ABSTRACT
In Chapter 3, we looked at a generically conventional piece of story writing as a way of examining how mainstream media might be read and given meaning by an adolescent boy. In the last chapter, we used the practical production work of A-level students in order to raise questions about subculture and taste which indirectly challenge the role and purpose of media teaching within the school curriculum. This chapter is based on an extensive photography exercise carried out with year-10 students in the first year of their GCSE Media Studies course, and it develops one of the central concerns arising from these earlier enquiries: the extent to which young people already possess the competencies to ‘write’ in contemporary media forms, and the kinds of knowledge such writing mobilises.
