Textual analysis and Critical Political Economy
Media Studies (COM1010) Assignment 2 (2000 Words) Mohamed Sidhrath 21813515 This essay will highlight the following news items based on textual analysis and critical, political economy. The news item addresses the issue related to war in Sri Lanka between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the Tamil tigers. An online news publication and video reports is compared in this essay. The video news report by Al Jazeer reported on 12th May "Concerns rise over Sri Lanka civilian deaths " and the news article published by CNN on May 5th "Sri Lankan president declares success over rebels " is more likely to give its readers with different opinions based on textual analysis as well as the critical, political economy. The video report shows concern towards the war and death of civilians, which a viewer will instantly get by the title itself and in depth after viewing the report and listening to the report saying that Tamil tigers using civilians as human shields and government attacking them. However the CNN report title seems to give another impression as it says the crisis is more successfully tackled which however doesn't seem to take into account the government's failure to provide civil safety due to war. As in textual analysis, there is no absolutely accurate or wrong answer. The readers based on the cultural background, general understanding of the
How is vaccination portrayed in the media?
How is vaccination portrayed in the media? The portrayal of vaccination in the media has always been a controversial issue. When a new vaccination program makes the news the mainstream media often find themselves accused of ignoring the evidence in favour of scaremongering reports or the distortion of facts and yet the media commonly counter with the argument that they are acting on respectable evidence and valid scientific studies. The matter is yet to, and may never be resolved. Many people will always believe newspaper reports containing scientific reports whilst others will remain sceptical. Within the subject of vaccination in the media new reports consistently emerge, often with controversial consequences, although some become a lot larger than others. This is not to say that alternative coverage does not exist. Certainly there are many purportedly more 'respectable' publications that would claim to show unbiased coverage and factual or statistical evidence but these are often incompatible with the more popular reporting from mainstream news and the tabloid press. When presented with this ongoing, contradictory reportage it might be difficult for someone to make a considered opinion, particularly if they have no prior knowledge of the science of vaccination or little understanding of media machinations. Whilst the public dialogue continues between tabloid journalists,
Select an aspect of the development of Magazines that you consider significant and evaluate your choice with appropriate examples.
Francesca Bellis MEP 112 Context Select an aspect of the development of Magazines that you consider significant and evaluate your choice with appropriate examples (2000 words) 'A picture is worth a thousand words'1 Photojournalism is described as a form of documentary photography, that tells a particular story, but in visual terms. A photojournalist's job is to document events as they happen. One of the fist pioneers of photojournalism was an English photographer; Roger Fenton who documented troops in the Crimean War, although now these are considered more as historical documents than photojournalism. Due to the technology of photographic equipment at the time the action of war was impossible to capture, and so the pictures were never actually published as journalism, instead woodcarvings of the original pictures were made. The Illustrated London News was the first magazine to include mainly images, with the first issue, published on the 14th May 1842; containing thirty-two woodcuts. The first edition included pictures of the war in Afghanistan, a train crash in France, a steam boat explosion in Canada and a fancy dress ball at Buckingham palace. However the pictures used were simply artists impressions of what happened, as no camera at the time could have captured action. Fig 1 shows what the front cover of the illustrated London news looked like around the time when
Overcoming Cultural Obstacles: the use of imagery and syntax for the creation of a connection with the reader
Overcoming Cultural Obstacles: the use of imagery and syntax for the creation of a connection with the reader Connection to one's intended audience is central to the conveying of one's message. It is only in this relationship that a writer or artist has with their audience that space for their literature or art is created. The authors of the literature I read this summer are presented with a sizable problem for these women are faced with the hardship of connecting with an audience that cannot in any normal circumstance understand or appreciate their writings due to the barriers presented by race, gender and language. These roadblocks came into existence during a time period known as the Enlightenment, an intellectual revolution in which the definition of self became determined through the comparison of one self with others and the world in which we live (Gay 59). During this movement the mental space in which all things not of oneself exist was created, this being "the other." The persistence of this ideology results in the limitations of thought on the behalf of western cultures in that all things foreign find themselves categorized and discarded. I was interested in investigating how the literary tools of imagery and syntax aid sub-continental female authors to overcome the label of being 'the other' in order to establish a necessary connection with their reader because
How successful was the Manchester Ship Canal before 1914
How successful was the Manchester Ship Canal before 1914? To understand why The Manchester Ship Canal could be considered successful before 1914, it must first be understood why Manchester needed another canal in the first place. The ship canal could be called a financial failure up to 1914 due to the escalating costs and rivalries between the Liverpool Docks and railway companies with Manchester itself. This essay will highlight the major points that led to the Manchester Ship canal becoming a success by 1914. During the 1800's there were several canals connecting Manchester to the surrounding area. From the Bridgwater canal, this was the first to be built to the Macclesfield canal one of the last to be built. They all connected Manchester to trade routes all over the country. Crucial to Manchester's success in the cotton trade was the import and export of cotton. The canals and later the railways that served Manchester and the surrounding area were crucial, bringing and taking goods by barge, to the docks at Liverpool. It was during the Great Depression in the late 1870s that things came to a head. During this worldwide depression, Manchester was going in to economic decline. Industries were failing, with factories and shops closing and a steady migration of people away from Manchester1. Like the Duke of Bridgwater before them, the local business men realised that the
Portfolio On Burroughs and Cut-Ups, Including Comments On My Own Cut-Ups
PORTFOLIO ON BURROUGHS AND CUT-UPS, INCLUDING COMMENTS ON MY OWN CUT-UPS CONTENTS Page 1--------------------------------- Title Page Page 2---------------------------------- Contents Pages 3-22----------------------------- Commentary on Cut-Ups and Burroughs and word count Page 23-------------------------------- Bibliography Page 24-------------------------------- Example of a 'Picture Letter' Pages 25-27--------------------------- Original Text used for Cut-Ups Pages28-31---------------------------- Examples of Experimentation with cut ups with various songs Pages 32-34--------------------------- My own Cut-Ups commented on in pages sixteen to nineteen (see reverse of pages thirty-two and thirty-three) My Cut-Up Experience Cut ups essentially began when Brion Gysin "sliced through a pile of newspapers...made a mosaic out of the strips of newspapers...when he read it he thought it was hilarious...for Burroughs...Gysin's cut-up newspapers switched on the electric light bulb over the cartoon character's head"1 What was essentially an amusing accident, tied in with old surrealist games, for Gysin, was, for Burroughs, something completely different; it was a way of escaping the traditional format of word layout and communication on paper. It introduced an element of unpredictability and put the words and their meanings into different perspectives. This idea had been
Critical analysis: Virginia Woolf, 'A Room of One's Own.'
Emma Alaball-03069044. EL1S04-Reading/Writing women. Diana Wallace. 7/11/03 Critical analysis: Virginia Woolf, 'A Room of One's Own.' Emma Alaball-03069044. EL1S04-Reading/Writing women. Diana Wallace. 17/11/03 Virginia Woolf is one of the most highly acclaimed female authors and feminists of the nineteenth and twentieth century. Her essay and lecture, 'A room of one's Own,' clearly demonstrates her attitude and opinions towards a patriarchal society during her lifetime. Woolf portrays her judgments through the use of language, style, narrative, and outspoken viewpoints about men, male-dominance, and female subservience. The end of chapter six is a clarification and summary of Woolf's beliefs, which are expressed throughout the essay. This essay will provide a critical analysis of this part. Woolf's use of style, language, and narrative is evident throughout the extract. She particularly uses irony and sarcasm combined with humour in order to contradict the general opinions of men, as well as to emphasise and clarify her argument. "Like most uneducated women...I like reading books in the bulk." This quote is particularly ironic, in that one must be educated in order to be able to read accurately. Here, Woolf is using the male belief that women are uneducated with the intention of rebelling against the society in which she lives, as she challenges the
Investigate the Guardian and the Mirror in terms of their news agendas, and the type of news they value as important.
Investigate the Guardian and the Mirror in terms of their news agendas, and the type of news they value as important. This essay aims to explore the news agenda and news values of the British newspapers, The Guardian and The Mirror. The essay will touch on aspects of what each newspaper deems newsworthy, due to their publications over a one week period (excluding the weekend editions) from the seventeenth of November, through to the twenty first. This week was chosen, as it seemed to be a fairly average news week, avoiding the presidential elections in the U.S.A. the previous week. To analyse the newspapers, Galtung and Ruge's (1973) research was applied to each newspaper each day. Galtung and Ruge were social scientists, and they studied press cuttings as part of their research into peace studies. The cuttings they studied were from the Congo, Cuba (1960) and Cyprus (1964). From this research, they established twelve factors which may bring a news story the to the attention of the public and the newspapers. These factors include Continuity, Unexpectedness and Consonance for example. Many of these factors can overlap each other. These factors will be explained more clearly in the main section of the essay. A similar set of values from Harcup and O'Neill's (2001) research into what is newsworthy will also be used. They revisited Galtung and Ruge's newsworthy factors and
Discuss basic semiotic concepts in the analysis of news texts.
Discuss basic semiotic concepts in the analysis of news texts. The analysis of news texts, and hence the semiotic concepts relating to it, is vital to our comprehension of the world around us, and the meaning we attribute to it, because as explained by Watson in chapter 4.1 of the reader (The news: gates, agendas and values), news is not a direct reflection of reality but a manufactured construct which goes through several selective phases before it eventuates in the forms we read it. In our Australian society, there are three main forms of news texts that we consume. These are: * Visual news texts - e.g newspapers, internet news sites * Audio news texts - e.g radio * Audio-visual news texts - e.g television In the analysis of news texts, we must analyse how the news is represented. Hall suggests that there are two systems of representation that we work with. Firstly he states that all objects, people and events in our minds are connected with a set of concepts. Without this system we would not understand much, as the meaning depends on the links we make between an image and its concept. Secondly, we need to communicate through language - made up of words, sounds and images which carry meanings - therefore we see them as signs. This indicates that signs make up the meaning systems of our culture. We'll start with visual texts. They are almost always a combination of
Philosophy of Journalism
CAMPBELL DOUGLAS PHILOSOPHY OF JOURNALISM ESSAY 1 MARCH 2003 "An editor is required to edit and should not be fettered by the direction of any third party, unless, of course, that was agreed in advance." (The Journalist, December 1995) Editors have a responsibility to print information, opinions and ideas without outside restraint but within the accepted boundaries of legal, moral and ethical concerns. This is broadly accepted as the ideal model of journalism practice. The editor can find himself bound by criminal or civil law and codes of practice and conduct, which can be considered acceptable forms of censorship necessary for the common good. However, it is the newspaper owner's inevitable links with commerce and the state which represents the greatest threat to editorial autonomy. With the advent of Gutenberg's moveable type in the 15th century came the first news books which developed into newspapers and gave birth to editorial autonomy in its earliest sense. But while the radical press flourished in the 1800s, it was to enter a vacuum during periods of massive social change in the early 20th century. By 1918 the press was shown to be out of step with public opinion when Labour gained 22 per cent of the vote without the support of any daily or Sunday paper. Lucy Brown (1971) suggests the political elite devoted more time and skill to