Timed Essay Question 5

 

Question 5:

Explain how different newspaper audiences might interpret the same content in different ways. Refer to the front covers below to support your answer.

Both of these present different stories and show how different people interpret different stories on the news depending on a lot of different factors, mainly with political leanings of the person and the newspaper.

The first paper covers a story with the EU and the UK wanting Brexit to split away from the European Union. Since the Daily Mail is a right winged outlet, they would agree with Brexit and everything about it so they are more likely to post a more positive story while a left winged outlet may not. They specifically use collective words like “us” which gives a false sense of unification of the subject despite the clear rivalry between the right and the left wing; words like “them” are also used to refer to the EU which collects the altogether and makes them seem like an unnamed threat to make clear sides between the UK and the EU. Reception Theory is used with newspaper outlets and their political leaning, because the chances are a person isn’t going to by a newspaper that they do not agree with, but the preferred reading to this text is still the right wing (mainly Tories) who wanted Brexit to happen which the Daily Mail agree with.

The second story covers something very different with a much bigger threshold, The Mirror covers the story of 9/11 and how it shaped the way to the Iraq war in the early 2000’s. The story does not involve nor care about politics because it enforces the idea of “them” and “us” with an actual sense of unification unlike the first paper since this was a terrorist attack on the western world and the life that we live. The cover shows pictures of George Bush who was the president at the time of 9/11 and mentions of the US since that is where the attack took place, showing a lot of reference to elite nations and elite persons. “War” is the focus of the story showing how the US along with the UK will go to war to defend the Western world and lifestyle with also mentions of Tony Blair (the UK Prime Minister) backing him up showing how politics does not matter in this story and how this is a conflict rather than an argument. Since the attack happened in the US and the story is being covered in the UK with a 36-page record of the attack it shows how big the story actually was and how many people it affected. This story mainly covers the fact that this story can be interpreted mostly the same way by most people despite politics, the only thing that would change someone’s mind would either be what country and lifestyle they live and how much they agree that this was a cause to go to war for.

Reception theory, as mentioned before, is hard to cover with newspapers as you don’t usually buy a newspaper you don’t agree with but can still be used to when buying a newspaper to gauge someone’s political leaning. This leads nicely into cultivation theory as the more you read a certain newspaper the more likely you are to share views and ideologies with that paper which can affect your political leaning since you are absorbing all of their information. One big thing covered all across the world and in a lot of countries with strong politics is the binary opposition between the left and the right wing, saying how they both just want “the best” for their country but the idea of the best country varies a lot from person to person and shows how far left or right you are depending on who you side with. This opposition has been present for years and is also enforced by the rivalry between different parties like Tories and Labour or Democrat and Republican, one being red and the other being blue which suggest complete opposites just like their policies and usually the people that agree with them. This conflict between the two also makes newspapers usually pick a side and the side they cover ultimately comes down to their audience and who they are writing for.

Overall, different news stories can be interpreted as completely different stories as two different outlets can provide two sides of the story to two different people.