Framing School Violence and Bullying in Young Adult Manga by Drew Emanuel Berkowitz

Author:Drew Emanuel Berkowitz
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030581213
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

What It Means to Be “Normal”

Media messages about socio-cultural issues—such as classroom violence or bullying—have often been said to follow the path of least resistance. Although perhaps a gross oversimplification of media framing theories, it would not be incorrect to claim that the most prevalent and salient patterns within the media works that members of a particular group most like to consume will often correspond to the most prevalent and salient patterns within the thoughts that members of that same group most like to think. In practical terms, it seems as though it would be relatively easy for a young adult title’s messages about classroom bullying and violence to go unexamined by its readers—many of whom have not, and may never, receive any form of proper critical media literacy training—if those readers already believed what these messages were telling them. Analysis of the data set’s own media messages about violence and abuse suggested that parents and educators might very well be shocked by what young adult manga titles seem to assume that their young adult readers are pre-disposed to believe.

Even putting aside the “ripped from the headlines” sensationalism of Persona 5’s depictions of abusive teachers and conspiratorial school administrators, there is still much within the data set’s patterns of portraying school faculty that parents, teachers, and administrators would likely consider to be shocking. Prior to this study, media literacy researchers have conducted a number of explorations into the ways that K-12 school classrooms, school faculty, and school institutions have been represented in popular media such as films (Shaw and Nederhouser 2005; Townsend and Ryan 2012; Trier 2001). Many of those scholars have posed questions about what audiences might take away from media representations of K-12 schools, such as:How might media narratives shape teachers’ sense of self? How might those narratives also influence what the students in our schools, their parents, and the politicians and administrators who mandate public school policy expect of teachers? (Townsend and Ryan 2012, p. 156)

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