AQA A-Level Media Studies - The Daily Mail

Headline analysis

Elite people - Kemi Badenoch

Trying to continue the rhetoric of BBC apparently being too left-wing

By supporting Tory party it matches TDM’s target audience as well as likely matching the audience’s view on Israel and the genocide in Gaza

Mentions “license fee payers” - trying to involve the readers as victims. The older audience of TDM are also more likely to be paying for TV license’s (the resigned)

The quote makes it seem as if BBC directly paid Hamas - sensationalist headline - what actually happened was that a 3rd party production company sent a small sum of money to a young boy’s mum, who’s father is the “Deputy Agriculture Minister”. The young boy was interviewed as part of the film - hence the money

Other headline analysis

Air fryer diet - appeals to readers personal identity - part of the ‘inspire’ section. The picture of assumably a woman with stereotypically pink text and mentions of ozempic make it seem to be aimed at women. It exploits the western beauty standard. Mentions of ‘ozempic’ links to how popular it’s been within celebrity cirlces and gossips with fans trying to copy and look just like them

Lily James - Famous and known for fashion. It appeals to entertainment and escapism as well as matching with the tabloid presentation

QR Code in top right - shows TDM’s technological convergence

Aim of the publication

“to cater to an increasingly curious and literate public in an age of innovation” and “to deliver bright, invigorating news into millions of homes”

Print statistics/demographics (2024)

2 in 5 readers say the paper challenges their view on things

1.87m daily readership

2.73m Saturday readership

53% of readers are female

59 is the average age

63% are ABC1

79% are homeowners

MailOnline and social media statistics (2024)

1.2bn monthly page views and an average of 40 page views per day per user

TikTok - 14m followers - average age of 28 - 33% male - 67% female

Instagram - 1.6m followers - average age of 33 - 43% male - 57% female

Intentions/goals

“in touch with the hearts and minds of Middle England” “concerns, hopes and lifestyles of this powerful audience”

Original owner of the publication described the target audience as “people who liked to think they earned £1,000 a year” - the readers are full of themselves

Is a tabloid so lots of sensationalist headlines to sell more copies - wikipedia even banned TDM from being used as a source on articles

Psychographics

The succeeder (“powerful audience”)

Resigned - a lot of content focused around the royal family and celebrity gossip with a lot of traditonal and conservative views - matching the older avg audience age of 59

Blumler and Katz - Uses and Gratifications

Surveillance - news, stories, gossip etc.

Personal identity - sections appealing to identity like health, sports and travel

Personal relationships - well known returning columnists and an online comment section

Diversion - short comic strips, crosswords etc.

Curran and Seaton

Owned by huge conglomerate so is not pushing any stories or opinions that break the status quo and is focused on what earns the most profits

Uses sensationalist headlines to deliberately anger readers as they are more likely to read and purchase the paper

Gerbner and Cultivation Theory

Repetitive and regular consumption of a certain perspective are likely to make the audience see the world this way too. Publications can frame stories from different perspectives altering how readers perceive the story

It can also be argued that it’s the audience themselves that influence the papers’ perspective - publications have to cater to their audience and so are likely going to have to have a similar perspective to the audience

It could be a balance between the publication and the audiences perspectives too - with audiences now being able to interact with the publication online it could allow the audience to influence the publication in some way (Shirky)

Regulation

Regulated by IPSO - with common complaints being that it’s not powerful enough, rarely makes any significant punishments and is run by people within the industry

One example of IPSO failing - An article in 2023 reporting on the “Synthesis Report” about the environment and the effects of climate change

TDM headlined it “climate hysteria” and downplayed the original report by saying it used “hysterical language” and talked about “prophecies of catastrophe” - the original report was nothing close to hysteria

TDM also falsely called the writers “the green lobby” - IPSO chose to do nothing about this

Livingstone and Lunt - Regulation is hard

TDM’s massively popular online website makes it hard to regulate - easily accessible by anyone with internet access and potentially content unsuitable for younger audiences

There’s no way to verify audience age and TDM certainly won’t ever attempt to do that

Ownership

Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) owns DMG Media which then own Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday etc.

Owned by Viscount Rothermere - chairman and controlling shareholder - offshore holdings and trusts - previous Tory party supporter - nepo baby

Funding

Similar to TG - has options to purchase adverts in phhysical print spaces

No options for donations/patrons - funded by a conglomerate and shareholders

MailOnline has a monthly £1.99 subscription a month for the first year of no advert reading

Hesmondhalgh - Cultural Industries

Horizontal integration/technological convergence - one of the early adopters of an online edition. In this current age the MailOnline is receiving much more attention and success than print editions

Also horizontally integration by having papers published under different names about different things