- Newspaper circulation is seen to reflect the social-class of its readers.
- The ‘red-tops’: The Sun, The Mirror, The Daily Star are all working-class newspapers, with content written on such assumptions. So there’s little political coverage, but more ‘celeb news’
- Pluralists (see audience as active) would argue this is because it’s what the audience want otherwise they wouldn’t buy these newspapers
- While Marxists (see audience as passive) would argue it’s because media owners (media barons) own the means of production and they need their workers to be political compliant so as not to ‘rock the boat’
- There’s four dominant media representations of the working-class:
- 1. As dumb buffoons – Goggle Box, Jeremy Kyle and Royle Family are constructed on this representation
- 2. Sources of trouble – undesirable scroungers
- 3. Living in idealised working-class communities – the working-class hero model
- 4. As white trash – Jeremy Kyle show underclass Chav stereotypes who are aggressive drunken thugs who are sexually promiscuous, welfare dependent scum
Media representations of middle-class
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