Adolescent Students as Media Fictional Characters

Abstract

Media fictional narrations on adolescents as characters and target are used by teenage audiences when looking for references for their identity building. As a starting point for Media Literacy activities to help teenage students in this process, this research focuses on the representations of adolescent students proposed by different kinds of media fictional narrations. Three European narrations have been chosen in order to analyse and compare different genres, codes and values: the television series «Física o Química» and the films «Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix» and «The Class». A classic narrative analysis approach has been applied in order to encourage teachers to use this kind of Media Literacy activities by employing methodologies that they are familiar with. The results show that such a methodology could facilitate the comparative analysis of important coincidences between these examples (such as the importance of friendship and couple relationships) and also underlines meaningful differences (like the orientation towards the future). The conclusion reached is that the comparison between such different kinds of media fictional narrations is a useful educational tool for improving Media Literacy skills and helping teenage students in the identification of the values and images they really want to choose as reference and inspiration for their own identity building..