Newspapers: Daily Mail & Mail Online CSP

 Daily Mail and Mail Online CSP: Blog tasks

Work through the following tasks to complete your case study on the Daily Mail and Mail Online.

Daily Mail and Mail Online analysis 

Use your own purchased copy or our scanned copy of the Brexit edition from January 2020, plus the notable front pages above, to answer the following questions - bullet points/note form is fine.

1) What are the most significant front-page headlines seen in the Daily Mail in recent years?

"Enemies of the people" The Daily Mail deliberately singling out three judges for their actions against Britain leaving the EU. Quite an aggressive front page, which received a decent amount of complaints, but nothing was ever done.

2) Ideology and audience: What ideologies are present in the Daily Mail? Is the audience positioned to respond to stories in a certain way?

The Daily Mail is politically very far right on the political scale. They represent economically and socially conservative views, whether that is backing Liz Truss's mini budget or putting on the front cover "Stop the boats"

3) How do the Daily Mail stories you have studied reflect British culture and society?

Very big on patriotism and what it means to be British. Howe, with Brexit, it came to the understanding of everyone that British society has recently been very divided. The split in ideology between the young and the old is very wide.

Now visit Mail Online and look at a few stories before answering these questions:

1) What are the top five stories? Are they examples of soft news or hard news? Are there any examples of clickbait that you can find?

Numerous examples of soft news. Most stories are clickbait. Mostly celebrity gossip or relationship examples, rarely will you see an example of hard news, which may reflect what the editor wants. Basically, the story with the most clicks.

2) To what extent do the stories you have found on MailOnline reflect the values and ideologies of the Daily Mail newspaper?

They are both socially and economically conservative, so not that different. They have a mixture of hard/soft news, but mostly soft news. 

3) Think about audience appeal and gratifications: why is MailOnline the most-read English language newspaper website in the world? How does it keep you on the site?

It is very addictive, the way the website is formatted. It seemly does end almost like TikTok but in a newspaper format. The stories specifically are highly entertaining and humorous.


Factsheet 175 - Case Study: The Daily Mail (Part 1)

Read Media Factsheet 175: Case Study: The Daily Mail (Part 1) and complete the following questions/tasks. Our Media Factsheet archive is on the Media Shared drive: M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets or online here (you'll need your Greenford Google login).

1) What news content generally features in the Daily Mail?

Celebrity drama. Sports news and immigration.

2) What is the Daily Mail’s mode of address? 

The mode of address is a method of creating a relationship between the addresser (producer) and the addressee (audience).

3) What techniques of persuasion does the Daily Mail use to attract and retain readers?

Daily Mail's mode of address is aimed at wom, so the language and discursive strategies are ones more likely to appeal to a preferred female audience. As such, the mode of address creates a relationship between the addresser (producers) and the addressee (readers).. A method used by the Daily Mail is the use of techniques of persuasion to establish a consensus in line with the

political and social ideologies. These techniques are subtle and will attempt to stir the emotions of the consumer to prompt consensus. These techniques are split into 3 areas:

4) What is the Daily Mail’s editorial stance?

The Mail’s political stance is traditionally Conservative, having supported the party in all recent general elections. The paper is also known for criticism of the Labor Party and the BBC.

5) Read this brilliant YouGov article on British newspapers and their political stance. Where does the Daily Mail fit in the overall picture of UK newspapers? 

Massively right-wing compared to the other UK newspapers.


Factsheet 177 - Case Study: The Daily Mail (Part 2)

Now read Media Factsheet 177: Case Study: The Daily Mail (Part 2) and complete the following questions/tasks. Our Media Factsheet archive is on the Media Shared drive: M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets or online here (you'll need your Greenford Google login).

1) How did the launch of the Daily Mail change the UK newspaper industry?

The Daily Mail employed shorter bite-size boxes of information, seen in the magazine-style digestss. This meant that news was presented in shorter articles with clear headlines.

2) What company owns the Daily Mail? What other newspapers, websites, and brands do they own?

The Daily Mail is owned by the British Media company DMGT (Daily Mail and General Trust plc) and “manages a balanced multinational portfolio of entrepreneurial companies. The company has also developed its B2B (business-to-business) information amongst many other things.

3) Between 1992 and 2018, the Daily Mail editor was Paul Dacre. What is Dacre’s ideological position and his view on the BBC?

Dacre is a conservative, so he is right-wing on the political spectrum. He sees the BBC as this dominant state sponsored news service that has crippled commercial radio and is distorting the free market for internet newspapers.

4) Why did Guardian journalist Tim Adams describe Dacre as the most dangerous man in Britain? What example stories does Adams refer to?

Tim Adams describes Dacre as the most dangerous man because he hcacanfluence millmillions ofcitizens with stories such as the stories that detail immigrants committing heinous crimes and highlights how they need to be deported. His ability to use the Daily Mail to rally a crowd against immigrants was why Tim Adams described him as dangerous.

5) How does the Daily Mail cover the issue of immigration? What representations are created in this coverage?

Daily Mail sees immigration as a complete threat to UK society. They believe that immigration is the cause of the rampant rise in crime

Factsheet 182 - Case Study: The Daily Mail (Part 3) Industrial Context

Finally, read Media Factsheet 182 - Case Study: The Daily Mail (Part 3) Industrial Context and complete the following questions/tasks. Our Media Factsheet archive is on the Media Shared drive: M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets or online here (you'll need your Greenford Google login).

1) What do Curran and Seaton suggest regarding the newspaper industry and society?

They argue that newspapers have to reflect the needs and desires (interests) of the reader in order to maintain circulation and readership. Curran and Seaton, taking a participatory approach, consider that anyone should be able to set up a newspaper and that newspapers should maintain a liberal ideology.

2) What does the factsheet suggest regarding newspaper ownership and influence over society?

The growth of the press as a mass medium was accompanied by increased concentration of ownership. 

3) Why did the Daily Mail invest heavily in developing MailOnline in the 2000s?

To captalize on the rapidly growing digital audience and expand and diversify different revenue streams.

4) How does MailOnline reflect the idea of newspapers as conversational?

It is very informal. Very emotive language and its very obsessive focus on celebrity culture and scandals.

5) How many stories and pictures are published on MailOnline?

Around 1,500 stories and a significant amount daily.

6) How does original MailOnline editor Martin Clarke explain the success of the website?

"Mail Onlines' entire success is built on the fact that we do our own thing" is what the editor for the MailOnline said.

7) How is the priority for stories on the homepage established on MailOnline?

What ever story has the most clicks is prioritized the most as said by the editor for the MailOnline. It is based on virality which breeds clickbait.

8) What is your view of ‘clicks’ driving the news agenda? Should we be worried that readers are now ‘in control of digital content’?

It could drastically reduce the quality of journalism which is terrible for the newspaper industry almost turning into a slop of clickbait stories it wont be pretty. However, it could be the new method for newspapers to survive in a dying industry a lot of revenue can be earned rather than print which is what the Daily Mail adopted.