Part 1
The general belief is that broadsheet newspapers such as 'The Times' are aimed at the higher earning. More intelligent reader and so, you would expect a higher quality of English used, therefore longer words and sentences. Tabloid newspapers are supposedly aimed at the lower earning, less intelligent reader and so the quality of English used wouldn't be as good as that found in a broadsheet, so the length of words and sentences one would assume would be smaller. To find out whether this is true I will count Roughly 200 words from each paper, 80 words taken from the same news story, 60 from the same sports report and 60 taken from the general section of the newspaper. I will do this to give an even analysis of each newspaper but so that each newspaper is treated like the other, making it fair.
Results (Broadsheet)-
Inter-quartile Range= 7-2= 5
Results (Tabloid)-
Inter-quartile Range- 5-2= 3
Well from the results, I can conclude that, if a person is more intelligent than someone because the newspaper has longer words in it, then yes people who read broadsheets are 0.42 of a word more intelligent. The data shows that there are more ‘long’ words in a broadsheet than in a tabloid, but this does not necessarily mean that broadsheet readers are of a higher intelligence? No, to realistically prove that I would need to design a test for a cross section of readers e.g. and IQ test, which isn’t practical. But, having said that, it is fair to say that broadsheet newspapers are aimed at more intelligent people. Even though there is only a 0.37 word length difference, the ideas of the newspapers are contrasting, which maths statistics cannot show.
Part 2
Another theory is that people with a higher intelligence than others, read newspapers that have longer sentences. My hypothesis is that tabloid newspapers will have shorter sentences than broadsheets. To find out whether this is true, I will count the sentence length of 190 sentences for a broadsheet and a tabloid newspaper. To make the test fair, I will use more than one article in each newspaper.
Results -
Tabloid Paper- 2295 Words from 114 sentences at an average of 17.5 words per sentence.
Inter-Quartile Range= 11-6 OR 15-10 = 5
Broadsheet Paper- 2653 Words from 112 sentences at an average of 18.6 words per sentence.
Inter-Quartile Range= 16-6 OR 20-10 = 10
As you can see from the results, the average length of a sentence was higher for a broadsheet by 1 than in a tabloid – but does this necessarily mean that broadsheet readers are more intelligent than tabloid readers. I think that the most important statistic is the inter-quartile range. I think that this gives a better reflection of how clever the reader is because the amount of words in a sentence has not much to do with what type of reader it’s aimed at. For instance, if a poem is written and it is at a tense moment, the writer would usually put down short, snappy sentences to add to the effect and entice the reader, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the reader is more intelligent than someone who reads a passage with long, flowing sentences. I think that the range of sentence lengths is far more important because I think it takes more thought to read and understand a newspaper with a greater range of sentence lengths that it does one that is all made up of simple sentences. Obviously every sentence isn’t going to be 2 words long, nor is it going to be 100+ as that would be hard to read and write. But the range of sentence lengths gives us a better idea, as it shows us how many sentences would be considered ‘short’ and how many considered ‘long’, therefore letting us compare a tabloid and broadsheet. We can see that the broadsheet has a wider range of sentences, which shows that the writer is writing in a more interesting style that takes more though and knowledge to read and understand.
Part 3
I think that people with more intelligence will read broadsheet newspapers that have a higher ratio of writing to illustrations per article. To see whether this is true I will find the area of a page, then work out the area that the pictures take up, and from that work out the percentage of the page that the pictures take up. If I’m right, tabloid newspapers will have a higher proportion of pictures to writing than a broadsheet will have.
Number of pictures in 20 pages –
The echo
Amount of paper covered by pictures
(total page size = 90cm²)
4 1 3
5 4 6 7 8 where 4 | 3 = 43cm²
6 0 2 4 4 4 6
7 1 3 3 8 8
8 1 9
Average = ∑fa / ∑f
1232 / 20 = 61.6 cm²
Number of pictures in 20 pages
The Times
Amount of page covered by pictures (cm²)-
(total page size = 90cm²)
0 0
3 4 9
4 5 7 8
5 0 3 8 8 8 8 9
6 1 4 7 9
7 0 1 2
Average = ∑fa / ∑f
1139 / 20 = 56.95cm²
Mode = 58
Median = 58
Range = 72-0 = 72
As you can see above, the average space taken up on a tabloid page is 61.6 cm², whereas for a broadsheet it is 56.95cm². This does prove my hypothesis that “I think that people with more intelligence will read broadsheet newspapers that have a higher ratio of writing to illustrations per article”. Well almost. It does prove that the ratio of writing to illustrations is greater in broadsheets, but like the other hypothesis’ it doesn’t necessarily prove that the people who read the broadsheets are more intelligent. But it doesn’t take into account what the pictures are showing, what story are they linked to, did that newspaper have a certain photographer on the story etc. It just tells us that, on average, there are more pictures in each article in a tabloid than in a broadsheet.
Conclusion
The results of my initial 2 hypotheses disproved my original hypothesis this led me believe that the original hypothesis was wrong but my last set of results threw that into questioning. I can’t fully determine whether broadsheet readers are actually more intelligent than tabloid readers unless I performed some sort of IQ test on a population sample. So I believe none of my evidence can conclusively prove or even disprove the original hypothesis. Data cannot prove whether a group of people are more intelligent than others because of what newspaper they read, it can just tell us about what it is in the paper, and what may indicate that the reader is more intelligent, but not as definite statements.
