Audience positioning and the newspaper industry - Q block
Explore the ways in which audiences are positioned by this front page of The Daily Star
Make reference to:
- Heavy emphasis on images suggests a working class audience, and is a clear attempt to appeal to them
- Image of a stereotypically hegemonically conventionally attractive woman targets a heterosexual male demographic
- Use of simple language/lexis suggests an informal mode of address for a working class audience
- Layout is bold and easy to read for a working class audience
- Sexual connotations of image of woman are further anchored by the caption "spooked by my flashing, giant orbs"
- The MES of Boris Johnson's brightly coloured Hawaiian shirt functions as a symbolic code, suggesting that he is careless and incompetent
- A binary opposition is formed between the PM of the UK and the ridiculous costume and props he is associated with
- Poor photoshop quality suggests low production values, which further makes Johnson a figure of fun
- Suggests that the audience are immature, by taking an informal and non-serious mode of address
- Soft news: Gnasher the cartoon dog has turned vegan
- Use of informal language takes a patronising and even mocking mode of address
- Assumption that working class audiences have less intelligence and will only be able to understand restricted code
- Escapism provided by informal language can be pleasurable
- By reinforcing and normalising a low level of literacy among the working class, the daily star is effectively keeping the working class in their place, and normalising the idea the working class are uneducated. This ensures that The Daily Star have a guaranteed audience, day after day
- Marxist theory: does The Daily Star ensure the proletariat remain poor? And reinforce certain ideological perspectives that ensure that society will not change?
