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Newspaper CSP’s: The i & Daily Mail – Revision

Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) – Regulator of the newspaper and magazine industry in the UK

The i

Political alignmentLeft-wing, Liberal, Libertarian
Royal FamilyRepublican, not FOR the Royal Family

NOAM CHOMSKY THE INDIVIOUS CONTROL OF INFORMATION

CURRAN & SEATON

GERBNER – MEAN WORLD INDEX

STUART HALL reception theorymedia texts contain a variety of messages that are encoded (made/inserted) by producers and then decoded (understood) by audiences. Therefore what we see is simply a ‘re-presentation’ of what producers want us to see.

  • Certain political stances and ideologies that are encoded by the newspaper producers can be decoded in a juxtaposing understanding. The public all retain differing political stances, which relates to the use of conglomerate business technique (The Daily Mail owns The i) to be appeal to both right and left wing political stances to be able to gain the largest interest and customer loyalty, and therefore profit. Relating to ideas of Hesmondhalgh which says that media producers are motivated solely by profit rather than a duty to provide trustworthy productions.
  • “Journalism you can trust”
  • “Vote on Johnson future turning toxic for Tories” (Political alignment evidence)

Under the ‘Investment section’ it has the title of ‘Tokens of appreciation’ where it talks about NFT’s (Non-fungible tokens) and ‘Where most NFT users live’.

  • Says the majority live in Thailand (5.65m), then Brazil (4.99m) and in third the US (3.81m)

Daily Mail

Political alignmentRight-wing, Authortarian
Royal FamilyPatriotic, royalistic, PRO Royal Family

According to the Daily Mail, its readers skew 54% female to 46% male. Some 83% are said to be homeowners and 69% own their homes outright. Some 63% are ABC1 (upper and middle class) and some 366,000 are said to have savings of more £100,000. (Source)

  • Daily Mail is patriotic – “Relive all four days of a joyous Jubilee”
  • A section named “Our Platinum Queen”
  • Support the Tory party but not Boris Johnson it seems: “Tory rebels ‘are plotting course to catastrophe'”
  • Page 7 – “Hilarious and barmy… final parade was so very British” – clearly conveys PRO Royal Family and patriotic values is to be British

Main Theories and Ideas

Jurgen Habermas; Transformation of the Public Sphere; Public Sphere

James Curran; The Liberal Free Press

Main ideas above, Ideas to develop on below:

  • Governance
  • Regulation
  • Media Concentration
  • Conglomerates
  • Free Market
  • Culture Industries
  • Hesmondhalgh
  • Noam Chomsky
  • Hegemony
  • Framing
  • Value
  • Uses and Gratifications
  • Escapism
  • Social Needs
  • Mainstreaming
  • Commodification
  • Theory of Preferred Reading

Score & Maybelline : Revision

Intro

David Gauntlett believes that identity is fluid, and representation changes over time to accommodate for this. A great example of this is Score and Maybelline. Whilst both are an example of queer theory and present a eudemonia through their hyperreal (Jean Baudrillard) depictions of gender and sexuality, they are still essentially binary oppositions. Score depicts gender through the lense of old traditional binary definitions and ideals. Sexualising the women and placing them as subservient to the man (Jean Kilbourne). It is exclusively for heterosexual men, and more specifically, white heterosexual men, its lack of racial representation (it only includes white characters) is an example of Paul Gilroy’s post-colonial theory, as it fails to provide equal representation for black individuals. Maybelline on the other hand, puts an emphasis on inclusivity, representing multiple races, sexualities, and genders. Maybelline’s use of Manny MUA, a gay makeup artist / influencer, and Shayla Mitchell, a black makeup artist / influencer shows that their product is for everyone.

Eudemonia – happiness as the result of an active life governed by reason.

David Hesmondhalgh

believed companies involved in cultural industries were motivated by profit rather than a duty to public service broadcasting.

Cultural industry technology realizes standardization and mass production by subtracting the two logical differences between social work and social system.” In order to make products attractive to consumers and occupy the market, producers “rationalize” according to consumers’ preferences.

  • The constructed identity presented of the eras new prototypical masculinity representations and ideologies on ‘being a man’ during the time era of score, relates to the idea of toxic representation of masculinity being used as a tool to promote and sell products to its male audience rather than a duty to provide a quality product to its target market. Relating to Hasmondhalgh‘s idea on rationalisation with their consumers preferences by appealing to gender roles and norms of the time, this time being a representation of men as strong and having control over women, they were to attain to these societal roles otherwise they’d be discredited and not seen as a man.
  • Specifically and more relating to, ‘Oh!’, a self-proclaimed feminist production with an aim to celebrate femininity and specific female individuals. These products have a clear juxtaposition to each other and represent advancements in how the media presents females, relating to the theorist Van Zoonen, who believes that ‘media portray images of stereotypical women and this behaviour reinforces societal views‘. So when applying this theory, it shows a shift in representations of women in media, and therefore a shift in societal views, which celebrates women more than the time era of score. Similarly, a reason for the increase in female related productions and products would be as a duty motivated by profit rather than a duty to appeal to new 3rd wave of feminism ideas and to rationalise that feminism is a new wave of consumers and there is a need to appeal to them.

Clay Shirky and the End of Audience

Old Passive Audience VS New Active Audience

Lazerfeld

Metroid, Sims & Tomb raider – CSP Revision

  • David Gauntlett
  • Feminist Frequency
  • Male Gaze
  • Fluid Identity
  • Imagines communities
  • Simulation
  • Semiotics
  • Baudrillard
  • Lanier
  • Bandura
  • Gerbner
  • Cultivation Theory

“Metroid Prime 2: Echoes” was released in 2004 for the Nintendo GameCube

  • Samus Aran puts on her power suit, gets her weapons ready and protects the galaxy from the evil Space Pirates. She is the hero. – Relating to feminist ideas and how women are presented in the media like said by Van Zoonen and Judith Butler

TV CSP’s Revisit

“A group of police officers try their best to keep the streets of Manchester free of crime. When all else fails, they decide to use unconventional methods to teach the perpetrators a lesson.”

  • The genre of the show is multi-genre’d/ hybrid genre. It is a drama/ police procedural/ dark comedy

Feminist culture –

Van Zoonen – Van Zoonen believes the media portray images of stereotypical women and this behaviour reinforces societal views. The media does this because they believe it reflects dominant social values (what people believe in) and male producers are influenced by this. [Word Press]

This relates to No Offence as recent advancements in feminism and the increasing culture of women empowerment and empowerment of different cultures creates a countertype to usual conventional media ideologies by casting a mainly female cast where women are in positions of power which goes against patriarchal society norms.

Toril Moi – According to Professor of Literature Toril Moi, feminist theory has become so abstract that it no longer says anything about ordinary women’s lives. Concepts like intersectionality have become so overtheoretical that they no longer apply to people’s actual experiences. [Kilden]

Judith ButlerSex is a biological category; gender is a historical category. Butler questions that distinction by arguing that our “gender acts” affect us in such material, corporeal ways that even our perception of corporeal sexual differences are affected by social conventions. [Source]

Ghost Town revisit

Antonio Gramsci

Key Terms:
● Hegemonic: dominant, ruling-class, power-holders
● Hegemonic culture: the dominant culture
● Cultural hegemony: power, rule, or domination maintained by ideological and cultural means.
● Ideology: worldview – beliefs, assumptions and values

When writing in the 1930s Gramsci researched why so many people followed and believed in fascist Germany.

It became the idea about hegemony, where more powerful people would change peoples views and imbedded their own political views deep into their culture as the easiest way to make someone believe in such extreme views is to access their emotional and mental state and to get them to truly believe in what they are told, which is done through this hegemony. —–>

  • Cultural hegemony functions by framing the ideologies of the dominant social group as the only legitimate
    ideology
  • The ideologies of the dominant group are expressed and maintained through its economic, political, moral,
    and social institutions (like the education system and the media).
  • As a result, oppressed groups believe that the social and economic conditions of society are natural and
    inevitable, rather than created by the dominant group.

Do you remember the good old days before the Ghost Town? – Magazine

Context:

  • The Specials, a band of the immediate post-punk period.
  • It was a track which bottled the discord, racial tensions and societal breakdown happening in the UK that summer.
  • GT music video was directed by Barney Bubbles
  • Day before GT reached no1, Britain erupted:
  • Had been riots in Brixton the previous month, sparked by a new police stop-and-search policy named Operation Swamp 81 after Margaret Thatcher‘s 1978 assertion that the UK ‘might be rather swamped by people of a different culture‘:
  • 943 people – majority black – were stopped by plainclothes officers in 6 days.

The music video as said by Horace Panter: an original Special

  • I think the music video works (a) ‘because it was done in the middle of the night with all the brooding and menace that comes with the dark.
  • (b) ‘when dawn finally broke and we drove through the City district, there was nobody else around. The political/social context of the song didn’t really materialise until the Brixton/Toxteth/Handsworth riots in July 1981, by which time the song was No.1 in the singles charts.

Links to my CSP posts

CSPMy Post Link
Scorehttps://hautlieucreative.co.uk/media23al/2021/11/15/csp-3-score-4/
Maybellinehttps://hautlieucreative.co.uk/media23al/2021/11/11/maybelline-csp-notes/
Letter to the Freehttps://hautlieucreative.co.uk/media23al/2022/03/10/letter-to-the-free-16/
Ghost Townhttps://hautlieucreative.co.uk/media23al/2022/02/08/ghost-town-16/
War of the Worldshttps://hautlieucreative.co.uk/media23al/2022/11/09/csp-war-of-the-worlds-8/
Newsbeathttps://hautlieucreative.co.uk/media23al/2022/11/03/csp-newsbeat-3/
Daily Mail
The i

Blinded by the light: https://hautlieucreative.co.uk/media23al/2022/01/19/blinded-by-the-light-26/

Bombshell: https://hautlieucreative.co.uk/media23al/2021/12/13/bombshell-17/

CSPMy Post Link
No Offence and The Killinghttps://hautlieucreative.co.uk/media23al/2022/03/16/television-csp-no-offence-and-the-killing/

https://hautlieucreative.co.uk/media23al/2022/03/16/television-csp-no-offence-and-the-killing/2/
The Voice Onlinehttps://hautlieucreative.co.uk/media23al/2023/01/27/csp-the-voice-2/
Teen Voguehttps://hautlieucreative.co.uk/media23al/2023/01/23/csp-teen-vogue-5/
Men’s Healthhttps://hautlieucreative.co.uk/media23al/2022/10/03/csp-magazine-2/
Oh Comelyhttps://hautlieucreative.co.uk/media23al/2022/10/14/oh-comely-5/
Tomb Raider and Metroidhttps://hautlieucreative.co.uk/media23al/2021/09/28/representation-22/
Sims Freeplayhttps://hautlieucreative.co.uk/media23al/2023/01/25/csp-sims-freeplay-5/

Paper 1 + 2

Paper 1:
Section A (Language and Representation)

Unseen CSP Semiotics Question 8 Marks

Letter To The Free / Ghost Town
That Boss Life / Score

Section B (Audience and Industries)

War of the Worlds / Newsbeat
Daily Mail / The i
Blinded By The Light

Paper 2:

Unseen CSP Analysis Question 8 Marks

Capital / Deutschland 83
The Voice Online / Teen Vogue
Men’s Health / Oh Comely
Tomb Raider / Metroid / Sims Freeplay

Paper 1 CSP Posts:

New Media EXAM QUESTIONS and dates

Paper 1 exam: 22nd May

Paper 2 exam: 6th June

  • SharePoint: Students – YEAR 12 2022-2023 – Key theorists
  • Students – YR12 22,23 – Legacy – final revision

You will answer 1 Exam Question from Paper 2, which will be either:
June 2022 Q 3 (Voice and Teen Vogue) or
June 2020 Q 3 (Tomb Raider and Sims) or
June 2019 Q 2 (Tomb Raider / Metroid / Sims)
Speciman Paper Q 3 The Voice, Teen Vogue

Media effects theories argue that the media has the power to shape the audience’s thoughts and behaviour.
How valid do you find the claims made by effects theories? You should refer to two of the Close Study Products (Tomb Raider Anniversary, Metroid: Prime 2 Echoes, Sims Freeplay) in your answer.

Media producers must respond to changing social and cultural contexts to maintain audiences.
To what extent does an analysis of the online Close Study Products The Voice and Teen Vogue support this view?

The target audiences for video games change because of the historical and economic contexts in which they are produced.
To what extent does an analysis of the Close Study Products Tomb Raider: Anniversary and The Sims FreePlay support this statement?

Media products are shaped by the economic and political contexts in which they are created.
To what extent does an analysis of your online, social and participatory Close Study Products (The Voice and Teen Vogue) support this view?

CSP: The Voice

The Voice, founded in 1982, is a British national African-Caribbean newspaper operating in the United Kingdom. The paper is based in London and was published every Thursday until 2019 when it became monthly. It is available in a paper version by subscription and also online.

The Voice newspaper is “committed to celebrating black experience” and aims to deliver “positive change” by “informing the black community on important issues”. With its news stories, in-depth interviews, opinion pieces and investigations, The Voice remains “Britain’s most successful black newspaper”.

Editor: Lester Holloway – British journalist and editor, as well as a campaigner and local politician.

Stats:

  • The circulation of the paper peaked at 55,000 in the early 1990s with young women being a substantial majority of its weekly buyers.

Other significant points:

  • How McCalla secured funds for this ‘risky business venture’ – McCalla secured £62,000 from Barclays with the backing of the Loan Guarantee Scheme which was part of a series of initiatives set up by Margaret Thatcher’s government to help unemployed people start their own business. The Voice enterprise was a success and the bank loan was paid off within five years.
  • Paying over £3m, The Gleaner Company took ownership of the newspaper in 2004. They are a Jamaican newspaper and media enterprise
  • The company then moved from print to online and changed to only monthly editions. Production costs for online newspapers are generally cheaper. For the website the main running costs are for hosting, maintenance and security.

Representation:

Before the introduction of The Voice, the black press in Britain targeted first-generation immigrants. Newspapers, such as The Caribbean Times and West Africa, kept the diaspora up to date about news about the old countries. The Voice was different. It wanted to publish stories which were relevant to the second generation who were born and raised in Britain.

Theorists:

  • David Hesmondhalgh believed companies involved in cultural industries were motivated by profit rather than a duty to public service broadcasting. No one was going to invest in a newspaper which targeted a niche audience unless it was going to make money.

However, the social and political context of the early 1980s offered the founder of The Voice, Val McCalla, an opportunity to raise the funds needed for such a risky venture.

Clay Shirky and the End of Audience

Old Passive Audience VS New Active Audience

Old – Broadcast media used to deliver their products to a mass audience who were mostly disconnected from each other. It was a linear flow of communication with carefully crafted messages intended to entertain and inform the audience.

New – The internet was the beginning of the end of the traditional audience. For example, readers seemed to prefer digital copies of newspapers because they could respond to the articles by adding their own comments and interact with other commentators.

In We The Media, Dan Gillmor (2004) explored the changes in the news industry. He argued grassroots journalists were a serious threat to the monopolies enjoyed by big media conglomerates. The “official” news organisations are no longer writing the “first draft of history” because “the audience is learning how to get a better, timelier report”.

This sort of citizen journalism is a good example of Clay Shirky’s concept of mass amateurisation.

The Voice will struggle to be heard by an audience who prefer the quick and easy comment culture of social media rather than long-form journalism.

CSP: SIMS FREEPLAY

The Sims FreePlay is a strategic life simulation game developed by EA Mobile and later with Firemonkeys Studios. It is a freemium version of The Sims for mobile devices; it was released for iOS on December 15, 2011, released for Android on February 15, 2012, released for BlackBerry 10 on July 31, 2013, and released for Windows Phone 8 on September 12, 2013.

The game was banned in multiple countries: China, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar and Egypt due to the ability to form homosexual relationships.

The Sims Freeplay is a game available on multiple mobile devices where the player uses ‘Sims’ who they can control to do many activities similar to real life. It can be considered a simulation of real life and an escape from the real issues and hardships of everyday life to enjoy a simulation of life with no real effect or consequence. This idea can be applied to Baudrillard’s theory on postmodernism and simulacra where he says “It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real” (“The Precession of Simulacra” 2).

Theorists:

Thomas Schatz-page 3

Todorov’s narrative theory,

Steve Neale-page 4

hierarchy of needs-page 6

uses and gratifications

Henry Jenkins+Jeremy Tunstall-page 5

David Gauntlett-page 7