Newspaper Coverage of mod and rockers "Clashes"

One weekend in 1964 residents and holiday-makers in the seaside towns of Brighton, Bournemouth and Margate, were rocked by a sudden influx of young, cool gangs. They were Mods and Rockers, and the culture clash that occurred that weekend, described in the articles below in The Daily Sketch, Daily Mirror and others, has become iconic in the history of youth culture. 

Mods and Rockers were easily identifiable by their distinctive clothing styles: the Mods wore Fred Perry and Ben Sherman designer suits, covered by a Parka jacket; while the Rockers wore leather biker jackets and jeans. Mods also rode European scooters like Lambrettas and Vespas and listened to a mix of Motown, ska and bands such as The Who. 

The Rockers favoured motorbikes and listened to American rock and roll such as Eddie Cochrane and Elvis. Although the movements were short-lived, violent clashes between the two gangs were seized on by the media and used by moralists to exemplify the outrageous liberties enjoyed by Britain’s youths. 

The seafront vandalism and violence described in the newspaper article was later made into the 1979 film Quadrophenia.

The video below shows how the media in the 1960s reported the clashes between mods and rockers and considers whether or not the media coverage exaggerated the scale of events leading to a 'moral panic' in relation to the behaviour of these youth subcultures.

Question

In what ways do the media texts referenced above create a representation of young people as being a danger to society?

The way the newspapers described the clashes between the mods and rockers in the 60's was very unified in a very much negative manor, for the the two subcultures. Although the two groups where very different they both took the full brunt of the mediated and sensationalised representation of the events. This demographic of "teens" was under attack from the newspapers but was it really as bad as they said?

One extract from the daily sketch described the events in it title. "Beach crowds take cover from battling mods and rockers" this first section talks about the events as if they where a form of war as it describes the clashes as a battle, with in mode this is only 20 years since world war two, this creates a sense of fear and un easy fro the older generations which experience a real war, making this head line more hard hitting. The line starts of with saying the "crowds take cover", this tells use that the people who where on their holiday, where suddenly disturbed and had to take cover as they where in dander, this gives the impression that these two groups are in fact a danger to the public, and when people do confront they should run away and "take cover". This closely references the messages given to people during the war because of the war, so there a constant reminder of what terror these groups could cause.

further on in the article we then see a small anecdote, of a 50 year old "Heroine" called Ellen Green who managed to, fight away 200 teenagers. This might have been used to show that these teens are also attacking the elderly but it actually contradicts the whole article, because if the 50 year old women was able to fight them of with a mop they could not have been violent or as menacing as they are described all "200" of them. 

This is a large clue, to show that these events where sensationalised by the media, and this representation of the teens given by the Daily sketch highly effected the rest of the british teen demographic, as any teen wearing a leather jacket or wearing a suit, would instantly be prejudged, to be a danger to society.

some of the images used in the extracts are very specific and they all shown a negative image of the mods and rockers violently attacking each other or being arrested. all these images would have been carefully selected and would have been targeted shots. One particular image which is very popular is the first one. This image shows a mod throwing a deck chair at a rocker. this image is very powerful as it shows the full brunt of violence which happened, the chairs being thrown could potentially seriously insure the rocker, further more the rocker hanging of a ledge, this shows that the mod is showing no remorse, and if he could do something so violent to somebody who is running away and hanging of a ledge, he must be a clear threat to the public, and all the mods would have been branded with this act.