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From the Dance Hall to Facebook
Teen Girls, Mass Media, and Moral Panic in the United States, 1905-2010
Published by: University of Massachusetts Press
216 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 x 0.60 in, 6
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From the days of the penny press to the contemporary world of social media, journalistic accounts of teen girls in trouble have been a mainstay of the U.S. news media. Often the stories represent these girls as either victims or whores (and sometimes both), using journalistic storytelling devices and news-gathering practices that question girls' ability to perform femininity properly, especially as they act in public recreational space. These media accounts of supposed misbehavior can lead to moral panics that then further silence the voices of teenagers and young women.
In From the Dance Hall to Facebook, Shayla Thiel-Stern takes a close look at several historical snapshots, including working-class girls in dance halls of the early 1900s; girls' track and field teams in the 1920s to 1940s; Elvis Presley fans in the mid-1950s; punk rockers in the late 1970s and early 1980s; and girls using the Internet in the early twenty-first century. In each case, issues of gender, socioeconomic status, and race are explored within their historical context. The book argues that by marginalizing and stereotyping teen girls over the past century, mass media have perpetuated a pattern of gendered crisis that ultimately limits the cultural and political power of the young women it covers.
In From the Dance Hall to Facebook, Shayla Thiel-Stern takes a close look at several historical snapshots, including working-class girls in dance halls of the early 1900s; girls' track and field teams in the 1920s to 1940s; Elvis Presley fans in the mid-1950s; punk rockers in the late 1970s and early 1980s; and girls using the Internet in the early twenty-first century. In each case, issues of gender, socioeconomic status, and race are explored within their historical context. The book argues that by marginalizing and stereotyping teen girls over the past century, mass media have perpetuated a pattern of gendered crisis that ultimately limits the cultural and political power of the young women it covers.
Shayla Thiel-Stern is assistant professor in journalism and mass communication at the University of Minnesota, and author of Instant Identity: Adolescent Girls and the World of Instant Messaging.
"By drawing attention to media coverage of teen girls and young women, this book makes a unique contribution to existing studies of the construction of girlhood and also to journalism history."—Lynn Schofield Clark, author of The Parent App: Understanding Families in a Digital Age
"In this thorough, clear, and very well written book, Thiel-Stern makes an absolutely convincing argument that the mainstream news media has a part in creating and perpetuating moral panics about girls."—Sarah Banet-Weiser, author of Authentic„¢: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture
"Despite being published by the University of Massachusetts Press, 'From the Dance Hall to Facebook' is far from ivory-tower stuff. . . . A provocative new book."—Star Tribune
"From the Dance Hall to Facebook is successful in revealing the voices of young women, contextualizing them in the sociocultural sentiment at the time, and demonstrating how media reinforce the sense of crisis and panic while restricting the cultural and political agency of teenage girls. Recommended."—Choice
"Shayla Thiel-Stern analyzes media coverage of teenage girls over more than a century in the United States to build a convincing case for the way in which journalists mitigate the power of young women as a public, social force. Written in a lively and accessible style."—Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly
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