Question 3 15th march

With detailed reference to two or three examples you have studied, explore how media texts are constructed to position audiences?

The media is constructed to show things from a specific perspective, this is usually so the audience can see it and take it on board before looking further into it. This is audience positioning because consumers will trust outlets they like for example a specific newspaper or news channel as they present stories differently.

An example of this is a news story from The Sun which was published on the 5th of September 2014. The headline of this story was 'Muslim convert beheads gran, 82 in garden'. This may just look like a normal headline but in fact you could say that the way it mentions that a 'Muslim convert' beheaded the women could be seen as an attempt to distract the audience from the story and concentrate on the fact it was a Muslim that committed the crime. This is an example of audience positioning because The Sun are trying to put more importance on the fact that a Muslim committed the crime, this is then seen by the hundreds of thousands of people that read The Sun and makes the whole Muslim community look bad when in fact this is just one case.

Another example is the This Girl Can campaign, the first advert was uploaded to the National Lottery YouTube channel on the 23rd of January 2015 and is aimed at all women. The advert is made to convince women to be more active and they do this by showing clips of your everyday women taking part in sports and other leisure activities such as Swimming. The reason they didn't use the typical swimsuit models in this advert is because they wanted to appeal to all women, they also show multiple activities so the women know they don't have to limit themselves to one specific thing. The advert is made like this to encourage all women to become more active regardless of there: age, ethnicity or possible disability. This again shows how the media is shaped to give a certain message across but this time it is in a more positive way than the article in The Sun.

In conclusion, the Media can shape texts to appeal to different people or to get a certain view across, this is evidenced through the news article in The Sun and the This Girl Can advert.