Q.5 Analyse the representation of gender on the front cover of The Observer. Give two examples from the extract. [5 marks]
This Observer cover primarily focuses on men. One example is that there is a picture of five police men surrounding a police woman. In terms of representation, it symbolises the men as powerful and strong, protecting the women in the middle from danger. Secondly, the skybox shows a story about a dad proudly and lovingly holding his son. It is an article about Clive James and his son, who suffers from a disorder. This symbolises and represents the strength and love that men have for their children. From this, we can draw the conclusion that men are represented on the front cover as strong and powerful, but also loving and caring at the same time.
Q.9 In this question you will be rewarded for drawing together elements from your full course of study, including the theoretical framework and media contexts.
How far does the media language on the front cover of The Observer. reflect genre conventions? [15 marks] I have explained terms a bit to guide you!
In your answer, you should:
- analyse the media language, using specific examples
- make judgements and draw conclusions about how far the media language reflects generic conventions (= looks like a quality broadsheet front cover) or other areas of the theoretical framework (= meets audience needs) and media contexts (= looks like a typical Observer production, bearing in mind its target audience and its ethos).
The Observer has lots of conventional broadsheet features on its front cover. For example, the first article you see in the central splash is about covid-19, which is probably the most relevant thing currently in the world. This is a feature of a broadsheet as it is hard news and not all bright and colourful like the tabloid conventional features. The Observer front, when you take away the skybox, looks very plain and bland. This is typical of the olden days, compared to today's 'joy' that you get from tabloid newspapers. The seriff font makes it look very old style, especially in contrast to tabloid's colourful and modern fonts. The main Observer article contains information about Boris Johnson and how he is going to shift the rules about covid as the polls have had a drastic change, and the front picture shows a soldier that was killed a few days ago. Both are serious news articles. This draws the conclusion that The Observer contains many conventional broadsheet aspects to it.
This edition of The Observer also has some conventional tabloid features on the front cover. One example of this is having news that covers world events and interesting and exciting stories that hook a reader in. Some examples of this include sports news, celebrity news, and human interest stories about emotion. For example, in the skybox it has the story '20 autumn recipes' which is a typical story for a tabloid. In addition, there are lots of colours and bursts at you, whereas the skyline has a economic story about covid that people can also read. The Observer also has the same structure of a newspaper to that of a tabloid. One of the reasons for this is because a few years back newspapers used to be double the size of normal papers but were then shrunk to save space and to do less harm to the environment due to wasting paper.
In conclusion, this Observer front cover contains both aspects from a broadsheet and tabloid conventions. However, I think it has more focus towards a broadsheet, as the tabloid aspect only shows in the skybox and article about the dad and son.
