Your Future, Your Choice: Media Lessons for the Young and Ambitious

Your Future, Your Choice: Media Lessons for the Young and Ambitious
Prof Anita Biressi (Roehampton University)

As the new generations negotiate the tricky terrain of their future hopes and plans who will guide them? Where are the maps and compasses? What lessons are there to be learned about living a successful life and who are the teachers? Reality TV, the self-help and career-coaching industries all claim to have answers; offering advice on securing a job, getting a promotion or pay rise and developing a positive mind-set.  In this presentation Professor Anita Biressi explores some of these messages and reflects on how they distort the public conversation about social mobility and social progress. She will end by asking how young people can take care of themselves, maintain their integrity and build supportive social bonds to help them survive and even thrive in a neoliberal world.

Anita Biressi is Professor of Media and Society in the Department of Media, Culture and Language at the University of Roehampton, and co-author with Heather Nunn of Reality TV: Realism and Revelation and Class and Contemporary British Culture.