Media Piece Idea

To write a newspaper article in the style of  'The Sun Newspaper' about the School Rock Concert on the 18th February

Articles I'm Using

SUN ARTICLE HYPERLINK

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3740546/Cops-battle-new-riots-across-London.html

TELEGRAPH HYPERLINK

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8690199/London-riots-police-lose-battle-as-lawlessness-erupts.html

The Sun

The Sun is a tabloid newspaper, making it traditionally smaller than a broadsheet and includes ‘tabloid journalism’. From researching on the internet I found that tabloid journalism focuses on scandal, such as celebrity gossip, television presenters, thrilling crime stories, football and sex and that this is what the Sun follows. This is not the case for all tabloid newspapers. The Independent for example is a British morning newspaper originating as a broadsheet in 1986 but later becoming a tabloid newspaper in 2003, calling itself a compact newspaper. According to Wikipedia the Independent is left-wing, however it does not tie itself to any particular party.

The Sun newspaper fits under the stereotypical opinion of a tabloid newspaper and Wikipedia says‘‘The Sun has been involved in a number of controversies in its history, including its coverage of the Hillsborough football stadium disaster, falsely accusing Elton John of having had sexual relationships with rent boys, and its attitude towards mental health issues and homosexuality.’’ whilst internet bloggers  from Yahoo view The Sun to be read by ‘’the white van man’’ ‘’torie chavs’’ and ‘’idiots’’. Taking the article‘Cops Battle Riots Across London’ by Laura Caroe the grammar is basic. Simple demonstrative sentences are used which are single independent clauses, such as ‘acting Scotland Yard Commissioner Tim Goodwin has asked the public to clear London’s streets’ and ‘more rampages broke out in Brixton last night’. The phonological features of rhythm and alliteration feature heavily in this article. ‘’Huge fires are burning out of control in Croydon, South London, with police struggling to maintain control.’’ There is alliteration with ‘control’, ‘Croydon’ and ‘control’ and there is a rhythm to the phrase ‘control in Croydon’. I think that this use of phonology links to sociolinguistics, the sociolinguistics used by The Sun fit with the social group whom read The Sun. It is relevant towards its target audience.

The Sun’s report on the London riots is dramatic with emotive language, high levels of bright graphology, slang and pragmatics. There are 19 photos in its 1,203 word article, each followed by a caption with highly emotive and expressive language such as ‘terrifying’, ‘inferno’, ‘destruction’ and ‘blaze’. Each word is followed by an ellipsis then a statement, such as with ‘blaze … remains of torched car in Hackney’. This is as though it is spoken discourse. The ellipsis adds a pause to the reading which makes the statement seem bolder and more significant, again adding drama to the article and a kind of thrill which The Sun seeks to give to its audience.

A use of slang gives the article an informal feel, instead of using ‘police’ the title includes ‘Cops’. Straight away this lowers the reading level. This simple language suggests that the audience is of this lower reader level which is what I expected to be included in The Sun. It is casual language and similar to what would be expected from a magazine. The title is in bold and is in sans serif. It is immediately next to a brightly coloured photograph which includes red and yellow colouring. This use of graphology grabs the reader’s attention and draws them in making them want to read the report.

The title is followed by two sub headings which both sum up what the article includes. ‘London’ is included in the first title, ‘Birmingham and Liverpool’ are included in the sub heading and in the subtitle ‘LONDON’ is repeated in upper case lettering. This will have been done to attract a wider variety of readers from different places as they are more likely to buy the paper if somewhere local to them, hence the mention of 3 differing places in the titles.

Methodology

To do my investigation I will be using articles from The Suns and The Telegraphs website. I will be collecting one report on the London Riots from each site. I have chosen these two newspapers as one is a tabloid and one a broadsheet so I expect there to be significant amount of details to analyse, compare and contrast.

I intend to make a study sheet so they can be compared easily, however I will use the internet sites to collect my data for the two articles. The articles will be ones which were written at a similar time to make sure that they have the same amount of occurrences to report on. I will look at and analyse a current edition of The Sun and of The Telegraph looking at similar and dissimilar features of language such as:

                Register – If the language is appropriate for the audience. Formal, political, teen mag.

Pragmatics - Social conventions, context, levels of formality social conventions

Graphology – The way it looks with images, serif, sans serif and layout

I have chosen ‘Cops Battle Riots Across London’ by Laura Caroe written on August 9^th 2011 from The Sun and ‘London Riots: police lose battle as lawlessness erupts’ by Mark Hughes and Tom Whitehead written on August 8^th 2011 from The Telegraph. The Sun being a tabloid has an audience of stereotypically less educated people with a lower level reading ability who are less interested in politics, finance, business and economy whilst The Telegraph is a broadsheet newspaper stereotypically read by an audience with a higher level reading ability who are right-winged Torie supporters. 

Introduction

Introduction

Riots began in London, August 2011 in Tottenham, as protests began after police shot dead a local man. The riots spread through England and spanned over several days and nights. In this investigation I am going to look at the frameworks of language used from two different newspaper articles reporting on the London Riots. The newspapers I am going to use are going to be The Sun and The Telegraph. I am going to look at and compare the register, semantics, audience and purpose used in both these papers.

By comparing articles from these two newspapers I expect to find a large difference between the register, audience and pragmatics. I think that the lexical field and purpose however to be similar as both papers are covering the same topic and will have a similar purpose, to inform, perhaps entertain and report events. I think that the register of the Telegraph will be formal whilst The Sun, which  is generally read by lower class who are more interested in gossip than politics or business and finance, often not having much of an interest  in economic current events, to have an informal register with simple language and the use of slang

Methodology

Really stuck at how to get my methodology to more than a couple of sentences...
I'm using two articles from two websites.....this is what i have so far. 

To do my investigation I will be using articles from the newspapers website, collecting one report on the London Riots from each site. They will be ones which were written at a similar time to make sure that they have the same amount of occurrences to report on.

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Introduction

For this investigation I am going to look at the frameworks of language used from two different newspaper articles reporting on the London Riots, August 2011. The newspapers I am going to use are going to be The Sun and The Telegraph. I am going to look at and compare the register, semantics, audience and purpose used in both these papers. By comparing articles from these two newspapers I expect to find a large difference between the register, audience and pragmatics. I think that the lexical field and purpose however to be similar as both papers are covering the same topic and will have a similar purpose, to inform, perhaps entertain and report events. I think that the register of the Telegraph will be formal as it is stereotypically read by an audience with a higher reader level who are high middle class or upper class tory supporters. The Sun is generally read by lower class readers who are more interested in gossip than politics or business and finance, often not having much of an interest  in economic current events hence I expect the register to be informal and the language to be simpler and with the use of slang.