Read all About It - The Length of Words in Newspapers and Magazines
Read all About It - The Length of Words in Newspapers and Magazines
Introduction
In general terms, newspapers and magazines fall into two main broad categories, Quality and popular publications.
It creates two kinds of influence: societal influence, which is not for sale, and commercial influence, which is for sale.
Magazines and the national press are separated into three markets; quality press, popular press and mid-market newspapers. The consumption of each market is in relation to Social Grade, which is a classification system that separates people according to their career and income; A (upper professional); B (lower professional); C1 (routine clerical); C2 (skilled manual); D (unskilled manual); E (economically inactive). Using this system the broadsheet titles (or quality press) have most of their readers in the A and B categories with hardly any of the others consuming their newspapers. C1, C2, D and E are more consumers of popular press, proving that readership of quality press belongs to upper and middle classes whereas the working class prefer popular press.
The consequence of this social division is that both Newspapers and Magazines categories operate very differently in order to maximise profit. The popular press are very much sales orientated and are not interested in who buys their newspapers. As a result, the structure, style, language and wordings are at the simplest format as possible to maximise consumption. The quality press and magazines, however, relies heavily on advertising as its main income and must target itself at the upper and middle classes in order to keep advertisers or potential advertisers interested, with the structure, style, language and wordings with technical terms, all of higher intelligence format which can be understood by their target audience.
Having these conflicts of interest between the two markets means that the content and length of words of the newspapers and magazines in these two categories are very different.
There are many different newspapers; they range from tabloid papers to the broadsheet papers. The tabloids are a lighter read to the more involving descriptive broadsheet papers. Different newspapers are written to suit these preferences.
As the popular press relies on sales, it must target itself at the largest group, ensuring that the content interests the masses. The wording used is less profound and therefore more easily understood and more "easier" read than a broadsheet paper.
The quality press, on the other hand, features politics and economics and is targeted at the upper and middle classes, more of a minority, but with more money to spend. Quality press, as a result, does not have to take such an interest in circulation and sales.
Aim:
In this investigation I aim to investigate the length of words in newspapers and magazines - using the same story line that has been reported.
Objectives
.To collect data on the number of letters per word in four publications.
2.To present data in a meaningful way
3.To interpret and analyse results and diagrams
4.To draw conclusions on analysis, state whether the prediction is correct.
Method
To do it I have decided that the best way would be to get an identical story line that has been reported in the ...
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Aim:
In this investigation I aim to investigate the length of words in newspapers and magazines - using the same story line that has been reported.
Objectives
.To collect data on the number of letters per word in four publications.
2.To present data in a meaningful way
3.To interpret and analyse results and diagrams
4.To draw conclusions on analysis, state whether the prediction is correct.
Method
To do it I have decided that the best way would be to get an identical story line that has been reported in the four publications. The topic means that I will need to compare newspapers and magazines. Because Newspapers fall into two main broad categories - the Broad sheets and the popular press, I have decided to compare a topical issue that is bound to be reported in the two and I have chosen the Financial Times newspaper and the Sun.
I shall then wait for the news to be reported in 2 weekly magazines - HM Treasury Weekly and Reuters, and then begin my investigations by counting up the first 100 words in each publication and then investigate the length of words in this sample.
Hypothesis / Prediction:
Using the Social Grade classification system that separates people according to their career and income, I predict that in The sun the words will be very short, hence easier to read by the majority C2, D and E readers.
The broadsheets/quality press are more educational and I predict that these will have more letters on average per word than a tabloid paper.The Times will have the longest words - typically read by fewer readers within Class A and Class B.
Magazines are usually targeted at specific target groups and they depend a lot on advertising. I can thus predict that the words in the magazines will be longer than in the newspapers because they will be using a lot of longer technical buzzwords.
Articles Chosen: Gordon Brown Pre Budget Speech - Friday December 3 2004.
Data Analysis
I will record my results using a tally chart. I will then include the Frequencies and Cumulative Frequencies. I will also calculate the mode, median and estimated mean of each publication. Finally, I will translate the date in a cumulative frequency polygon on a graph paper for visual impact.
The median Value is the number in the middle. When the frequency numbers are placed in order of magnitude, the middle number is the median. For more accuracy, it can be worked out by the formula (n+1) /2nd value.
We add the numbers within the frequency (n) + 1 divided by 2. The corresponding value will give us the median value.
HM Treasury Weekly (X) 12+1 = 13/2 = 6.5th value is 8
Reuters Weekly (X) 11+1 = 12/2 = 6th value is 8
Financial Times Newspaper (X) 13+1 = 14/2 = 7th value is 10
The Sun Newspaper (X) 11+1 = 12/2 = 6th value is 8
Using the cumulative frequency curve, "n" is the cumulative frequency. Therefore the median is the value we get when divided by 2.
On the curve, we find this value on the y-axis which is labelled cumulative frequency. The corresponding "x" value is an estimation of the median.
HM Treasury Weekly (X) 100/2 = 50th
Reuters Weekly (X) 100/2 = 50th
Financial Times Newspaper (X) 100/2 = 50th
The Sun Newspaper (X) 100/2 = 50th
Modal Value
This is the most frequently observed value in a set of data. A set of data can have more than one mode. The mode does not necessarily give much indication of of a data's sets centre. However, it is oftem close to the mean and median, and will be so if the data has a normal or near normal distribution. The mode values for the 4 publications are as follows:
HM Treasury Weekly (X) 1, 2, 8, 18
Reuters Weekly (X) 6
Financial Times Newspaper (X) 1, 12
The Sun Newspaper (X) 2, 7, 12
Estimated Mean
The estimated mean (average) number of letters per word was found this by dividing the fx column (frequency multiplied by letters per word) by the words sampled.
HM Treasury Weekly (X) 490/100 = 4.9 the extreme figures in this set (1-18)
Reuters Weekly (X) 477/100 = 4.77 the extreme figures in this set (1-22)
Financial Times Newspaper (X) 554/100 = 5.54 the extreme figures in this set (1-15)
The Sun Newspaper (X) 472/100 = 4.72 the extreme figures in this set (1-21)
The extremes in the set of means distorts the values. As a result, it will be best to calculate using the inter quartile ranges. The interquartile range is another measure of dispersion and is found by subtracting the lower quartile from the upper quartile. It eliminates extreme values and bases its measure of dispersion on the middle half of the data.
Quartiles
If we divide the a cumulative frequency curves into quarters, the value at the lower quarter is reffered to as the lower quartile, the value at the middle gives the median and the value at the upper quarter is the upper quartile.
The lower quartile is (n+1)/4th value, "n" being the cumulative frequency and the upper quartile is the 3(n+1)/4th value. Having used the same number of words on all our 4 samples, the cumulative frequency all add up to 100. as a result, estimating the interquartile ranges will be simualr for all 4 samples.
The lower quartile is (n+1)/4th = (100=1)/4 = 101/4 = 25.25
The upper quartile is 3(n+1)/4th = 3(100+1)/4 = 3(101)/4 = 303/4 = 75.75. The difference between these two is the interquartile range (IQR) = 50.50
Frequency Distribution of Data
It is important to know about the results as a whole. It will be importamt to know whether they are all truely close to the average or whether thay are all spread out.
The frequency polygon of a frequency distribution is a simple line graph joining the midpoints of the bars of a histogram. The midpoint of each class is plotte against the frequency for each class of data within the set. s all show similar distribution.
Six diagrams are presented on a graphs.
Histograms on the same graph showing the lenghts of Words in the 4 publication illustrates the grouped frequency distribution of all 4 publications for visual impact.
Frequency Polygons on the same graph diagram, showing all 4 publications together.
4 separate diagrams, showing both histogram and cumulative frequency of each publication separately.
Interpretation of Data
Publication
Mean
Median
Mode
HM Treasury Weekly (X)
4.9
8
1, 2, 8, 18
Reuters Weekly (X)
4.77
8
6
Financial Times Newspaper (X)
5.54
0
1, 12
The Sun Newspaper (X)
4.72
8
2, 7, 12
The mean values are clearly in line with my predictions.
HM Treasury Weekly 4.9, Reuters Weekly 4.77, Financial Times Newspaper 5.54 and the Sun Newspaper clearly at the lowest at 4.72.
I had to use a formula to calculate the median value. Looking at the set of frequency numbers, all the medians coincided with the calculated value except the Sun Newspaper. This had a median of 7, but on using the formula, I had a more accurate value of 8.
By looking at the results table I can quite clearly see that my prediction was correct in the way that the words in The Sun, tabloid, is shorter than the Financial Times - broadsheet, has the longest words 10.
But I would have expected the magazines to be with median values slightly higher than the Sun. The both had median values of 8.
The mode values are interpreted to mean for every word picked at random that has been published in the HM Treasury Weekly, a good guess will be that the word will be 1, 2, 8 or 18 .
Reuters Weekly is 6, the Financial Times Newspaper has two modal values 1& 12 and the Sun Newspaper has 3 mode values, 2, 7 & 12.
HM Treasury Weekly gave the best result as 8 appeared in both the median and mode results.
Evaluation
My results were, I think, reasonably fair and accurate. However, I only recorded my results from the papers on one day and I only used one broadsheet and one tabloid. For my results to be truly accurate I would have needed to record my results over a much longer period of time, and from several different tabloids and several different broadsheets.
To get a even higher degree of for my investigation the only way I could do that is by taking a larger sample of each newspaper.
Only a small sample has been taken for my investigations. If there was more time, a larger, wider investigation by including 4 other newspapers could have been made. I could have investigated other newspapers. I could also have investigated on the size of photographs or pictures that were in the papers, to see if there was a correlation between the size and number of pictures to the size of the words.
Having used the same number of words on all our 4 samples, the cumulative frequency all gave the same result. The grouped frequency polygon of all 4 publications on the same diagram show show quite similar frequency distribition.
I would have preferred to chose my sample by selecting the first 5 paragraphs as well to compare the interquartile ranges more accurately.
Additionally, I would have investigated the main headline news story of the 4 publications reported on a particular date - making the story line date specific only rather than date specific and story line specific.
As regards the mearsures of dispersion, I would have calculated the standard diviation in addition to the frequency polygon.
Conclusion
Using the mean calculations, the values, are clearly in line with my predictions. HM Treasury Weekly 4.9, Reuters Weekly 4.77, Financial Times Newspaper 5.54 and the Sun Newspaper clearly at the lowest at 4.72.
The results suggest that the quality tabliod press - The Financial Times and the magazines have more letters per word on average than the popular press newspaper - The Sun.
To conclude, most of my hypotheses were correct - broadsheets do, on average, use long words. Tabloid newspapers do, generally contain shorter words than broadsheets.
Being professional magazines, the HM Treasury Weekly and the Reuters weekly both used technical buzzwords targeted at their marget audience and thus used more word than the Sun newspaper.
Edward GCSE Maths 13th December 2004