OSP - The Voice

Language and contexts

Homepage

Go to the Voice homepage and answer the following:

1) What news website key conventions can you find on the Voice homepage?

Articles, minimalist design, navigation bar, logo, subscribe button

2) What are some of the items in the top menu bar and what does this tell you about the content, values and ideologies of the Voice?

News, Sport, Lifestyle, Entertainment, Competitions, Opinion, Faith

3) Look at the news stories on the Voice homepage. Pick two stories and explain why they might appeal to the Voice's target audience. 

"Making Black history today: the leaders shaping innovation in public health"
Appeals to the Voice's target audience as they'd want to see other black people succeeding and doing good for the world.

"Anne Mensah, Kanya King, among the winners at this years Black British Business Awards"
Similar to first one; showcases and highlights the success of black people

4) How is narrative used to encourage audience engagement with the Voice? Apply narrative theories (e.g. Todorov equilibrium or Barthes’ enigma codes) and make specific reference to stories on the homepage and how they encourage audiences to click through to them.

Narrative is used to encourage audience engagement with the Voice by implementing narrative into its articles. If we apply Todorov's equilibrium theory, their news stories typically have equilibrium that gets broken, and then a new equilibrium is formed at the end.


Lifestyle section

Now analyse the Lifestyle section of the Voice and answer the following:


1) What are the items in the sub-menu bar for the Lifestyle section and what does this suggest about the Voice audience?

Fashion & Beauty, Food, Health & Wellbeing, Relationships and Travel.

This suggests the average audience member of the Voice is a healthy, hardworking person.

2) What are the main stories in the Lifestyle section currently?

"Honestly, it's Giving Blood Drive", "Befriending someone on death row", "Nala's Baby goes from strength to strength", and "Sporting Equals launch conversation around women's health".

3) Do the sections and stories in the Voice Lifestyle section challenge or reinforce black stereotypes in British media?

I don't really see anything reinforced or challenged here. The stories featured here do not seem that tied to race or ethnicity.

4) Choose two stories featured in the Lifestyle section – how do they reflect the values and ideologies of the Voice?

"Honestly it's Giving Blood Drive" and "Nala's Baby goes from strength to strength". They reflect the values and ideologies of the Voice by showcasing success and achievement from black people.


Feature focus

1) Read this Voice opinion piece on black representation in the tech industry. How does this piece reflect the values and ideologies of The Voice?

It reflects the values and ideologies of the Voice as again, it showcases success and achievement from black people. This helps in allowing black people to have a voice and lets them have a better representation overall.

2) Read this feature on The Black Pound campaign. How does this piece reflect the values and ideologies of The Voice?

It reflects the values and ideologies of the Voice as it attempts to bring light to struggling black business owners and helps them get the support they deserve. 

3) Read this Voice news story on Grenfell tower and Doreen Lawrence. How might this story reflect the Voice’s values and ideologies? What do the comments below suggest about how readers responded to the article? Can you link this to Gilroy’s work on the ‘Black Atlantic’ identity?

This reflects the Voice's values and ideologies as they aim to reduce bias and racism against black people in the media. The comments below have made readers upset as the content was largely disrespectful.


Social and cultural contexts - 40 Year of Black British Lives

Read this extract from The Voice: 40 Years of Black British Lives on rapper Swiss creating Black Pound Day (you'll need your Greenford Google login to access the document). Answer the following questions:


1) What is Black Pound Day?

Black Pound Day is an event focused at celebrating black-owned businesses and giving the black community a financial and emotional boost.

2) How did Black Pound Day utilise social media to generate coverage and support? 

They utilized social media to generate coverage and support by having people share the news around and share their experiences.

3) How do events such as Black Pound Day and the Powerlist Black Excellence Awards link to wider social, cultural and economic contexts regarding power in British society?  

It links to wider social, cultural and economic contexts regarding power as typically, British society is largely dominated by white-owned corporations; these events give the chance for black-business owners to shine and stand out against the fierce competition.


Audience

1) Who do you think is the target audience for the Voice website? Consider demographics and psychographics.

I believe the target audience for the Voice website would either be middle-class audiences or the "Aspirer". This is because the Voice regularly focuses on ordinary everyday things and also the achievement and success of the black community.

2) What audience pleasures are provided by the Voice website? Apply media theory here such as Blumler and Katz (Uses & Gratifications).

Audience pleasures include Information and Education (because the Voice showcases world events and achievements), and Entertainment (because the Voice showcases media-related stories and such).

3) Give examples of sections or content from the website that tells you this is aimed at a specialised or niche audience.

Top tabs - specialised audience (genres like news, sport, lifestyle, etc.)

Voice 40 years book - niche audience 

4) Studying the themes of politics, history and racism that feature in some of the Voice’s content, why might this resonate with the Voice’s British target audience?

This may resonate with the Voice's British target audience considering the history of the country. For example, the 1981 Brixton riot.

5) Can you find any examples of content on the Voice website created or driven by the audience or citizen journalism? How does this reflect Clay Shirky’s work on the ‘end of audience’ and the era of ‘mass amateurisation’?

The more social media and celebrity oriented articles, and the addition of comments - this reflects the "end of audience" theory seeing as audiences aren't controlled/chained by one big collective audience anymore, and are free to document and create media themselves.


Representations

1) How is the audience positioned to respond to representations in the Voice website?

The audience is positioned to respond to them in a good way.

2) Are representations in the Voice an example of Gilroy’s concept of “double consciousness” NOT applying?

Yes, as the Voice and its articles are purely written by and for the black-community; they are not living through other people's eyes.

3) What kind of black British identity is promoted on the Voice website? Can you find any examples of Gilroy’s “liquidity of culture” or “unruly multiculturalism” here?

The kind of black British identity promoted by the Voice is the one that is hardworking and achieving. 

4) Applying Stuart Hall’s constructivist approach to representations, how might different audiences interpret the representations of black Britons in the Voice?

Different audiences might interpret the representations differently; a oppositional reading would be that the representations of black Britons here are biased.

5) Do you notice any other interesting representations in the Voice website? For example, representations or people, places or groups (e.g. gender, age, Britishness, other countries etc.)

Gender is represented in such a way here too, as there's lots of articles dedicated to women-only achievements and awards.


Industries

1) Read this Guardian report on the death of the original founder of the Voice. What does this tell you about the original values and ideologies behind the Voice brand? 


2) Read this history of the Voice’s rivals and the struggles the Voice faced back in 2001. What issues raised in the article are still relevant today? 


3) The Voice is now published by GV Media Group, a subsidiary of the Jamaican Gleaner company. What other media brands do the Gleaner company own and why might they be interested in owning the Voice? You'll need to research this using Google/Wikipedia or look at this Guardian article when Gleaner first acquired The Voice.


4) How does the Voice website make money?


5) What adverts or promotions can you find on the Voice website? Are the adverts based on the user’s ‘cookies’ or fixed adverts? What do these adverts tell you about the level of technology and sophistication of the Voice’s website?


6) Is there an element of public service to the Voice’s role in British media or is it simply a vehicle to make profit?


7) What examples of technological convergence can you find on the Voice website – e.g. video or audio content?


8) How has the growth of digital distribution through the internet changed the potential for niche products like the Voice?


9) Analyse The Voice’s Twitter feed. How does this contrast with other Twitter feeds you have studied (such as Taylor Swift)? Are there examples of ‘clickbait’ or does the Voice have a different feel?


10) Study a selection of videos from The Voice’s YouTube channel. What are the production values of their video content?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Industries - Ownership + Control

Image
Media conglomerate research 1) Type up your research notes from the lesson - what did you find out about your allocated media conglomerate? Selection of companies: Alphabet, The Walt Disney Company, National Amusements, Meta, News Corp, Time Warner, Comcast. If you were absent or didn't have time in the lesson to make these notes, research any one of the companies above and find examples of all the terminology outlined in the notes at the start of this blogpost. 2) Do you agree that governments should prevent media conglomerates from becoming too dominant? Write an argument that looks at both sides of this debate. On one hand, yes. Media conglomerates should be stopped from becoming too powerful, as the lack of competition would make things unfair for the market. Government intervention would probably be the best in order to prevent a monopoly. On the other hand, this would directly conflict with the idea of a "free market". The idea that companies and/or individuals deci...
Read more

Magazine Practical

Image
Magazine Research 1) 2) Chosen brand: Edge A common theme I'm noticing between these 3 of these front  covers is their heavy use of sans serif typography. I assume they've done this on purpose considering gaming is more of a recent medium; it first became popularized around 20-30 years ago, compared to TV or movies, which have been around for far, far longer. Gaming is seen as more of a "futuristic" kind of entertainment (as reinforced with their slogan, "The Future of Interactive Entertainment"), with its interactivity to audiences and its increasingly high quality graphics. Additionally, another theme I've noticed is the fact that they always seem to feature a render or drawing of a character of the game on the front cover; this is most likely a stand-in for a model, seeing as gaming obviously is digital. It's going for traditional magazine codes and conventions while re-iterating to the audience that it's different and more modern compared to ...
Read more

Magazine Practical LR

Image
1) Add your finished magazine cover as a JPEG image. 2) Type up your feedback from your teacher. If you've received this by email, you can copy and paste it across - WWW and EBI. You don't need to include a mark or grade if you don't want to. Mark out of 15 for Media Language: 13 Estimated A Level coursework grade: A WWW: This is top level production work – the final product is so impressive and absolutely fits in alongside professional examples. The hand drawn, digitally coloured central image is fantastic – it bodes brilliantly for the coursework next year. Font and typography is also at a professional standard so you’ve got the basis of a top grade piece of work here. The challenge now is to make sure we can recreate this level in the real coursework next year. EBI: I’d largely agree with your evaluation and you are right to suggest it is very good quality work. In terms of pushing up towards full marks, you need to make sure text is legible over the image which I’d say ...
Read more