The final deadlines for A Level Media coursework are now approaching.
You will receive feedback on your print drafts and then have the last few weeks to make any final improvements to your video and print work before submitting everything after the holiday. Statement of Intent
Your Statement of Intent is submitted to the exam board in PDF format so please ensure the final version is saved as a PDF in your folder on Media Shared for Mr Ray to collect.
Coursework deadline
The final deadline to submit your production work is Friday 17 April. This is the Friday immediately after the Easter holiday. You will have a coursework lesson in the first week back after Easter to submit your work. After this date, we will be marking and moderating the coursework before sending it to AQA for approval.
Submitting your production work
You will submit your work to Mr Ray for collection and uploading to the exam board. It is YOUR responsibility to make sure Mr Ray has the following in your 'NAME - FINAL COURSEWORK' folder on the Media Student Drive:
1) Video files of your final three TikTok videos - format H264/mp4: Labelled - 'NAME - TikTok 1' etc.
2) PDF copies of your three billboards: Labelled - 'NAME - Billboard 1' etc.
3) Statement of Intent in PDF form:Labelled - 'NAME - Statement of Intent'
In class we will be completing the Candidate Record Forms that are sent to AQA with your work and writing a list of non-assessed participants. The list of non-assessed participants is simply any other people who were involved in the production of your coursework as it is very rare that media projects can be completed by one single person. This is required by AQA as they need to confirm that you have either made the coursework yourself or that you clearly directed people if you had other people operating the camera while you performed etc. Final deadline: Friday 17 April Good luck!
The Daily Mail (and its website Mail Online) is our first newspaper CSP and represents a hugely influential voice in British media.
We need to study the newspaper and website from the perspective of audience and industries, linking what we've already learned about the newspaper industry and journalism. Notes from the lesson The Daily Mail is a ‘black top’ or mid-market tabloid newspaper. It is the second most popular daily national newspaper after the Sun. The Daily Mail was most successful in the early 2000s with more than 2m copies sold daily. It is now down to around 1.2m but still influential. The paper offers a mix of hard and soft news. It is socially, economically and politically conservative and backs the Conservative Party in politics.
The Daily Mail: ownership and editorial
The Daily Mail is owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT). Its chairman is Jonathan Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere, whose great-grandfather was a co-founder of the newspaper. From 1992 until Autumn 2018, the editor was Paul Dacre – a hugely controversial and influential voice in the UK newspaper industry. The editor is now Ted Verity who moved over from the Mail on Sunday.
The Daily Mail: influence and accuracy Even with falling circulation, the front cover of the Daily Mail can set the news agenda and dictate what broadcast media lead on – such as the influential BBC Radio 4 Today programme or Newsnight on BBC2. This is why newspapers are still seen as having a disproportionate influence despite falling sales. In February 2017, the Daily Mail was labelled ‘generally unreliable’ by Wikipedia editors, discouraging people from using the Mail as a source. The Daily Mail responded by saying it had only been adjudicated ‘inaccurate’ twice by IPSO – but as we know from our newspaper regulations lessons: how effective is IPSO?
Audience
The Daily Mail readership key details:
Average age of 58
Almost half of its readers are over 65 and only 14% of the paper’s readers are under 34
The Daily Mail is the only newspaper to have more female readers than male (52% - 48%)
Two thirds of the readership are ABC1 so middle class. Seen as ‘voice of middle England’
In constrast, the MailOnline website readership details are quite different to the newspaper:
In addition, the following Daily Mail front pages are particularly significant in terms of political contexts, British culture and values and ideologies. Consider the following when analysing your chosen copy and these front pages: Selection of news How is news selected and presented by editors? Is there an ongoing narrative created by the newspaper to engage an audience? Audience and ideology What ideologies are present in the text? Is the audience positioned to respond to stories in a certain way?
Enemies of the People:
Response to Liz Truss's budget that crashed the UK economy:
Asylum seekers / Immigration:
Daily Mail website - Mail Online
MailOnline is the most successful English-language newspaper website in the world and one of the most popular news sources in the UK.
We need to study MailOnline alongside the newspaper version of the Daily Mail, again from the perspective of audience and industries. This is particularly important in terms of the editorial stance, the internet's influence on media power, the clickbait-driven business model and the prevalence of soft news or social-media driven stories.
Pluralism: a brief introduction
Pluralists see society as consisting of competing groups and interests, none of them predominant all of the time. Media organizations are seen as enjoying an important degree of autonomy from the state, political parties and institutionalized pressure groups.
A basic symmetry is seen to exist between media institutions and their audiences, since in McQuail's words the 'relationship is generally entered into voluntarily and on apparently equal terms’. Audiences are seen as capable of manipulating the media and as having access to what Halloran calls 'the plural values of society' enabling them to 'conform, accommodate, challenge or reject'. (Gurevitch et al. 1982: 1)
Curran & Seaton: Power Without Responsibility
Curran and Seaton argue that the media should follow the pluralist model and be shaped by audience demand:
“The free market makes the press a representative institution…newspapers and magazines are to respond to the concerns of their readers if they are to stay in business.”
However, in practice the newspaper industry is dominated by a small number of powerful owners and this influences newspaper coverage and media influence. In short, the free market doesn’t work.
James Curran on the internet and power in the media
Curran and Seaton argue audience demand rather than powerful owners should influence news media. But can we trust audience demand?
Original MailOnline editor Martin Clarke said: “We let the readers decide what they’re interested in, that’s why MailOnline is so sticky and why it’s so addictive and why people love it so much.”
The homepage stories are selected by clicks – the most popular stories move to the top of the page. But does this turn news into ‘clickbait infotainment’? Should news be about informing the public – not entertaining them?
MailOnline: addictive design
MailOnline is designed to encourage readers to stay on the site: the homepage has (virtually) endless scroll, there are thousands of images, embedded social media posts and promotional features linked to the stories.
Celebrity gossip drives traffic to site (often via social media) with clickbait used heavily to initially attract readers. Then, controversial headlines and opinion columns encourage users to comment, share and engage with the site.
The right-hand bar (‘sidebar of shame’) means an endless supply of celebrity gossip available on every page. This creates clickbait within the site itself.
Daily Mail and Mail Online CSP: Blog tasks Work through the following tasks to complete your case study on the Daily Mail and Mail Online Daily Mail and Mail Online analysis Use your own purchased copy or our scanned copy of the Brexit edition from January 2020 plus the notable front pages above to answer the following questions - bullet points/note form is fine. 1) What are the most significant front page headlines seen in the Daily Mail in recent years? 2) Ideology and audience: What ideologies are present in the Daily Mail? Is the audience positioned to respond to stories in a certain way? 3) How do the Daily Mail stories you have studied reflect British culture and society?
Now visit Mail Online and look at a few stories before answering these questions:
1) What are the top five stories? Are they examples of soft news or hard news? Are there any examples of ‘clickbait’ can you find? 2) To what extent do the stories you have found on MailOnline reflect the values and ideologies of the Daily Mail newspaper? 3) Think about audience appeal and gratifications: why is MailOnline the most-read English language newspaper website in the world? How does it keep you on the site? Factsheet 175 - Case Study: The Daily Mail (Part 1) Read Media Factsheet 175: Case Study: The Daily Mail (Part 1) and complete the following questions/tasks. Our Media Factsheet archive is on the Media Shared drive: M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets or online here (you'll need your Greenford Google login). 1) What news content generally features in the Daily Mail? 2) What is the Daily Mail’s mode of address? 3) What techniques of persuasion does the Daily Mail use to attract and retain readers? 4) What is the Daily Mail’s editorial stance? 5) Read this brilliant YouGov article on British newspapers and their political stance. Where does the Daily Mail fit in the overall picture of UK newspapers? Factsheet 177 - Case Study: The Daily Mail (Part 2) Now read Media Factsheet 177: Case Study: The Daily Mail (Part 2) and complete the following questions/tasks. Our Media Factsheet archive is on the Media Shared drive: M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets or online here (you'll need your Greenford Google login). 1) How did the launch of the Daily Mail change the UK newspaper industry? 2) What company owns the Daily Mail? What other newspapers, websites and brands do they own? 3) Between 1992 and 2018 the Daily Mail editor was Paul Dacre. What is Dacre’s ideological position and his view on the BBC?
4) Why did Guardian journalist Tim Adams describe Dacre as the most dangerous man in Britain? What example stories does Adams refer to? 5) How does the Daily Mail cover the issue of immigration? What representations are created in this coverage?
Factsheet 182 - Case Study: The Daily Mail (Part 3) Industrial Context
Finally, read Media Factsheet 182 - Case Study: The Daily Mail (Part 3) Industrial Context and complete the following questions/tasks. Our Media Factsheet archive is on the Media Shared drive: M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets or online here (you'll need your Greenford Google login). 1) What do Curran and Seaton suggest regarding the newspaper industry and society? 2) What does the factsheet suggest regarding newspaper ownership and influence over society? 3) Why did the Daily Mail invest heavily in developing MailOnline in the 2000s? 4) How does MailOnline reflect the idea of newspapers ‘as conversation’? 5) How many stories and pictures are published on MailOnline? 6) How does original MailOnline editor Martin Clarke explain the success of the website? 7) How is the priority for stories on the homepage established on MailOnline? 8) What is your view of ‘clicks’ driving the news agenda? Should we be worried that readers are now ‘in control of digital content’?
A/A* extension task
If you'd like to go the extra mile on this CSP, read this Guardian column by Media veteran Peter Preston on a row between the Guardian and the Mail over the controversial MailOnline (ex-) columnist Katie Hopkins. You could then answer the following questions if you wish: 1) Why does Preston suggest that the Daily Mail and MailOnline should be considered to be basically the same publication? 2) How does Preston summarise other newspaper websites? 3) How many readers does the online-only Independent now boast? 4) Do you feel the Daily Mail and MailOnline have a different ‘world view’? 5) Do you see a future for the paper version of the Daily Mail or will it eventually close like the Independent?
The debate regarding the regulation of the newspaper industry has been one of the most controversial and important media issues of the last 15 years.
You need to understand how the newspaper industry is regulated, how some people think it should be regulated and what might happen in the future. Most importantly, you need to form your own opinion on newspaper regulation and how the industry should operate following the 2012 Leveson Inquiry. Newspaper regulation: notes A brief history of newspaper regulation The newspaper industry was regulated by the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) between 1990 and 2014. It was a voluntary regulator with no legal powers and was heavily criticised for saying it found no evidence of phone hacking at the News of the World in 2007. The PCC had a code of practice that provided guidelines for newspapers in how to report inaccuracies, crime, news stories involving children and more. However, the PCC was effectively run by the newspaper editors themselves and papers merely had to print a small apology when the regulator ruled against them.
The Leveson Inquiry 2011-12 The Leveson Inquiry in 2011-12 was a judicial public enquiry ordered by the government into the culture and ethics of the British press. This followed the revelations of the phone hacking scandal and the closure of the News of the World.
Post-Leveson: IPSO and IMPRESS Following the Leveson report, a new press regulator was introduced: the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). IPSO is more powerful than the PCC and can order newspapers to print apologies or corrections on the front page or fine papers. However, it crucially doesn’t act on Leveson’s key recommendation that the regulator is backed by government legislation. Alongside IPSO, IMPRESS was also set up as an alternative regulator. This was fully compliant with Leveson – but no major newspapers have signed up with IMPRESS.
Watch the following videos on Leveson and the press regulation debate: BBC News overview:
Task One: Media Magazine article and questions Read the Media Magazine article: From Local Press to National Regulator in MM56 (p55). You'll find the article in our Media Magazine archive here. Once you've read the article, answer the following questions: 1) Keith Perch used to edit the Leicester Mercury. How many staff did it have at its peak and where does Perch see the paper in 10 years' time? 2) How does Perch view the phone hacking scandal? 3) What does IPSO stand for and how does it work? 4) What is Perch's view of newspaper ownership? 5) Do you agree with his view that broadcast news should have less regulation so that TV channels can support particular political parties or people? Task Two: Newspaper regulation exam question Write an answer on your blog answering the following exam question: What are the arguments for and against statutory regulation of the newspaper industry? [20 marks] Aim to write an answer of around 400-500 words featuring at least three detailed paragraphs. Make sure you cover both sides of the debate. This topic could well be our 20-mark essay at the end of Paper 1, Section B so it's great preparation for the summer exams.
One of the factors we must consider when studying the decline of the newspaper industry is the importance of news and journalism to society and democracy.
Technology moves on and industries evolve - but newspapers have traditionally played an important role in holding governments to account, exposing corruption and keeping the public informed about the world they live in. As media students, we need to consider the impact to society of news coverage being driven by 'clicks' and ending up with funny cat videos rather than hard-hitting investigative journalism. We've got some excellent video resources to work with on this topic. Both of our videos refer to the 2016 Best Picture winner at the Oscars - Spotlight. This is director Tom McCarthy's film based on the true story of Boston Globe reporters investigating widespread child abuse in the Catholic Church. We highly recommend you watch this film as part of your work on newspapers. John Oliver on journalism
British comedian John Oliver presents a show called Last Week Tonight on HBO in America. In a previous episode, he put together a report on the decline of journalism in America and its replacement by 'clickbait' stories rather than real news. Watch it here: Clay Shirky on news: don’t build a paywall around a public good
Clay Shirky is a professor at NYU (New York University) and a worldwide expert on digital and social media. As we know from our work on Online, Social and Participatory Media, Shirky is a named media theorist for A Level Media and he also makes a compelling argument for the role news plays in society. Interestingly, he argues against paywalls - the subscription model that some newspapers use to make money in the digital age - and says that news is a 'public good' that is vital in a healthy democracy.
The Future of Journalism: Blog tasks Part 1: Clay Shirky lecture
Go to the Nieman Lab webpage (part of Harvard university) and watch the video of Clay Shirky presenting to Harvard students. The video is also available on YouTube below but the Nieman Lab website has a written transcript of everything Shirky says. Play the clip AND read along with the transcript below to ensure you are following the argument. You need to watch from the beginning to 29.35 (the end of Shirky's presentation). Once you've watched and read the presentation and made notes (you may want to copy and paste key quotes from the transcript which is absolutely fine), answer the questions below: 1) Why does Clay Shirky argue that 'accountability journalism' is so important and what example does he give of this? 2) What does Shirky say about the relationship between newspapers and advertisers? Which websites does he mention as having replaced major revenue-generators for newspapers (e.g. jobs, personal ads etc.)? 3) Shirky talks about the 'unbundling of content'. This means people are reading newspapers in a different way. How does he suggest audiences are consuming news stories in the digital age? 4) Shirky also talks about the power of shareable media. How does he suggest the child abuse scandal with the Catholic Church may have been different if the internet had been widespread in 1992? 5) Why does Shirky argue against paywalls? 6) What is a 'social good'? In what way might journalism be a 'social good'? 7) Shirky says newspapers are in terminal decline. How does he suggest we can replace the important role in society newspapers play? What is the short-term danger to this solution that he describes? 8) Look at the first question and answer regarding institutional power. Give us your own opinion: how important is it that major media brands such as the New York Times or the Guardian continue to stay in business and provide news?
Part 2: MM55 - Media, Publics, Protest and Power Media Magazine 55 has an excellent feature on power and the media. Go to our Media Magazine archive, click on MM55 and scroll to page 38 to read the article Media, Publics, Protest and Power', a summary of Media academic Natalie Fenton’s talk to a previous Media Magazine conference. Answer the following questions: 1) What are the three overlapping fields that have an influence on the relationship between media and democracy? 2) What is ‘churnalism’ and what issues are there currently in journalism? 3) What statistics are provided by Fenton to demonstrate the corporate dominance of a small number of conglomerates? 4) What is the 'climate of fear' that Fenton writes about in terms of politics and the media? 5) Fenton finishes her article by discussing pluralism, the internet and power. What is your opinion on this crucial debate - has the internet empowered audiences and encouraged democracy or is power even more concentrated in the hands of a few corporate giants?
Complete for homework: due date on Show my Homework.
Galtung and Ruge defined a set ofnews valuesto explain how journalists and editors decide that certain stories and photographs were accepted as newsworthy, while others were not.
The following list is adapted from their work: Immediacy: has it happened recently? Familiarity: is it culturally close to us in Britain? Amplitude: is it a big event or one which involves large numbers of people? Frequency: does the event happen fairly regularly? Unambiguity: is it clear and definite? Predictability:did we expect it to happen? Surprise: is it a rare or unexpected event? Continuity: has this story already been defined as news? Elite nations and people: which country has the event happened in? Does the story concern well-known people? Personalisation: Is it a personal or human interest story? Negativity: is it bad news? Exclusivity: do any other newspapers have this story? Visual impact: are there amazing pictures accompanying the story? Balance: the story may be selected to balance other news, such as a human survival story to balance a number of stories concerning death. News Values: Blog task Read Media Factsheet 76: News Values and complete the following questions/tasks. Our Media Factsheet archive is available here - you'll need your Greenford Google login to access.
1) What example news story does the Factsheet use to illustrate Galtung and Ruge's News Values? Why is it an appropriate example of a news story likely to gain prominent coverage?
2) What is gatekeeping? 3) What are the six ways bias can be created in news? 4) How have online sources such as Twitter, bloggers or Wikileaks changed the way news is selected and published? 5) In your opinion, how has the digital age changed Galtung and Ruge’s news values? 6) How would you update these news values for the digital age? Choose TWO of Galtung and Ruge's news values and say how they have been affected by the growth of digital technology.
E.g. Immediacy is more important than ever due to news breaking on social media or elsewhere online. However, this in turn changes the approach of other news sources such as newspapers as the news will probably already be broken so different angles might be required. Newspapers now contain more comment or opinion rather than the breaking story.
Our final topic is newspapers: an industry that has changed hugely in the last 25 years due to the impact of the internet.
This is the final set of targeted CSPs - we will be studying the Audience and Industry key concepts plus all relevant contexts for the Daily Mail and the Guardian newspapers. This means newspapers will come up in Paper 1, Section B of the exams. Here's one Daily Mail front page we may want to reference:
Notes from the lesson In the lesson, we looked at the history of the newspaper and some key terminology we need to learn:
Newspapers: hard and soft news
Newspapers cover a range of stories that are generally divided into two categories:
Hard news: stories related to current affairs, politics, economics, wars and other serious news.
Soft news: stories related to entertainment, sport, celebrities, gossip, scandal and human interest/lifestyle topics.
Newspapers: tabloid and broadsheet
Newspapers were traditionally available in two sizes: tabloid and broadsheet. Today, most newspapers are in the smaller broadsheet size but the terms are still used to describe the style of paper:
Tabloid: focusing largely on soft news, famous examples include the Sun and the Mirror. Generally read by more working class audience. Mid-market tabloids are a middle ground between tabloid and broadsheet and include the Daily Mail.
Broadsheet: serious newspapers that focus more on hard news. The Times, Guardian and Telegraph are all examples.
Newspapers: sources of news
Newspapers tend to get their news content from two sources:
Journalists: newspapers employ reporters and photographers to attend events, interview people and write stories.
News agencies: Reuters and Associated Press are examples of global news agencies that are independent institutions that employ journalists to write stories that newspapers and other media organisations can pay to use.
Increasingly in the digital age, newspapers are sourcing news from their audiences using citizen journalism. This is sometimes criticised as creating clickbait – an example of soft news aimed simply to attract online readers.
The decline of newspapers
In the last 20 years, the newspaper industry has faced a sharp decline due to the rise of the internet.
In 2003, almost 30 million newspapers were sold in the UK every day. By 2017 that was down to 12.4 million (source: Ofcom).
Newspapers have traditionally made their money in two ways: through the cover price and by selling advertising. With so much news available for free online, audiences are not buying newspapers so both these sources of income have been decimated.
The Wall Street Journal produced a short video demonstrating how the industry has changed in the last 100 years:
Once you've learned the key terminology, watched the video and considered the decline in the industry, work through the blog tasks below.
Blog tasks: The decline in print media
Part 1: Ofcom report into news consumption Read this Ofcom report on the consumption of news in the UK and answer the following questions (bullet points/short answers are fine): 1) Look at the headlines from the report on page 5 & 6. Pick three that you think are interesting and bullet point them here. Why did you pick those three in particular? 2) Now look at the motivations for following news which differs by age on pages 7 & 8. What are the main reasons people gave for following news? What are the percentages?
3) Look at the platforms used, by age on page 9. What trends do you notice based on the platforms used and by the different age groups?
4) Look at how online news continues to be a key platform for receiving news on page 14. How does the internet enable audiences to access the news in different ways? Can you provide any examples of news organisations with percentages?
5) Look at the news brands (print newspapers and digital offerings) on page 20. Can you provide percentages of readership of print vs. online?
6) Looking again at page 20 for news brands - how are print newspapers rated by their metrics - can you offer the different metrics with percentages?
Part 2: Factsheet - The death of print media Go to our Media Factsheet archive and open Factsheet 165: The death of print media. Our Media Factsheet archive is on the Media Shared drive: M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets or you can find it online here - you'll need to log in using your Greenford Google login. Read the Factsheet and complete the following questions/tasks (bullet points/short answers are fine): 1) What has happened to print media in the last 30 years? 2) Why is the Independent newspaper such a good case study for the decline in print media? 3) What was the Independent newspaper famous for? 4) What did the then-owner of the Independent, Evgeny Lebedev, say about the newspaper's digital-only future? 5) How do online newspapers make money? 6) What did the Independent's longest-serving editor Simon Kelner warn regarding the switch to digital? 7) What is the concern with fake news? What does 'post-truth' refer to?
8) What is your view on the decline in print media? Should news be free? Is it a concern that established media brands such as the Independent can no longer afford to exist as a printed newspaper?
For the Newspapers unit, you have an ongoing mini-homework every week: to find, read and postTWO news storieson your blog.
The very simple detail: every week you must find, read, and post two news stories from the websites of our two newspaper CSPs (one from Mail Online and one from The Guardian website): Mail Online The Guardian website This will help familiarise yourself with the two newspapers over several weeks so you can recognise how the news stories reflect the values, ideologies and ownership contexts of the two CSPs. Newspaper news story research: blog task Create ONE blogpost that you return to and update weekly. Call it 'Newspaper news story research'. Then, each week you need to visit the MailOnline website and the Guardian website and choose one story from each to summarise and share. Most importantly, you need to do the following on your blogpost for each story...
Copy the headline, date and link.
Briefly summarise the story in a sentence or two: is this is an example of hard news or soft news? Does it reflect the politics or ideological stance of that newspaper/website?
Explain in a sentence how or why this story appeals to the audience of that newspaper (use media terminology and theory if you can). Is it quality journalism or an example of clickbait?
We'll be sharing our stories as a starter each week and this will ensure you build up a range of stories from both CSPs to provide examples to use in exam questions and essays. Due: EVERY week for the next five weeks. Just update the same blogpost with additional stories each time!
