OSP: The Voice - blog case study

 Overview: Media Factsheet #229 - Applying Post-Colonial Theory to The Voice Online

1) What does the factsheet suggest regarding how The Voice is constructed from a media language perspective?

The Voice is conventional in the formal register of writing in the use of standard grammar, punctuation and sentence structure. It avoids overly long descriptive sentences and favours short, forceful sentences including the necessary facts and information.

The Voice avoids the red-Top tabloid approach when it comes to sensationalising stories and favours a tone more comparable tobroadsheet newspapers or mainstream websites, their headlinesstill use enigma codes but do not instigate outrage amongst theiraudience with the aim of generating clicks.

2) Complete Activity 3 on Page 2 of the Factsheet - analyse The Voice's website and suggest a possible demographic and psychographic breakdown for The Voice's audience.

    Demographic:

Age of The Voice audience - 30+ If this was online news I would've brought this a lot lower but due to this being a newspaper, the reading age is pretty high. I believe that 30+ is the most popular age for The Voice as it wants to educate about today's black politics and news.

    Psychographic:

Interests of the audience - Having political interests about today society. Reading about inspiring stories to take inspiration and educate them selves.

Opinions of the audience - Radical and Open minded opinions. I believe that The Voice does write articles of critical news today but they want to target the audience with a open mind so they can educate them further without being bias.

3) How can we apply Stuart Hall's audience theories to The Voice?

If we apply Stuart Hall’s theory of audience reception to The Voice, where media is encoded with an intended meaning by the producers, which is then decoded by an audience who may or may not accept the intended meaning. A preferred reading of The Voice is likely to rely on the audience having the direct experience of being a British black person in order to fully decode the meaning of the content.

4) What is an anti-essentialist perspective and how does this link to Paul Gilroy? 

Gilroy’s work is anti-essentialist (essentialism is the reduction of a group of people to an ‘essential’ idea of what it means to be part of that group). He argues that the fixed Black British identity which dominates the media, is an ideological construct that sees Black British groups as ‘other’ to White British people. This ‘otherness’ has the result of Black Britons being portrayed as a threat – at the time he was researching this, the term ‘the black problem’ was in use in the media – or as ‘victims’, dependent on the help of ‘white saviours’.

5) Choose three of the key terms from Gilroy's post-colonial theory on page 3 of the factsheet and apply them to The Voice as a media product.

Double Consciousness: 

Black people in these societies are forced to view themselves first through the eyes of a society that perceived them to be inferior before they can view themselves as a citizen of that society.

Othering:

The practice of othering means that groups may be excluded from the dominant social group to the margins of society. The effect is dehumanising on the people being othered.

Diaspora:

Diasporic communities often feel that their cultural identity is disconnected; they feel they do not belong in the country they live in nor in their country of historical origin.

6) How does The Voice link to Gilroy's Black Atlantic theory?

Gilroy outlines numerous commonalities in the lives of black people in Europe and North America because of the transatlantic slave routes. The history of racism, social deprivation and institutional prejudice are similar on both continents and these communities can relate to each other because of this, as well as their heritage and broader cultural heritage. People from diasporas may feel disconnected from both where they live now/were born and their heritage. Part of the reason The Voice was established in 1982 was the lack of media that catered to a generation of black people born in the UK and the aim was for the newspaper to connect with and report on issues faced by this community.

7) Look at page 5 of the factsheet. What news stories are highlighted as examples of the way the media reports differently depending on the race or ethnicity of the victims?

Recent news stories, such as the murder of Sarah Everard, have highlighted the potential difference in the way cases are treated with the implication being that white people are treated more seriously than those of people of colour. Wilhelmina Smallman, mother of two daughters who were killed in similar circumstances to Sarah Everard, says her daughters didn’t get “the same support, the same outcry, as Ms Everard because ‘other people have more kudos in this world than people of colour”.

8) How does the factsheet summarise and apply wider media theories The Voice on the final page?

The purpose of The Voice Online is to be a news site for black British people that focuses on their community and lives. Because of this community focused approach, it automatically means that there is a degree of identification for the target audience that is not attainable for people outside that Black British community. As a racial minority in Britain, British African-Caribbean people have experienced particular disadvantages and injustices because of systematic bias against them. This experience informs the meaning of The Voice Online’s content, and is encoded within the media language choices creating an intended meaning in the text.

Language and textual analysis

Homepage

1) Does The Voice homepage tend to use news or magazine website conventions? Give examples.

2) How does the homepage design differ from Teen Vogue? 

3) 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?

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

5) How is narrative used to encourage audience engagement with the Voice? Apply narrative theories (e.g. Levi-Strauss and binary opposition, Todorov's equilibrium or Barthes’ enigma codes) and make specific reference to stories on the homepage and how they encourage audiences to click through to them.

Lifestyle section

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

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

3) How does the Lifestyle section of the Voice differ from Teen Vogue?

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

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

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?

2) Read this feature on Michaela Coel supporting Oxfam's Second Hand campaign. Why might this feature appeal to readers of The Voice?

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?

Audience

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

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

3) 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’?

Representations

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

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

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?

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

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.)

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

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

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

8) Study a selection of videos from The Voice’s YouTube channel. How does this content differ from Teen Vogue? What are the production values of their video content?