Introduction to The Times and constructing representations

Advantages of a newspaper demonstrating a particular political/ideological bias:

• To control people, can inspire people to carry out actions (manipulated by the media)
• Ideologies will attract more of their target audience 
• To gain support for the political party the newspaper is supporting 

What is the difference between broadsheet and Tabloid newspapers?

• Since tabloids are smaller, their stories tend to be shorter than those found in broadsheets. So they are quicker to read than broadsheets 
• Broadsheets being the larger, more serious papers that you had to fold to read and while broadsheet readers tend to be upscale suburbanites
• Tabloid readers are often working-class residents of big cities. 
• Tabloid more about celebs and focus on gossip
• Broadsheet, "actual news", focus on facts, serious press, more focus on politics and international news 
• Tabloid - the stuff you like to read about 
• Tabloid is smaller
• Broadsheet bigger
• Less pictures in Broadsheet newspaper
• Red tops, red masthead, easy to distinguish, eye catching 
• Tabloid has bigger headline
• Broadsheet, higher literacy skills in order to read them
• Tabloid, easy to read, below GCSE level to read
• Broadsheet - story on front page 
• Broadsheets more expensive than Tabloid

Polysemy - Multiple meanings, not everything has a single meaning. But in creating a newspaper, producers typically attempt to avoid polysemic readings. the process of forcing an audience in to a particular reading is called anchoring.

Anchorage - The 'fixing' of a particular meaning to a media text, often through the use of captions

What possible readings could there be for a group protesting?

• power
• strength
• unity
• anger
• hope
• Binary opposition 

Representation, constructs and reality:

• The sun are against Cor-bin as they are representing him as trash in the rubbish bin, If he's elected he will ruin Britain, controversial 
• The sun - Mise-en-scene dirty area, "we've had enough of Jezza's rubbish..." talking about the audience of the sun and the sun 
• The sun - Bullet points show key info but don't explain so can come across as different message
• Whereas the morning star are for labour and Jeremy
• The Sun is targeting an anti labour target audience
• The morning start is targeting a labour target audience, has more information, Corbin is seen as a hero, saviour to Britain
• Both uses bullet points 
• The sun - the image he looks creepy and shifty. But in the morning star he looks happy and like a nice guy with the thumbs up 
• The sun is trying very hard to make him look bad but morning star is effortless and makes him look good

Bias - favour one opinion over another (placement, headline, photos, names and titles, statistics and crowd counts, source control, word choice and tone)

Agenda - Trying to do something for a reason