Betrayal and Fear: Press Coverage of Canadian Skinheads

Abstract

This paper examines the ways in which skinheads and the press in Canada mutually engage in public strategies to subvert each other’s significatory powers. Arguably, skinheads present a limited challenge to the social mainstream which, like their style, exists primarily on the surface. In analyzing the media response, the discursive containment of subcultural resistance is revealed as news reports retain the social order of the existing institutional structure. As skinheads attempt to draw attention to themselves and to society’s hidden contradictions, the media exploit their spectacularity, transforming it into a saleable news commodity.