‘Illegal Youth’: media representations of young people in Portugal during the first pandemic year

• DOI: 10.1080/13676261.2024.2309892
• Publication Date: 2024-01-31T07:23:00Z
• Authors: Ana Melro; Odete Girão; Rui Carreira
• Keywords: Pandemic; Youth culture

Young people have a long tradition of being portrayed in media discourses as mainly problematic and victims. In the first year COVID-19 pandemic, World Health Organization declared that not-yet vaccinated young were primarily responsible for rise infections not complying with safety measures place. This view youth circulated landscape while lockdowns imposed European countries. Given scarcity studies, this study aims to understand how represented by Portuguese during pandemic. By conducting news content analysis two online newspapers, from March 2020 2021, our findings suggest representations pandemic took three approaches: blaming youngsters irresponsible 'illegal' youth; concerned about their vulnerabilities; fostering citizens. While stigmatised images dominated news, barely played leading role them.