Curran and Seaton present the view that a free press relies on a free market where individual newspapers can compete through their political stances and points of view.

Analyse the ways 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 – for both papers – as well as, on-line versions of these publications.

• Two theorists who co-wrote a book called “Power Without Responsibility”
• the liberal theory of press freedom:
• The broad shape and nature of the press is ultimately determined by no one but its readers
• self regulation

Curran and Seaton co-wrote a book called “Power Without Responsibility” where the liberal theory of press freedom is discussed. Curran and Seaton describe the liberal theory of press theory within Power Without Responsibility as “ultimately determined by no one but its readers”. This means that the political variety found within the press is not decided solely by its editors – but by its readers. This is shown through newspapers like the i and Daily Mail where they both display a largely differing set of political opinions, with the Daily Mail adopting more centre-right ideologies compared to the i displaying more centrist or centre left ideologies.

The Daily Mail has been known to adopt more dubious strategies to its reporting. The Daily Mail capitalises on the fact that most of its readers will not bother to factcheck articles due to a lot of the more uneducated population reading it, and often creates articles with unreliable information. This is shown on the Wikipedia page for the Daily Mail, where “In February 2017, the Daily Mail became the first source to be deprecated as an “unreliable source” to use as a reference on the English Wikipedia”. The Daily Mail has a centric enough political stance that it can influence central-aligned readers, or those “uninterested” with politics. This is shown through Chomsky’s theory of the Five Filters of Mass Media: ownership, advertising sourcing, flak and anti-communism and fear. The Daily Mail is owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust, which also owns the i. The DMG owns all stages of production, with editing and printing in their own headquarters. Furthermore, both, but particularly the daily mail participate in the advertising stage, where the daily mail includes multiple fashion pages combined with full-page advertisements. certain articles are purged in order to keep readers in the “buying mood”, meaning that despite the newspaper being centre left, the i will never include articles that hold more strong-left political opinions because each newspaper relies on capitalism to survive and a criticism of the system would not put the readers in a “buying mood”. Therefore, it can be said that the Daily Mail is especially successful from this, due to its articles being mainly centre-right (more economically based). The Daily Mail makes particular use of creating its own, unique articles, providing a source that seems to provide strong evidence, with facts and figures. This, as a result, is useful for persuading readers to adopt these political viewpoints. The Daily Mail also incorporates flak, where ideas that threaten its traditional beliefs are shunned. An example of this is an article in the Daily Mail, discussing how “The number of white male, secondary school teachers has fallen by almost 20 percent in a decade, sparking fears over a lack of role models for working class boys”. This provides flack on diversity in teaching and reinforces the idea that the increase in diversity of teachers is bad because “white boys don’t have any role models”. (Conveniently leaving out that minorities never had role models in the first place). This creates racist ramifications as it ultimately creates the idea that “minorities are invading teaching spaces”. This is used to defend the Daily Mail’s centre-right beliefs and pushes its readers to think like this. Finally, the Daily Mail uses anti-communism and fear. While 2020 is the result of a post-red-scare era, anti-communism is still used to reinforce capitalism as the main ideology, with fearmongering used to paint leftism as ‘the evil’. An example of this is a recent article n the Daily Mail. A quarter of the page is headed with read and the communist flag. The title text reads: “Russia’s Cyber War on the Olympics”. However, Russia has nothing to do with communism as the soviet union dissolved in 1992. Furthermore, Russia has become more and more neo-liberal as it has incorporated more and more forms of privatisation. The article frames Russia’s attempt to “sabotage the games” as not Russia’s attempt to sabotage the games, but communism’s attempt to sabotage the games. This reinforces the idea that leftist ideas such as socialism and communism are “evil”, and are “a threat”. This political stance has been incredibly successful for the Daily Mail, as it is currently the top selling newspaper in the UK.

The i has adopted a centre-let political stance, but despite seeming somewhat different to the Daily Mail, they are both owned by the same conglomerate: the Daily Mail General Trust. A notable article in the i is a politics article titled “Even a win is not good news for Democrats”. Further in the article, it questions socialists if socialism is “just an idea” and “would never become a reality”: “The uncomfortable closeness of the election will empower the socialists in his party to push a niggling counterfactual: what if it had been an ideologue, not an establishment-type, at the top of the ticket?”. While the i appears centre-left, it can be argued that both of its opinions of leftism, especially far leftism, are the same, with the i expressing ideas of socialism as “unrealistic” and the Daily Mail expressing stronger ideas of counter-leftism. It can be argued that, historically, the public sphere was a lot more diverse, with a lot of early post-world-war two newspapers taking a leftist, anti-capitalist approach, being allowed to criticise the capitalist system. This was changed after these local newspapers either died out from a lack of funding or were pushed to become more right-wing as they required funding through advertising, which would require complying with the capitalist system. This has meant that the public sphere as a whole since then has shifted more and more to the right, with right wing views beginning to dominate the public consciousness, and as a result, has changed the public sphere to care less about socialist ideas and more about economy-based ideas. The point being, newspaper identities have shifted closer and closer together, to the point where it is a lot harder to tell the difference between centre-right and centre-left.

In conclusion, it can be argued that the identities the Daily Mail and the i have created are not as distinctive as they seem. The Daily Mail General Trust owns not only both newspapers, but all forms of journalism and production. The transformation of the public sphere has caused a large shift towards the political right, which is shown where The Daily Mail is the most popular newspaper in the UK, compared to the i, which is 7th. Furthermore, the i itself has started to shift more to the right, complying with the dominant ideology more and more

1. Show any knowledge and understanding you have of any related theoretical ideas (eg Habermas – transformation of the public sphere, Althusser, ISA/interpellation, Chomsky, 5 filters, Gramsci, hegemony). Make sure this section coherently links to the last.
2. Show your knowledge and understanding of the distinctive identity of your case studies (Daily Mail & The i) in terms of patterns of institutional ownership in the culture industries. As illustrated by:
   1. statistics, names and dates related to your case studies.
   2. key terminology related to ownership (media as public good, capitalist media, vertical, horizontal, transnational, conglomerate, subsidiaries, concentration of ownership, diversification, production/distribution etc etc)
3. Show your knowledge and understanding of the distinctive identity of your case studies by examining their audience profile & reach (eg ABC, psychographic profiles, readership, circulation, profit, costs, size)
4. Show your knowledge and understanding of the distinctive identity of your case studies by looking in detail at some key stories, which help you to illustrate the political stance and point of views presented in your case studies. Make sure you refer to both print and digital (and be clear about what differences and similarities you find).
5. Evaluate the success of each of your case studies in terms of:
   1. quantitative / statistical analysis
   2. qualitative analysis (think about the stories that you are talking about, how can they be measured as successful?)
6. Show your knowledge of audience theory to both support and criticise the way in which you can suggest qualitative success (point above). In other words, how does audience theory link to the particular identity (ie political and/or social stance) of your case study? (So you could reference Lasswell, 2 Step Flow / Lazarfeld, Skinner, U & G theory, Gerbner, Hall, Shirky, Zuboff)
7. Make some astute judgements and draw some conclusions from what you have written in your essay
8. Summarise (what you have presented as) your argument and try to end with a 2 sentence final though

lasswell’s model: the daily mail article

WHO:

Sarah Harris and joshua fullard

SAYS WHAT:

“The number of white male, secondary school teachers has fallen by almost 20 percent in a decade, sparking fears over a lack of role models for working class boys”

CHANNEL:

The daily mail newspaper

TO WHOM:

right-wing aligned or centre-right aligned audience

WITH WHAT EFFECT:

reinforces the idea that the increase in diversity of teachers is bad because “white boys don’t have any role models”. (Conveniently leaving out that minorities never had role models in the first place). This creates racist ramifications as it ultimately creates the idea that “minorities are invading teaching spaces”

adjusting voting behaviour in a digital age

b.f. skinner – operant conditioning:

• behavioural science
• “free will is fiction”
• schedule of reinforcement: if the pigeon knows it is going to get rewarded it will repeat the process to get that satisfaction

harold lasswell

• involved in world war 1
• propaganda technique in the world war: the way in which governments etc could brew up a “subtle poison” which could be injected into the veins of staggered people until the smashing powers … knocked them into submission
• hypodermic needle model
• propaganda vs persuasion: propaganda overtly political and manipulative vs persuasion (subtle manipulation)

Zuboff

• The age of surveillance capitalism
• emerging behaviour control technology: phones used to stimulate certain types of behaviour
• new technology -> new methods of behaviour control
• changing not only actions but changing people’s personalities and ways of thinking

cambridge analytica

• alexander nix – boss of CA

audience theory

• hypodermic needle – 1920 – 1930: passive audience, conditioning & propaganda. less people read and write

lasswell’s model: the daily mail article

WHO:

Sarah Harris and

SAYS WHAT:

“The number of white male, secondary school teachers has fallen by almost 20 percent in a decade, sparking fears over a lack of role models for working class boys”

CHANNEL:

The daily mail newspaper

TO WHOM:

right-wing aligned or centre-right aligned audience

WITH WHAT EFFECT:

reinforces the idea that the increase in diversity of teachers is bad because “white boys don’t have any role models”. (Conveniently leaving out that minorities never had role models in the first place). This creates racist ramifications as it ultimately creates the idea that “minorities are invading teaching spaces”

KATZ, GUREVITCH & HAAS

Personal needs: understanding self (reinforcing ideology)

Social needs: “knowledge” about the world

self confidence, stability, self esteem: if ideas are reinforced that align with the reader’s interests, they may agree giving a sense of stability

• shannon weaver: 1949: noise, error, encoding and feedback. Noise: being unable to understand the message conveyed due to some kind of distraction such as noise or another factor

• paul lazarfeld 1948: two step flow: information is shown to group 1 (influencers) (step 1). where one or two people are given the information. Then those people tell a lot of people (step 2)
• As Martin Moore suggests, ‘people’s political views are not, as contemporaries thought, much changed by what they read or heard in the media. Voters were far more influenced by their friends, their families and their colleagues’ (2019:124).
• active audience – the heart of the idea of the liberal press

• katz, gurevitch and haas: uses and gratifications 1973
• choose information based on what you want
• maslow’s hierarchy of needs

gerbner 1975: cultivation theory

• behaviours can be changed
• More pertinently, Gerbner and Gross assert that ‘television’s major cultural function is to stabilize social patterns and to cultivate resistance to change‘ (1978: 115). In other words, they assert the power of television to modify behaviour in support of the dominant structures of society.

Noam chomsky

• propaganda model

althusser

• theory of interpolation

stuart hall: theory of preferred reading (1980s)

• you don’t have to believe what people are telling you 9the media is telling you)
• 3 different ways of reading: dominant oppositional and negotiated
• encoding is different from the decoded message

clay shirky 2000: the end of audience

• no audience only individuals
• intersectionality
• In many ways, Shirky is not too removed from the work of Hall, prioritising the power of individual agency in the relationship between audiences and institutions, for example, recognising how the audience can be both producers and consumers of media text. This can be realised in the realm of new (interactive) communication media, where individual communications can be made in what appears to be beyond State or commercial control and interest.
• , ‘the more ideas there are in circulation, the more ideas there are for any individual to disagree with.’

the idea of “surveillance capitalism”

Theory	Theorist	Daily Mail	the i
Manufacturing consent	Noam Chomsky	The daily mail has been known to create news articles that are controversial and unreliable. The daily mail usually has at least one article that lies on the fringe of controversy, but throughout their article creates evidence to support their views. If readers can empathise with this small article, it may open up the possibility of accepting worse and more controversial articles. The Daily Mail has a more ‘gossip’ feel to it, and is not politically centrist on its opinions. This means that the Daily Mail is more likely to follow the Propaganda model. For example, the daily mail is more likely to participate in flak and anti-communism.	The i and the daily mail are owned by the same corporation, which means that the i can, if willing, can slowly push more right wing content into its newspapers. This means that the passive reader is more likely to slowly, over time, accept this and their agenda change.
the Public Sphere	Habermas	‘The Public Sphere’ refers to any public place of discussion of ideology

Question	Daily Mail	the i
When first introduced	4 may 1896	19 october 2010
part of a bigger organisational structure?	Daily mail and general trust	Daily mail and general trust
Political compass?	center-right	center-left
What kind of journalism do they produce? What is their USP? What stories do they specialise in?	shock based stories and scandals	stories presented in a more factual way but still draw attention
What kind of people run the paper? Produce the stories?	The daily mail has always had an imperialist perspective, as well as historically supporting fascism	Presented as liberal democrats but in reality the same people as the Daily Mail
Do they have a similar readership reach?	More reach	Less Reach
Do they have a similar readership profile / target audience?	average age is 58	aimed at all ages
How are they currently doing? Increasing or decreasing sales and revenue?	head of the newspaper markets, with a massive increase in readers in 2020	9th most popular in uk
How are they looking to embrace new media technologies?	has a website now	more accessed online
Do they have a similar layout and design?	larger broadsheet with more room for articles	smaller and more compact

• the United Kingdom’s highest-circulated daily newspaper
• According to a December 2004 survey, 53% of Daily Mail readers voted for the Conservative Party, compared to 21% for Labour and 17% for the Liberal Democrats
• the Mail from the start adopted an imperialist political stance taking a patriotic line in the Second Boer War, leading to claims that it was not reporting the issues of the day objectively
•  It was the first newspaper to recognize the potential market of the female reader with a women’s interest section
• Lord Rothermere was a friend of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, and directed the Mail’s editorial stance towards them in the early 1930s
• Rothermere and the Mail were also editorially sympathetic to Oswald Mosley (leader of the BUF) and the British Union of Fascists.
• The term “suffragette” was first used in 1906, as a term of derision by the journalist Charles E. Hands in the Mail to describe activists in the movement for women’s suffrage, in particular members of the WSPU. But the women he intended to ridicule embraced the term, saying “suffraGETtes” (hardening the ‘g’), implying not only that they wanted the vote, but that they intended to ‘get’ it
• On 16 July 1993 the Mail ran the headline “Abortion hope after ‘gay genes’ finding”. Of the tabloid headlines which commented on the Xq28 gene: (Xq28 is a chromosome band and genetic marker situated at the tip of the X chromosome which has been studied since at least 1980. The band contains three distinct regions, totaling about 8 Mbp of genetic information. The marker came to the public eye in 1993 when studies by Dean Hamer and others indicated a link between the Xq28 marker and male sexual orientation.) the Mail’s was criticised as “perhaps the most infamous and disturbing headline of all”.
• Following the November 2015 Paris attacks, a cartoon in the Daily Mail by Stanley McMurtry (“Mac”) linked the European migrant crisis (with a focus on Syria in particular) to the terrorist attacks, and criticised the European Union immigration laws for allowing Islamist radicals to gain easy access into the United Kingdom. Despite being compared to Nazi propaganda by The New York Times, and criticised as “reckless xenophobia,” and racist, the cartoon received praise on the Mail Online website
• There have been accusations of racism against the Daily Mail. In 2012, in an article for The New Yorker, former Mail reporter Brendan Montague criticised the Mail’s content and culture, stating: “None of the front-line reporters I worked with were racist, but there’s institutional racism [at the Daily Mail]”

In summary, the Daily Mail is an openly Tory newspaper, and is a repeat offender of racist, homophobic and sexist attacks. It historically supported the Nazi party. After WWII, it stopped supporting the Nazi party, but still holds right-wing views and refuses to apologises on its offensive comments.

1. Jurgen Habermas (the public sphere)
   • The public comes to interact with itself in a public discussion about ideas and concepts
   • this place is called the public sphere
   • the public sphere can be used to spread awareness of movements or spread ideology
2. James Curran and Jean Seaton
   • Two theorists who co-wrote a book called “Power Without Responsibility”
   • the liberal theory of press freedom:
   • The broad shape and nature of the press is ultimately determined by no one but its readers
   • self regulation
3. Noam Chomsky
   • created the book “Manufacturing Consent”
   • Created the theory that there are “5 filters that manufacture consent” (the propaganda model)
   • filter 1: ownership – media companies should own all steps of publication to create a bias (conglomerates)
   • filter 2: advertising – funding generated through advertising (the buyers of the newspaper are the ‘product’ sold to advertisers)
   • filter 3: sourcing – mass media will draw information from sources that consider its interests as economic first
   • filter 4: flak – mass media will attack radical ideas – creating stories that see the subject of the article in a negative light or just fake news.
   • filter 5: anti-communism and fear

Fuchs

• 3 types of media
• capitalist media: corporate ownership (a)
• Public servic media: state related institutions (b)
• Civil society media: citizen control (c)

• media is based on a. information commodities, b. information commons and c. information as public good
• capitalism is expansive, imperialist and colonising (consumption over culture)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_w2wFgFEoQB0jbCHDT0igTgCaJ_xQRCz/view?usp=sharing