2.) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Social networking and age are denoted within our film. The fact that it is teenage girls that are being attacked shows how vulnerable girls from that specific age group can be and how it is them that are particularly targeted and not teenage boys. Social networking is a modern phenomenon, with over 250 million people using sites like Facebook and Twitter. These social networking sites are thought to have major impacts on people’s lives.

The opening of ‘The Chain Mail’ reveals a teenage girl being attacked by the clown after she has opened a chain mail message on her phone. The girl in the opening scenes receives a BBM, a Blackberry Message, on her Blackberry smart phone. Blackberry’s are very popular now within the teenage society because BBM is available to Blackberry users as a way of messaging friends and family for free. The use of these modern technologies such as the Blackberry and the laptop gives the film a modern touch. The audience are able to relate more to the film as they too have these products.

The message on the laptop was originally filmed on one of our Facebook pages. However we decided that we needed a closer shot of the writing so this part was cut out. The use of social networking in the film represents the modern reliance on social networks of today.

There is a lot of media coverage at the moment about how dangerous social networking sites can be. There have been many stories in the news lately about how some people have posed as young teenagers in order to form relationships with other teenagers and consequently putting those teenagers in danger. Parents and guardians are encouraged to watch over and control their children’s online activity in order to prevent this from happening. There are always risks involved when using social networking sites and there are many trust issues that go alongside this.

Stereotypically it is teenagers who are associated with spending lots of their time on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and My space, as well as using their mobile phones. Social networking sites are branded as dangerous, especially for young teenage girls and this created an ideal narrative for us to use within our film as it is a very real scenario that could happen to anyone watching our film. This links with the conventions of teenage girls suffering in horror films and most main characters in horror films and teenagers.