Identity and stigmatization: the news discourse on the perception of children and young people from a social housing

Abstract

This article presents the results of an action research with children and young people in a social housing about their identity construction in face of the often stigmatizing media discourses. We conclude that the experience of violence in the neighborhood and it’s news representation (perceived as the main cause of the community bad external image) mark significantly the group studied, contributing to identity constructions that we classify into three categories: anguished identity, suspicious identity and stigmatized identity.