BBC 100 Radio Show

Natasha, Charlie, Greta and Kimberly: 24/11/2022 (10am-11am)

Statement of Intent 

I intend to produce a front page of a newspaper with an audience are people of all ages living in the region who are interested in national and international news stories as well as stories relating specifically to the local area. My newspaper will be named “The Jersey Topic” and will comment on popular culture on the island of Jersey as well as hard news to do with politics, healthcare, and business etc. I imagine that this newspaper will present a relatively libertarian left wing political compass due to its heavy focus on humanity, culture and freedom over economics, business and politics. This links to Habermas’s ideas on the public sphere and how newspaper paved a way for creating a libertarian “arena of public debate” in which people had the freedom to express and discuss real world issues. I intend for this newspaper to “reflect a wide range of opinions and interests” (James Curran) 

The main story featured on the front cover will be how the Jersey Opera House has been closed since the beginning of 2020. In the report I will focus on how the government has neglected the historical building due to a disregard towards the cultural industries. I will use previous news reports on the issue to help influence my own. 

The headline for the front-page article will be “History left to ruin”. To accompany this, I will include two images of the building which highlight its abandonment as well as a subtitle which reads; “Abandoned culture neglected by lack of governmental support.” Following this will be a byline which reads: ‘By Charlie Dicker.’ As for layout and positioning, I will base my product on my style model, The Daily Mail newspaper (CSP) although I intend to include more copy/ ‘body’ text. The images I plan to include will be a long shot main image of the theatre building and then a close-up shot of the theatre logo, the caption on these photos will read; “Jersey Opera House, one of the islands most historical buildings, has been abandoned by the states”. To create my production, I intend to use a combination of ‘Adobe Photoshop’, ‘Microsoft Word’ (to write my copy) and ‘Adobe InDesign’. This will allow me to create the singular aspects to then compile it all together in one production piece. To create a realistic, professional newspaper design, I will include a series of ‘ears’ which link to other pages of the paper as well as a masthead, a barcode and columns for my body text. 

I will structure the article using the ‘inverted pyramid of journalism’ model which explores how audiences read and decode news articles. Firstly, I will include factual, newsworthy, interesting information e.g. ‘Who, what, where, how, when’ which gives the basic background. This should be featured first to engage the passive audience with facts and figures which they can be ‘fed’. Secondly, I will appeal to the active audience who will read further, through continuing with more detailed accounts by using quotes from secondary sources before rounding the article off to a conclusion. 

Having studied audience theories as well as theories on cultural institution, I will focus on the theory of Uses and Gratifications by Katz to link to the gratifications of consuming culture, in particular the theatre, as well as taking influence from David Hesmondhalgh’s theories on the creative industries and how creativity is a “risky business” which must be supported by certain strategies to reduce this risk. 

Statement of intent:

I plan on creating two print products campaigning against the regulation of women in the culture industries – one being a billboard poster promoting a documentary which discusses these issues, and the other being a advertising campaign flyer which links to the documentary.

Language: Both the flyer and the billboard display a pink tinted newspaper collage displaying articles regarding the issues women have faced as a result of the media throughout history, connoting to the idea of continuous struggle. Iconic signs of celebrities – Angelina Jolie, Michelle Obama, x, Margaret Atwood, Emma Watson, Meghan Markle, Hunter Shaefer, and Janet Mock – display the cast of production who have all campaigned against women’s rights with regards to the media. the indexical sign ‘shine through the noise’ is the title of the documentary and provides anchorage as it signifies the message of the production – empowering women to ‘shine’ and break through the ‘noise’ created by both the regulation and the lack of regulation within the media industry. The symbolic white glow around the dominant signifiers connotes to peace and creating peace within their female roles and also portrays their highlights how they are ‘shining through the noise’ by being apart of the production.

Representation: The aim of the documentary is to highlight all the issues women’s face with regards to media, in terms of institutional regulation and therefore represents women as powerful and more than just their bodies. One of the key ideas touched upon is the regulation placed one women and their bodies in certain instances of public media – most commonly social media where women aren’t allowed to perform casual nudity on their own terms to please themselves – but the lack of regulation in other instances – such as film and TV where women are overly sexualised on other peoples terms, such as writers and producers, often for the pleasure of male viewers – creating a sense of unjust and lack of control within their lives. This touches upon Laura Mulvey’s notion on the male gaze where a woman’s “appearance [is] coded for [a] strong visual and erotic impact” (“Visual and Other Pleasures”, 1989). Both the flyer and the billboard fight against this social norm by representing the cast as more than just their bodies by portraying mainly just their faces (apart from Michelle Obama) and wearing unprovocative clothing. The white silhouette surrounding the women represents them as strong and powerful as they are ‘shining through the noise’.

Institution: The campaign is co-produced by the independent company Equal Media, whose primary focus is to support inferior social groups, and Columbia Pictures who also distributes the film and Netflix exhibits it. David Hesmondhalgh argues that the creative industry is a ‘risky business’ and therefore the companies have taken certain measures to minimise these risks: The use of vertical integration gives the production companies more control on how the campaign is distributed as well as also decreasing costs, Independent labelling engages more alternative audiences, audiences who are reluctant to consume mainstream media, and the use of star-formatting, Michelle Obama, Emma Watson etc…, creates a ready-made audience ensuring a higher viewership.

Audience: The campaign is aimed mainly at teenage to young adult audiences who support the campaigning against women’s rights as they are the primary social group seen to be willing to make a change within society today, especially regarding the rights and representation of inferior social groups, such as women. The use of well-known celebrities and their influence attracts the audience and touches upon Paul Lazarfeld’s Two Step Flow of Communication model whereby messages are filtered through influential opinion leaders who interpret a message and first and then relay them back to the mass audiences and therefore making them believe in a certain idea. However, the idea behind this campaign is more active than the audience just agreeing with what the celebrities tell them – it also fulfils the audiences particular pleasures of understanding themselves, to gaining more self-confidence and expanding knowledge of the world supporting McQuail and Blumlers Uses and Gratification theory