Media PPEs - what to revise

Your upcoming A Level Media Studies PPEs are a great opportunity to secure positive marks that will contribute to your final grade.

As discussed in class, we've put together PPEs that only test material you have been taught in class or in recent weeks to make sure nobody is disadvantaged by the last year of lockdowns and remote learning. This blogpost will help you plan your revision:

Media Paper 1

Media Paper 1 Section A 

This will always focus on Media Language and Media Representations. This means the following:

Unseen product analysis

The first question in Media Paper 1 Section A will always be an unseen media product. This requires a media language analysis of the unseen product - an advert, magazine cover or online screengrab. 

The second question will also relate to the unseen product while also bringing in a CSP. This means the unseen product will link to advertising and marketing.

Advertising & Marketing
Score hair cream advert from 1967 

Maybelline That Boss Life

Media Paper 1 Section B 

This will always focus on Media Audiences and Industries. This means the following:

General audience and industry knowledge and understanding

Industry terminology and the work on Hesmondhalgh and the Cultural Industries

Film Industry

Chicken

Newspapers

The Daily Mail 

MailOnline

Media Paper 2

The first question in Media Paper 2 will always be a 9-mark question on an unseen media product.

Aside from Q1, Media Paper 2 will test one in-depth topic area:

Online, Social and Participatory

Teen Vogue - background

Teen Vogue - Audience and Representation 

Teen Vogue - Industry and social media

Gilroy - Diasporic identity and Hall - Representation

The Voice - case study

AQA states for your extended response question:

“You will be rewarded for your ability to construct and develop a sustained line of reasoning which is coherent, relevant, substantiated and logically structured.” This basically means write an essay!

The list above tells you everything you need to revise for the PPEs - so prepare well and good luck!

Newspapers: MailOnline case study

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.

Notes from the lesson

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

Watch James Curran interviewed by Barcelona Centre for Contempory Culture on Vimeo here.

MailOnline: audience-driven news

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’? Shouldn’t news be about informing the public – not entertaining them?

MailOnline: audience

MailOnline readership key details:

• Average age of 40
• 58% female
• 55% 18-44 year olds
• 68% ABC1

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.

MailOnline case study: Blog tasks

Work through the following tasks to complete your case study on Mail Online. 

MailOnline close-textual analysis

Go to MailOnline and analyse the stories currently featured:

1) What are the top five stories? Are they examples of soft news or hard news?

2) What celebrity content is featured?

3) What examples of ‘clickbait’ can you find?

4) To what extent do the stories you have found on MailOnline reflect the values and ideologies of the Daily Mail newspaper?

5) 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?

Guardian column: So Daily Mail and Mail Online are ‘totally separate’? It depends how you look at it by Peter Preston

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. Answer the following questions:

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?

Media Magazine 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 the Media Magazine conference in 2015. 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 does MailOnline provide examples of this kind of news gathering?

3) Fenton argues that news should serve the public and help democracy. Does MailOnline do this?

4) What is infotainment? Is MailOnline guilty of relying on this kind of content?

5) Has the internet empowered audiences or is it still dominated by the major media conglomerates? How does MailOnline fit into this?

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. You won't be able to access our Factsheet archive now school is closed but you can open this factsheet here if you log in to Google using your School email and password.

1) What do Curran and Seaton suggest regarding the newspaper industry and society?

2) Curran and Seaton acknowledge that media ownership in the UK is dominated by what kind of company?

3) What does the factsheet suggest regarding newspaper ownership and influence over society?

4) Why did the Daily Mail invest heavily in developing MailOnline in the 2000s?

5) How does MailOnline reflect the idea of newspapers ‘as conversation’?

6) How many stories and pictures are published on MailOnline?

7) How does original MailOnline editor Martin Clarke explain the success of the website?

8) What does it mean when it says readers are in control of digital content?

9) How is the priority for stories on the homepage established on MailOnline?

10) What is your view of ‘clicks’ driving the news agenda? Should we be worried that readers are now ‘in control of digital content’?

Due date: on Google Classroom

Newspapers: Daily Mail case study

The Daily Mail is our first newspaper CSP and a hugely influential voice in British media.

We need to study the newspaper 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 Geordie Greig 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’

Daily Mail: Friday 31 January 2020

Our chosen edition of the Daily Mail to use as our CSP is Friday 31 January 2020 - Brexit day. Consider the following in your analysis:

Media language
Page design, font, text, images, conventions, hard news/soft news, news values.

Narrative
Selection of news: is there an ongoing narrative? How is narrative created by the paper 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?


Daily Mail case study: Blog tasks

Work through the following tasks to complete your case study on the Daily Mail and specifically the 31 January edition of the newspaper. 

Daily Mail analysis: Friday 31 January 2020

Use your notes from the lesson to answer the following questions - bullet points/note form is fine.

1) What is the front page story on the 31 January 2020 edition of the Daily Mail and how is it presented?

2) From your analysis in class, what other stories and topics are covered in this edition of the Daily Mail? Focus on the following pages:

• Page 2-3
• Page 4-5
• Pages 6-7
• Page 8-9
• Pages 38-39

3) Media language: Write an analysis of the construction of the Daily Mail front page: Page design, font, text, images, conventions, hard news/soft news, news values etc.

4) Narrative: How is narrative used in this edition of the Daily Mail? Look at the selection of news: is there an ongoing narrative? How is narrative created by the paper to engage an audience?

5) Ideology and audience: What ideologies are present in the newspaper? Is the audience positioned to respond to stories in a certain way?

You could add additional notes from class here for future revision. Remember, you will need to write about specific stories from this edition of the Daily Mail and how these stories are constructed to appeal to the Daily Mail readership.


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.

1) How did the launch of the Daily Mail change the UK newspaper industry?

2) What is the 'inverted pyramid of journalism' and why is it important to the way the Daily Mail and Mail Online presents news?

3) What company owns the Daily Mail? What other newspapers, websites and brands do they own?

4) Between 1992 and 2018 the Daily Mail editor was Paul Dacre. What does the extract from Dacre’s speech on the freedom of the press tell us about his ideological position?

5) What is Dacre’s view on the BBC?

6) Look at the right-hand side of page 4. Why is the editor of a newspaper so important?

7) Why did Guardian journalist Tim Adams describe Dacre as the most dangerous man in Britain? What example stories does Adams refer to?

8) How does the Daily Mail cover the issue of immigration? What representations are created in this coverage?

9) How did the Daily Mail cover the murder of MP Jo Cox?

10) What was Dacre’s position on Brexit?

Due date: on Google Classroom

Newspapers: Regulation

The debate regarding the regulation of the newspaper industry has been one of the most controversial and important media issues of the last 10 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:

Newsnight debate:

Channel 4 News debate:



Read the following articles and features on the press regulation debate:

Viewpoints – Should the press be regulated? BBC website
THEOS think tank website – press regulation debate 
Guardian letters – How should the press be regulated?

Newspaper regulation: blog tasks

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 essay

Write an essay on your blog answering the following question:

What are the arguments for and against statutory regulation of the newspaper industry? 

Your answer should be at least 500 words and feature a minimum of four paragraphs. Make sure you cover both sides of the debate.


Due date: on Google Classroom