can find a way to connect with
it. Rather than assuming those absent from the news media audience could
not care less about the political process and how it affects them, we might in-
stead ask how media enable viewers to define their relationship with the public.
Young people choose to get their political information less through the usual
adult news sources, and have turned to comedy shows, Internet Web sites, and
chat rooms. Despite a dramatic decline between 2000 and 2004 in traditional
news sources, Kohut notes that there have been large increases for comedy
TV shows (up from 9 percent to 21 percent), and the Internet (up from 13 per-
cent to 20 percent). More than twice as many teens reported regularly learning
something from comedy TV shows in 2004 than they did in 2000. One show
that has a particular appeal to young people is The Daily Show with Jon Stew-
art. Fully 13 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds report watching the show regularly,
compared with 6 percent of the general public. The Daily Show is a comic and
edgy news show, leading some to feel that The Daily Show does not qualify as
being “news/political.” On the other hand, many feel that maybe our under-
standing of what is and is not “political/news” is not adequate for the changing
face of programming today.
For instance, MTV has long been thought of as a music/entertainment TV
channel. But this isn’t always the case anymore. In some cases, MTV connects
with CNN to host presidential political debates. These debates have purposely
been set up to include a young audience and have a youthful feel to them. De-
bates like these result in large, young audience that is engaged and active in
discussion. Even though the content here may be no different than that of tradi-
tional debates, the audience perspective is different. Youth participants at these
types of youth-specific debates feel that candidates are more interested in them,
as opposed to the traditional format. They are also more likely to believe that
candidates are more interested in youth concerns, and that young people do
have a say in government. Based on this, it may be the case that young people
feel more connected to the political process when media make an attempt to
speak in the language of young people. If this is true, and most news/political
programming is directed towards adults, then young people’s alienation from
and cynicism about politics could be interpreted as a result of exclusion and
disenfranchisement, rather than ignorance or immaturity.

youTh CommuniCaTions EnvironmEnT:
graBBing ThE BuLL By ThE horns

Traditional news sources in many cases have marginalized youth from any
potential audience. But youth still have an active relationship with a variety
of media sources. The relationship between youth and the communications