curran and seaton present the view that a free press relies on a free market where induvidual newspapers can compete through their political points of views.

Analyse the way that The i and the Daily Mail attempt to establish a distinctive identity within this free market. To what extent has this been successful? Refer to the specific edition of your case study. As well as online versions.

Curran & Seaton’s theory is called the Liberal Theory and this is the freedom to publish in the free market to “ensure that the press reflects a wide range of options& interests in society” a quote taken from ‘the liberal theory of press freedom’ written by curran. This is the idea that anyone can publish whatever they choose, therefore creating diversification within the media for the audience to encode, decode or negotiate. Although the cost of publishing used to be high (making it difficult to publish) the advances of technology means that it is possible for almost anyone to publish whatever they like for a smaller sum of money. Curran & Seatons theory is that there is not enough diversification and this is proved as in the 80’s new technology was developed, and it should have increased the number of newspapers being produced however it didn’t. This relates to both newspapers and current American election as the press can impact who the people vote for. For example on the front page of the Daily Mail the headline reads on Thursday the 5th of November ” Trump calls results a ‘frued’ and sends in his lawyers.” By making this the headline on the front page it may have an impact on who the people vote for. This idea thinks to Althusser’s theory of interpellation, the idea that individualsare influenced by others around them.(For example the media, family,friends and education.) This theory relates to the Daily Mail as it is owned by The Daily General Trust & owns many other meaning the editor(George Greig) has control of different platforms and can create a dominant idea among the audience. By continuously creating the same dominant idea this allows the newspapers to establish themselves a distinctive identity in which reader become aware of. An example of this is on page 7 of the Daily Mail it shows a cartoon of both Donald Trump and the Statue of Liberty stating ‘ which part of go away don’t you understand’. This implies that American does not want Trump as their leader as the statue struggles to get out of his grasp. This cartoon was drawn by Justin Webb may play a role in who the Americans vote for. The press is important when it comes to the ISA aa it informs the public and is the ‘peoples watchdog, scrutinising the actions of the government” Again an example of this is the daily mail on the online version on thursday 5th november “The View host Sunny Hostin slams 69 million ‘un-American’ voters for ‘looking the other way’ and backing ‘racist, homophobic and misogynistic’ Donald Trump” showing that the Daily Mail is informing its readers and acting as a watchdog.

Another theorist that can be linked to this is Habermas and his theory of the public sphere and can be applied to the i as it allows for the spread of information between the public without the government interfering. The public sphere is the idea that the public opinions can be shared among a society and individuals and can come together to form a ‘public’.

Demographic classifications in the UK refer to the social grade definitions, which are used to describe, measure and classify people of different social grade and income. The Daily Mail has an average daily circulation of 1,134,184 copies (February 2020) most of these being middle classed females, the newspaper uses this information of the circulation to develop the content they feed into the media as they know who is most likely to read the paper. The Daily Mail is also a tabloid format making it easier to read when people are commuting to and from work in the morning, this is because the tabloid formate is more compact and smaller than the average size newspaper making it more appealing. However is is known that Lord Rothermere was the chairman of daily mail and was also friends with Adolf Hitler and Mussolini. He was known for using the newspaper for propaganda his political statue was far right, this could have been carried down and throughout the newspaper. This could explain why the newspaper has been deemed unreliable for sources of information after providing ‘fake news’ to manipulate and influence the audience.

The idea of uses and gratifications was developed by the theorists Gurevitch, Haas and Katz. This is an approach to understanding why people seek out specific media to satisfy their needs. They created the media order of preference for satisfying needs, including A: personal needs (understanding self, enjoyment and escapism) and B: Social Needs (Knowledge about the world, self-confidence, stability etc.) The daily mails shows both knowledge about the world and enjoyment and escapism. The newspaper swings more towards the right wing and helps them to establish an identity within the free market.

Both newspaper can be seen as successful as both newspapers as they both have such high circulation numbers, and the Daily Mail have won multiple awards including the National Newspaper of the Year award from the The Press Awards eight times since 1995. However the circulation numbers only mean how many people have purchased the physical newspaper there is a theory of the 2- step flow theory( by Paul Lazarfel) of communication meaning messages are not directly injected into the audience, but while also subject to noise, error, feedback etc, they are also filtered through opinion leaders, those who interpret media messages first and then relay them back to a bigger audience.

The daily mail bought the i for 49.6 million pounds, although the Daily mail is seen to be right wing police, the i is seen to have a more balanced view on things it is known to be more informational and to give straight facts rather than mocking or judging. There is a section on the Daily Mail called ‘female’ which talks about the stereotypically ‘female thing’ like hair, nails and beauty this backs the idea that the newspaper is sexist and stereotypical, however is acting on the fact that its readers are mostly female and is trying to cater for that specific gender.

Therefore to conclude both newspapers are successful in which they establish themselves within the free market however the daily mail as a higher circulation than the i as it is known to be the highest circulated newspaper in the UK. Both papers have established themselves in different ways and the i has a more neutral perspective whereas the Daily Mil is more right wing.