The Daily Star and the Daily Mirror
‘‘Using the comparison of these two texts as your starting point, explore the media issues and debates which they raise.’’
The Daily Star and Daily Mirror are two diverse newspapers that have different representations and ideologies to help appeal a. The daily star’s main story is about the accused racism to Shilpa Shetty within the Big brother house; with the Daily Mail, following this as their second main story.
Daily Star is covering the Racism scandal as there main headline story, contributing taking up the whole front page of the newspaper. This is done to help attract the target audience 18-53 year old males, from the social class of C2, D and E. The target audience will be drawn to the newspaper, through the use of language of the front the paper, for example ‘Beyonce’s Golden Globes’ and ‘Lads out for the Brits’. Dissimilarly the main story on the front of the Daily Mail is about the problem in the economy and the Big Brother story being there second story. This could be due to the fact that the values and interests of the reader of The Daily Mail, would differ as they are a different target market of males and females aged 24-50, from the social class of B, C1, C2.
The main image of Shilpa Shetty on the front of The Daily Star uses up half the page. Whereas the image of Shetty on the The Daily Mail is much smaller, which could suggest that they do not believe that the story is as important. The representation of Shetty in both newspapers differ, through the image and caption used. The representation of Shetty in the The Daily Star is showing her to be somewhat a sex object, reinforcing Mulvey’s (1975) theory of the ‘male gaze’ where women are just seen as an object of desire. This is demonstrated through her facial expression and body language. Shetty is seen to have her legs wide apart, suggesting the idea that she may be ‘letting a man in’ and her facial expression is like she is somewhat aroused. In contrast to the image used by the The Daily Mail where is seen to looking innocent and pretty, representing her as the vulnerable women. The two newspapers images differ, representing Shetty in two different lights; the audience are just getting injected by what they are seeing, and will just believe what is in front of them, reinforcing the hypodermic theory- that the media just injects audiences with ideas that they simply believe.
Furthermore, another difference between the two newspapers is the other news including in their papers. The Daily Star is mainly focusing on celebrity gossip, which is shown through the two stories which will be including in the papers. One of the first stories is about “Beyonce’s Golden Globes”; the caption is next to an image of Beyonce wearing a gold, very revealing dress making her assets stand out- moreover going wit the pun. The ideology is suggesting that women are seen as vulnerable and inferior to men. The hypodermic needle model suggests that images in the media promote females being beautiful and sexual.
