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Abstract
Communication scholars and media professionals recognize that young people are not paying attention to the news. There is little doubt that the often negative stories about young people shown on television news and in mainstream newspapers can lead young people to think negatively of their selves, possibly causing them to tune out these news sources. Is news coverage of adolescents really overwhelmingly negative, as the literature suggests? Much of the research into teen news representations has focused on mainstream media, including broadcast news programs and newspapers. This study utilized a textual analytic approach and Foucaults theory of representation to examine teen representations in three media sources: network news, adult-generated media sources geared toward teenagers, and teen-produced webzines. The study found that teenagers are represented as having problems, and as having limited ability to solve their problems. While teen representations found in this study do offer some support for the dominant discourses about teen media representations, they challenge some of the assumptions inherent in this dominant discourse. The most prominent challenges come from those media sources that are produced by teenagers for a teen audience.