Daily Mail CSP (industry and audience)

Context:

-      - established British publication (1896) – often uses and refers to ‘tradition’

-       - loyal supporters of British royal family – revealed by editorial stance/ news values

-       outspoken right wing political ideology e.g. pro Brexit – binary opposite of the ‘I’ newspaper’s liberal ideology

-       - ‘black top’ or mid-market tabloid newspaper

-       -Tabloid size & large tabloid style – dramatic headlines but higher written to photo ratio than tabloid but less than Broadsheet

-       -Traditional format/ masthead foregrounding British national identity

-      - 2^nd most popular after The Sun

-      - Most successful in early 2000s - more than £2m copies sold daily, now down to £1.2m but is still influential

-       - Combination of hard and soft news (mix between Broadsheet and Tabloid)

-       - Socially, economically & politically conservative & backs Conservative Party in politics

-       - Sister paper – ‘The mail on Sunday’ 

-     -  Tradition dictates ownership – Daily Mail & General Trust (4^TH VISCOUNT ROTHERMERE CURRENT CHAIRMAN, GREAT-GRANDSON OF CO-FOUNDER)

-     -  Daily Mail & General Trust – wealthy British multinational organization (PROPERTY, INSURANCE, ENERGY…)

Target Audience

-      - Male/ female gender split with female gender skew (particularly the Mail online) – mainstreamers

-       - C1, C2, D on demographic scale – stereotype is middle eged, middle England

-       - Aspirational, middle class/ working class but traditionally British on Psychographic scale

-       - Politically right wing

-       - 35+ with significant 55+ print readership (average age 58) but younger online – ‘the I’ has much younger readership

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’

Ownership & Editorial

- 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 - Autumn 2018 - editor was Paul Dacre (hugely controversial and influential voice in the UK newspaper industry, new editor is Geordie Greig who moved over from the ‘Mail on Sunday’, the paper is already showing signs of softening its pro-Brexit position under Greig’s leadership – a significant change for readers.

Influence & 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 how effective is IPSO?

Stuart Hall

READERS OFTEN HAVE SHARED CULTURAL OR SITUATED CAPITAL VIEWS

 THEY ARE OFTEN POSITIONED INTO A DOMINANT PREFERRED READING BY REFERENCE TO TRADITION AND HISTORY

   FREQUENT USE OF THE WORDS ‘WE’ OR ‘US’ ENCODE A MYTHICAL SHARED IDENTITY

   DIRECT MODE OF ADDRESS ANCHORS THESE REPRESENTATIONS 

Bandura

   SIMPLE THEORY SUGGESTING AUDIENCES ARE VICTIM TO PASSIVE CONSUMPTION

   THE DAILY MAIL, THROUGH USE OF LANGUAGE, JUXTAPOSITION, TYPOGRAPHY AND CHOICE OF IMAGE IMPLANTS, OR REINFORCES RIGHT WING BELIEFS AND VALUES

   THE KEY WITH BANDURA THEORY IS THAT IT AFFECTS ‘BEHAVIOUR’ E.G. THE ‘SACKED ME FOR BEING A WHITE MAN’ HEADLINE COULD ENCOURAGE RACISM

Gerbner

   THE DAILY MAIL REFLECTS ‘MAINSTREAM’ NEWS VALUES THAT ARE CONTINUALLY REINFORCED AS ‘COMMON SENSE’

   GERBNER ARGUES THAT REPEATED SIMILAR HEADLINES, REPEATED POSITIVE REPRESENTATIONS OF THE ROYAL FAMILY FOR EXAMPLE, ESTABLISHES A ‘WORLD VIEW’ THAT IS HARD TO CHALLENGE

   IT LITERALLY CULTIVATES A RIGHT WING IDEOLOGY AND REINFORCES TRADITIONAL VALUES 

Mail online

-reflects decline in print media circulation

-convergent links to audio-visual media including Daily Mail TV

-successful re-branded online platform – targets younger demographic with female skew including popular campaigns

-over £100m unique visitors per month

Differences in Daily Mail print and online platforms

-interactive content, easier to access on range of platforms like a website – more accessibility & choice 

-immediacy – breaking news stories but also ability to expand content and tailor to subjective news values

-maintains house style/ brand identity of print edition

-invasive advertising (important income)

Femail

-stereotypical pink/ red colour palette

-significant advertising content reflecting stereotypical gendered consumerist ideology

-brands reinforcing this stereotype e.g. chocolate (see editorial content below)

- house style – Megan Russel (fashion)

-editorial content – physical, home makeovers, babies and birth: tradition

Regulation and Daily Mail

-problem with newspaper is their regulatory body IPSO, like the previous regulatory body (PCC) is a ‘toothless’ organization

-Daily Mail, despite declining circulation has disproportionate impact – on the news stands but also dictating a broadcast media agenda – BCC Radio 4 today, Newsnight etc.\

-impress is a pro-leveson alternative regulator but n national newspaper signed up

Regulation and IPSO

-set up 2014, post Leveson replacing PCC

-deal with complaints that have breached the editor’s code of practice, some ‘new sanctions’ – they can dictate ‘’The nature, extent and placement of corrections”

-decisions – committee pf 12.7 members independent, 5 representing magazine/ newspaper industry (still a form of self regulation)

-IPSO deal with articles, images, embedded video, audio material, readers letters (print and websites), edited readers comments, not advertising

-also deal with “refusing to stop taking photographs/ asking questions, using hidden cameras, failing to be sensitive when dealing with grief/ shock”

Uses and Gratifications

-Katz and Blumler's theory

*audience uses media to gratify specific needs that they have, if media successfully gratifies this need it makes it more likely they will consume product again, these needs are escapism, surveillance, personal identification and social interaction

*escapism = audiences wish to escape ,mundane & repetitive elements of their life by experiencing things outside their normal lives, can include humour, excitement, fear, romance and other elements outside norm

*surveillance = audiences need to know about world around them and seek texts that offer knowledge pf world, often seen in texts that give news or show pats of world that are unknown to audience

*personal identification = audiences need to explore and develop their own identities by observing other similar and seeing how they respond to situations, audiences use media to act as a teacher of how to act an as role models or cautionary tales for their own identity; this is often seen in texts that represent similar characters to audience

*social interaction = audiences need interaction with other people and to develop bonds with others, media offers this in opportunity to discuss media texts with others but also through opportunity to develop bonds wit characters or interact with others while using the media  (social or interactive media), social media like Facebook or Twitter offers social interaction though; a TV show can offer it through developing a bond with a character that you want to succeed and do well or watching a film can offer you something to then talk about with friends or colleagues

Hall's reception theory

*messages are not just sent directly from sender (producer) to receive (audience but are encoded into media text and then decoded by audience; message isn't sent directly but audience interpretation as  well as method of encoding can affect meaning of message
*dominant/ preferred reading = how the producer wants the audience to view the media text

*negotiated reading = the audience accepts parts of the producer's views but has own views too

*oppositional reading = when the audience rejects the preferred reading & creates own meaning for the text, disagrees or has own beliefs 

How does front cover present ideological values of The Daily Mail?

ideological values = ideology is a world view, a system of values, attitudes and beliefs which an individual, group or society holds to be true or important; these are shared by a culture or society about how that society should function.

Dominant ideologies = ideologies or beliefs that we live by in our day-to-day lives and often do not question – they have become 'natural, common sense' things to do. This effectively dissuades people from rebelling against these beliefs, and keeps a sense of stability in society - include beliefs about gender roles, about the economy, about social institutions

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