Semiotic Newspaper analysis

Newspaper technical codes

News Values

Key term - Gatekeeping 

- Refers to the editing and filtering process about what information is let through to the receiver.

Acronym - CUPPTUNE

C - Continuity, the stories which are in the news already. 

U - Unambiguous, the stories that are easy to understand. 

P - Personalisation, the stories which include human interests about 'real' people and their problems.

P - Proximity, the stories which are close to home.

T - Threshold, a huge impacting story which is big.

U - Unexpectedness, an event which is out of the ordinary.

N - Negativity, the bad news tends to be 'more' interesting to read. 

E - Elite person/places, the stories about important people or nations.


                                                

Newspaper language conventions table

Newspaper notes

The three variations of newspapers are: 

Broadsheet - The Independent, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph

Mid Market tabloids - The Daily Express, The Daily Mail

Red Top Tabloids - The Mirror, The Sun, The Daily Star

Broadsheets (quality)

• Text to image ratio is much higher, the actual context is written in much more depth.
• Contains sophisticated formal language
• Broadsheets are objective, they tend to be made up of facts and figures. This eliminates too much persuasion from the journalist perspective.
• Contains lots of hard news (politics, economy, health), the vast majority of this hard news is international.
• The actual format is larger.
• The main story on the front page tends to contain small letters and lots of text so that we are able to gather a detailed concept of the content before we read the entire thing

Mid Market Tabloids

• Includes a combination of hard and soft news, hard news are examples of Politics, War, Health and Economy. Soft news are examples of celebrity gossip, sport, fashion and human interest.
• Has much bigger text and headings
• The image to text ratio is much larger in comparison to a broadsheet. 
• Informal and easy to read.
• Their language suggests that they talk to you rather then down to you, this is further emphasised by the use of the pronouns 'we' and 'you' which are mentioned continually throughout. 
• Although the Daily Mail can be trashy it does have a British aspect to it, such as the coat of arms and the fancy masthead text.
• Headings are written in capitals in The Daily Mail whereas they aren't in a broadsheet.
• Mid Market tabloids are very subjective rather then objective like a broadsheet.

Red Top Tabloids

• Mainly soft news and if it does contain hard news then it usually isn't taken with the same amount of seriousness as a broadsheet or a Mid Market. 
• All mastheads are red on a tabloid, they are easy to distinguish due to the brightness.

Assessment and DIRT sheet

HWK Newspaper research

Tabloid Newspaper front cover

Newspaper - Tabloid, The Sun

Name of Article - 'May's Brexit deal dead as a dodo

Date - Wednesday, January 16th 2019

Publisher - News Group Newspaper division

Intended audience - The main demographic audience for The Sun would often be suited for the middle/working class. This then refers to the C2, D, E social positions.

What is the article about?
The front page of the newspaper shows quite clearly that this article is going to be about the EU withdrawal deal, Theresa May has been faced with public humiliation as she is placed on the front cover of the newspaper.

What are the main points of this front cover?
A huge point to notice is that Theresa May has gone down in history as the biggest defeat of a Government motion in Parliament when she lost with 230 votes.
Also the fact that Theresa May has been referred to as a dodo also suggests that she is symbolising stupidity which is exactly the message that this newspaper is aiming to get across to its audience.
This type of portrayal on a newspaper automatically causes us as an audience to change the way that we view Theresa May for example, the For and Against vote count have been placed on the front page which then adds to this idea of further humiliation.

What do the key headings tell us about the point of view?
Considering that the headings are written in bold white writing means that they aren't easily missed, the Brextinct heading is even written in capitals which further enhances this eye catching idea. Also by using a simile 'deal dead as a dodo' creates this meaning that the deal she wanted is the bottom of stupidity and the fact that its been referred to as an extinct bird just in itself suggests that it is a bad idea.

What meanings are presented by the images?
The Sun took this opportunity to turn Theresa May into a dodo declaring that her Brexit deal is 'Brextinct', this is their way of publicly humiliating referring to her as an extinct bird. Dodo's were generally stupid anyway which further emphasises this idea of ridiculing her. Because these birds are extinct it basically explains that the deal she has made might as well not exist as it hasn't received the support that she hoped it would.

What is the message involved? 
The main message that is interpreted from this cover page is that within this particular source Theresa May has been represented negatively which could increase the amount of people that dislike her. She has also been made out to look like an idiotic person as the headings and the wording suggest that she doesn't know what she is doing.


Researching the decline in print newspaper circulations

2019 - Average circulations in January

The Sun - 1,410,896
Daily Mail - 1,246,568
Daily Mirror - 508,705
The Times - 417,298
The Daily Telegraph - 360,345
Daily Star - 329,971
Daily Express - 321,146
Financial Times - 180,053
The Guardian - 141,160
The Independence - N/A

2000 - Average Circulations in January

The Sun - 3.6 million
Daily Mail - 2.4 million
Daily Mirror - 2.3 million
The Daily Telegraph - 1 million
Daily Star - 500,000
Daily Express - 1.1 million
Financial Times - 400,000
The Guardian - 400,000
The Independence - 200,000

Which newspaper no longer has printed editions?
- The Independence

What is the list of national newspapers in the UK? (National newspapers aren't released on Sundays or December 25th)
- Daily Express
- Daily Mail
- Daily Mirror
- The Daily Telegraph
- The Guardian
- The Independent
- The London Evening Standard
- Metro
- The Observer
- The Sun
- The Times

What is the general trend in newspaper circulations?
The ABC figures regarding national newsprint sales are on a continuous long term downward spiral in the mid market sectors. Overall the newspaper industry continues to shrink with 126 fewer papers in 2014 than 2004.

What genre of newspaper has had the steepest decline - the red top tabloids, the middle market newspapers or the broadsheets?
Evidence would suggest that broadsheet newspapers have had the biggest decline among the titles for example, The Guardian's sales have fallen a massive 9.5% with The Telegraph not far behind with 8.4% year on year fall.


Ownership of paid newspapers
- Daily Express, Reach PLC
- Daily Mail, The General trust
- The Daily Telegraph, telegraph group
- The Guardian, The Guardian media group
- The Independent, Tony O'Reilly - Lebedev family
- The London Evening Standard, Lebedev family
- The Metro, The General trust
- The Observer, The guardian media group PLC
- The Sun, News International
- The Times, News International

Advert

What was the task that you were assigned?
- We were randomly allocated a topic on which we had to create an advert on, in this scenario my group ended up with the task of creating advertisement about an energy drink for adults - specifically how this positively effects them. Our aim once assigned this production was to signify the boost that an energy drink presents you with therefore, we wanted the beginning to come across very depressing and sad then once the drink is drunk you feel this instant alertness to feel positive and ready to handle the day.

What programme did you use to create your task? 
- Once we had gathered all the footage we when exported it onto Premiere 2019 which is a video and photo editing app created by Adobe.

What tools did you use from your programme to create your task?
- Primarily I used a lot of colour adjustment throughout such as, the black and white setting and I enhanced all the videos by playing around with the warmness, saturation and highlight effects. This was so that the change of mood was made clear to the audience. At the beginning of the advert I placed a VoiceOver on top of the music, this really adds to its originality. After the energy drink is drunk I placed a pop effect over the music which is then followed by consecutive zoom transitions as we move from one video to the next.

What went well and what would you do differently?
- The good parts of this advert for me is the storyline, it explains the purpose of our product and what it does once you have drunk it. I also really like how we added voiceovers instead of displaying text on the screen because this causes the audience to really engage with the concept that we are trying to get across. To improve I would like to show more variations of adults drinking the product so that the audience can fully gather that this drink does make everyone more energetic and positive. Also another aspect which would make this advert better is to have the product visible in more of the shots so that it is fully promoted the entire time.