ReviseSociology

Category: Media

  • Inside Facebook: What a Whistleblower’s Memoir Reveals About Media Power and Control

    In her recently published memoir, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, Sarah Wynn-Williams discusses her experiences. She presents a cautionary tale about power and greed. It also highlights the loss of idealism.

    She is a former Facebook executive. She provides a critical insider’s perspective on the corporate culture at Meta (formerly Facebook).

    During her six-year tenure, Wynn-Williams alleges that top executives tried to suppress her whistleblowing efforts. This happened just before Facebook’s rebranding as Meta. The executives mentioned include CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

    Her allegations concern the company’s internal practices. She claims that the leadership prioritized profit over ethical considerations, leading to decisions that compromised user privacy and platform integrity. Wynn-Williams further asserts that the company’s actions were often at odds with its public statements. This created a dissonance between its professed values and operational realities. ​

    Analyzing Media Theories in the Context of Wynn-Williams’ Exposé

    To understand the dynamics highlighted in Wynn-Williams’ memoir, it’s insightful to examine three prominent media theories. These are Pluralist, Marxist Instrumentalist, and Neo-Marxist perspectives.​

    Pluralist Perspective

    The pluralist view of the media posits that media content is driven by consumer demand within a competitive marketplace. It suggests that no single entity can dominate media narratives. Media organizations aim to cater to diverse audience preferences to maximize profits.

    This implies that consumers ultimately control media content through their choices. However, Wynn-Williams’ account challenges this perspective. It illustrates how internal corporate decisions at Meta were made without adequate consideration of user interests. These decisions indicate a potential disconnect between consumer control and corporate actions.​

    Marxist Instrumentalist Perspective

    This theory argues that media owners, as part of the ruling class, manipulate media content directly. They do this to perpetuate their own interests and maintain the societal status quo.

    According to this view, the media serves as a tool for ideological control. It disseminates content that aligns with the interests of the elite. This keeps the broader populace passive and less likely to challenge existing power structures.

    Wynn-Williams’ revelations about Meta’s leadership show that internal dissent was suppressed. Profit was prioritized over ethical considerations. These actions align with the Marxist Instrumentalist perspective. They suggest the company’s actions were intended to maintain its dominant position. This might have been at the expense of broader societal well-being.​

    Neo-Marxist Perspective

    Neo-Marxists focus on cultural hegemony. Media professionals share similar backgrounds and worldviews with the ruling class. As a result, they unconsciously propagate dominant ideologies. This perspective emphasizes that media content is shaped not just by direct control. It is also influenced by a shared cultural lens. This lens aligns with elite interests. Wynn-Williams’ experiences suggest that Meta’s corporate culture may have fostered an environment where certain viewpoints became normalized. Meanwhile, dissenting opinions were marginalized. These dynamics reflect the subtle mechanisms of control highlighted by Neo-Marxist theory.​

    Evaluating the Use of Qualitative Secondary Data

    Using qualitative secondary data, like Wynn-Williams’ memoir, provides valuable insights into organizational cultures. It also reveals internal dynamics that external observers often miss. Such personal documents can reveal subjective experiences and internal deliberations, enriching our understanding of complex entities like Meta. However, challenges exist. These include assessing the authenticity and credibility of the accounts. Understanding the author’s potential biases is also a challenge. Finally, determining the representativeness of the experiences described is necessary. Researchers must critically evaluate such sources. They should corroborate them with additional evidence. It is important to remain mindful of the context in which these narratives were produced. Hindustan Times

    Conclusion

    Sarah Wynn-Williams’ memoir offers a critical lens to examine Meta’s internal operations. It aligns with concerns raised by various media theories about corporate influence. It also touches on ideological control. Personal memoirs provide deep insights as qualitative secondary data. They also necessitate careful scrutiny to fully understand the complexities of organizational behaviors and media dynamics.

    Signposting

    This material is mainly relevant to the Media option within A-level sociology.

    You can find out more in this article in The Conversation.

  • Representations of class, gender, ethnicity and sexuality in The Outlaws

    The BBC television Sitcom, The Outlaws, has some stereotype busting representations of minority groups. In contrast it represents middle class, middle aged white men in generally negative ways. 

    The Outlaws is a comedy currently in its third series scripted by Stephen Merchant. The main characters are seven individuals from diverse backgrounds sentenced to community service. 

    Series one follows one of them ‘accidentally’ stealing several hundred thousand pounds worth of drug money. Three of the other characters find the money and spend it. The original thief then gets death threats from the drug dealer he stole from. 

    The rest of season one and into season three are about how the Outlaws get out of the mess they are in. As the plot develops they get dragged deeper and deeper into the underworld of drugs. The series also features three main law enforcement officers who are always one step behind. 

    The series also follows the characters through their own personal trials, mainly to do with family and relationship issues. 

    It’s a very enjoyable watch and a great example of representations of minority groups which bust stereotypes. 

    Rani 

    Rani is an Asian teenager with a scholarship to Oxford. However she enjoys the buzz of shoplifting, which is why she ends up with community service. 

    She also gets a buzz out of the risks surrounding drug dealing and trying to pull scams on criminals. She is the main ring leader of the group. 

    She’s also pro-sex and resists what her parents want her to do (go to Oxford) and is high-adrenaline. 

    Ben 

    The black teenager who steals the money from the original head of the drug gang. He gets sent to a rival drug-house to threaten them. However, he only does this because the drug gang is threatening to recruit his younger sister. The deal is if he does this, they leave his sister alone. He steals the money in a panic when things don’t go to plan. It transpires that he’s been around gangs on the estate he grew up on all his life. But he resisted this for the most part, and has a regular job. He’s basically a nice kid who just wants out of the estate he grew up on and to get away from gangs. He does this by setting up his own food business. He also ends up in a relationship with Rani, she dumps him because he’s too boring. 

    Ben is contrasted to GG the head of drug gang. However even with this guy we are constantly reminded that he’s doing this to feed his family. He ends up getting out of the drug game too at the end of episode two. 

    Rani and Ben

    Myrna 

    Myrna is a 50 year old social justice activist. She’s been quite an extremist all her life, campaigning for minority rights and having set up the Bristol Justice Collective. She’s wracked with guilt during the whole show because of a police officer who died when she petrol bombed a police station many years ago. 

    She’s generally represented in a positive light, in terms of her morality, very much a ‘do the right thing’ type character. But she suffers for her belief and is lonely. 

    John 

    John is a white, middle aged, middle class man who runs a factory which his father set up. He is very much out for himself and his family. He is right wing and politically the opposite of Myrna (but of course they end up becoming friends!). 

    His Dad sacks him leaving him jobless and he’s having a midlife crisis for much of the three series. He has some anger management issues. 

    One of the more negative portrayals, both him and especially his dad.

     

    Myrna and John

    Lady Gabriella Penrose-Howe

    A 25 year old white lesbian social media influencer. She is from an aristocracy, her Dad cuts her off. 

    She is a psychological mess, having been sectioned by her dad in the past. She has anger management and drug addiction issues. She is very self-centred, and spends money like water.  

    It transpires, however, that most of her problems are down to her dad. Her dad is an old white male that was a crap father and was never there for her. 

    Greg the Lawyer 

    Played by Stephen Merchant Gregg is kind of a mixed bag in terms of representations. He’s a hopeless lawyer, a weedy, pathetic character who is quite boring. His work colleague, another white male, keeps making fun of him and he just takes it without fighting back. He ends up getting sacked. 

    He is divorced, lives alone, hopeless with women, and solicits prostitutes. 

    He is mainly friends with Gabby, and becomes her lawyer. They end up living together when her dad boots her out. 

    However, on a positive note, his heart is in the right place and like Myrna he appears to have one of the strongest moral compasses. 

    Greg, played by Stephen Merchant.

    Frank 

    Only in seasons one and two, Frank is the oldest character. He is an ex-con who walked out on his daughter when she was young. He ends up doing the same again. 

    The Dean

    The ultimate evil character is the Dean. He is your classic evil villain, prepared to do whatever it takes to maintain his drug empire. 

    Representations of characters in The OutLaws

    It really is middle aged white men, especially fathers, who are represented as the cause of all the problems. 

    The Dean, and two of the fathers are all just horrible. Meanwhile John and Gregg both have the most negative aspects to them.

    Rani is also quite a selfish character, but this is a nice counter to the ‘good Asian girl’ stereotype. 

    The two main black characters are represented in most positive lights in my opinion. 

    Class is also an interesting one here… There is a suggestion that the aristocracy are a bit useless. Meanwhile the middle classes (in the form of John, Gregg and the Dean) aren’t represented positively.

    Overall it’s an entertaining watch and does a good job of giving us some diverse representations!

    Signposting

    This material is mainly relevant to the Media option within A-level sociology.

  • A Man in Full: A Criticism of Traditional Masculinity

    A man in full is a 2024 Netflix limited series which has some good examples of negative representations of traditional masculinity.

    The programme follows the demise of Charlie Croker, a real estate mogul in Atlanta, Georgia. Just turned 60, Croker is an extreme alpha male character who lives a lavish lifestyle. He has a mansion, hunting lodge and estate, private jet and a wife half his age. He has also spent the last ten years building a massive skyscraper: the concourse. 

    Charlie Croker and his wife

    The character of Croker is stereotypically hegemonically masculine. He was the star of the college football team when he was younger. He ‘lives life on his own terms’, he puts himself first, he enjoys hunting. In one scene we see him loving watching horses breed: ‘ah this is life’ he states.

    Croker is a very physical man, but at 60 he’s starting to deteriorate. He has a replacement knee put in which is state of the art, robotic. This enables him to be walking within two days because ‘it’s not OK for a man to be weak’. 

    The series starts with Croker’s lavish 60th birthday party, in which Shania Twain sings for him. It’s all about him and he loves the attention. The day after this his bank calls him in for a meeting and tells him he needs to repay the $800 million he owes them. 

    There are two key characters at the bank who want Croker to repay the $800, Harry Zale and Rayomnd Peepgrass. They not only want him to repay the money, they also want to crush him financially. They want to destroy him, to ruin his reputation. 

    Raymond Peepgrass has been working with Croker for years. He has been the main liaison between Croker and the bank. He hates Croker as croker has made him feel like a nobody. He also envies him and wishes he could be him. He is obsessed with bringing Croker down. He is a bit of a weasley character who has always lived a servile life working at the bank. So he starts out NOT being hegemonically masculine. However, as the plot progresses, we see Peepgrass becoming more ‘masculine’ as he obsesses more and more with destroying Croker. 

    Raymond Peepgrass

    Peepgrass’s boss is Harry Zale who is also keen to bring Croker down, but for him it’s not a personal vendetta. He just seems to relish the masculine accomplishment of destroying another alpha male. He was an ex-wrestler in college and keeps wondering if he could ‘take’ Croker in a fight. 

    Hegemonic masculinity ends in tears and death…. 

    The main plot line for the series is Croker’s attempts to avoid bankruptcy with the assistance of his lawyer, Roger White. White is not a hegemonically masculine character, he is much more balanced. He is a brilliant lawyer, working for a ‘bad man’ (Croker) because the work is interesting and pays well. However he does have a conscience and wishes he could be doing more good. 

    Over the course of the six episodes we see that hegemonically masculine all lead to disaster. Traits such as violence, competition, the urge to control and manipulate, eventually lead to misery and even death. 

    On the other hand, those who admit to the failings of these traits have a happier ending. 

    The most damning critique of hegemonic masculinity is in the interplay between Croker and Peepgrass. 

    Peepgrass’s descent into traditional masculinity has a comic end. Towards the end of the movie he and Zale are ordered to leave Croker alone by their boss (Croker struck a deal with the mayor who did him a favour). Zale accepts this but Peepgrass can’t leave it alone. He seduces Croker’s ex-wife and ends up sleeping with her. He also sets up a company with the intention of buying a majority share in Croker’s concourse (the skyscraper). Peepgrass has convinced Croker’s ex-wife to transfer over her and her son’s shares in the concourse. 

    Croker gets wind of this and sets off to confront his ex-wife, he finds her sleeping with Peepgrass. Peepgrass taunts him about having stolen his company AND his wife. Croker throttles Peepgrass, his hand locks up and he can’t release his grip and Peepgrass dies, then Croker has a heart attack and dies himself. The last scene we see is Croker dead, his robotic knee still twitching. 

    So here we have two men going at each other and both dying in a farcical situation. Both have been brought down by their aggressive hatred of the other. However, neither intended to kill the other or die, so they’ve lost control at the end of the day. 

    The critique of Croker’s alpha male character is the most obvious. He has made many enemies throughout his life by stamping on people and it’s clear no one is going to come to his aid in his time of need. He has bankrupted himself through going into deep debt to build a skyscraper. The phallic imagery here should be obvious. 

    The major sub-plot in the series is Roger White helping out another character, Wes Jordan. Wes hit a police officer over an incident involving a parking ticket. Wes’ car had been nudged into a parking zone by another vehicle and was being towed. He objected to this, the police were called and he lashed out after one officer used force to cuff him. 

    This ended him up in a high security prison because he refused to accept a plea deal. Roger White manages to get the case thrown out eventually. He argues that Wes was in fact just scared when faced with both the police officer and parking official. It was this fear that led to violence. The message here seems obvious: hegemonic masculine traits get you in trouble. However if you accept the failings of your hegemonic masculinity there is redemption. 

    Further, while in jail, Wes has to turn on violence, here it helps him survive. So the only place this character trait works: it’s jail, where all the losers are. 

    Characters who are less hegemonically masculine do much better

    Croker tries to get another local billionaire, Herb, to bail him out of bankruptcy. Herb is a very quiet man who lives his life in the background. He is calm, collected, rational, not aggressive or overtly masculine. He stands in contrast to the ostentatious masculinity on display by Croker.

    The characters are mostly painfully black and white but there is a tiny amount of nuance. Croker has a moment towards the end when he ‘does the right (not traditionally masculine) thing’ because of his son. 

    Also the character of the Mayor is ambiguous in terms of his gender traits. 

    NB the women in the series are generally portrayed much more positively, but I wanted to focus on men here. 

    Links to A-level sociology 

    This is mostly relevant to anyone studying the media option in the second year.

    This is a good example of traditional masculinity being represented in a very negative way! 

    Sources 

    IMDB – A Man in Full

  • Is the BBC News Biased…?

    The BBC was in the news this week because Elon Musk mislabelled it as ‘government funded’ whereas in reality it is a publicly funded corporation, paid for by the license fee.

    This means that it is, effectively, the great British public who are real owners of the corporation, and, as such, the content of the BBC news should reflect diversity in British society and a suitably broad variety of opinions.

    However, while the ‘owners’ of the BBC are diverse, the people who decided the news agenda are not as diverse, much more likely to be privately educated and upper middle class.

    However, this still doesn’t mean that the content of the news is going to be biased, and there will be variation on television and radio news, and within different news programmes.

    There is actually very little systematic and representative research on bias in the BBC, the latest proper university research was from between 2007 and 2012 by Cardiff University which showed that conservative views were given more airtime than progressive ones.

    However this may just be because the government is conservative, and a bog standard news item is to give whatever Tory minister time to talk rubbish, which could alone be enough to skew the difference.

    Conservatives also complain that the BBC is too progressive and biased against consverative view points.

    A look at the opinion polls shows that only 61% of the public thinks the BBC is fair compared to higher percentages when asked about Sky and ITV, but then again that lower result may just be because the ‘fairness debate’ is more in the news in relation to the BBC.

    It is probably the case that Sky and ITV are MORE right wing than the BBC, it’s just that we don’t notice!

    Bias is a very difficult thing to prove, certainly asking whether the whole of the BBC is biased isn’t a good starting point, you’d need to focus on say ONE specific news programme, maybe BBC News at 18.00, or Question Time, or The news on Radio 4 at 8.00 a.m. for a period of time and subject this to time-based and qualitative content analysis to find out for sure.

    It’s interesting that this is so much debated and yet so few people are doing ANY systematic research on the matter!

    Signposting

    This material is relevant to the media topic within A-level sociology

  • Is addiction to technology real?

    People spend four hours a day on average on their phones, which is equivalent to 60 full days a year, or one quarter of their waking lives.

    People are literally addicted to video games, social media, pornography and online shopping – and the numbers who are addicted to technology are growing.

    We already find it difficult to switch off from the many apps on our phones and this could be about to get much worse with FaceBook, Google and Microsoft ploughing billions of pounds into constructing the MetaVerse.

    These are just some of the claims that some experts make about the addictive nature of technology, but is this addiction to technology actually real?

    Elaine Moore, a tech columnist for the Financial Times subjected these claims to critical analysis in a recent Radio 4 analysis podcast: Addiction in the Age of the MetaVerse.

    Addiction to video Games

    According to Supply Gem (Accessed November 2023) the video games industry is valued at between $221 billion and $385 billion, and there are between 3.09 and 3.26 billion gamers worldwide.

    What drives a lot of that revenue are online games such as Fortnite and Call of Duty, games which are immersive, in real time and are played most obsessively by children and young adults.

    Teachers have already raised concerns about the amount of time children spend playing these games and when virtual reality headsets are introduced they can become even more immersive and addictive.

    The World Health Organisation recently added Gaming Disorder to the classification of Diseases.

    The World Health Organisation’s definition of gaming disorder.

    Ruth Lockwood from the NHS run centre for gaming disorder defines addiction to gaming as a lack of control over the amount of time an individual spends playing computer games, a tendency to prioritise gaming over other areas of one’s life to the detriment of other life activities. It is a compulsion to play video games even when there are negative consequences to doing so!

    According to the experts above, gaming addiction is a real and recognised addiction and it is something that the NHS provides help for.

    According to meta-analysis conducted in 2021 (and summarised by Game Quitters) 3-4% of gamers are addicted to video games, but the percentages vary considerably by age:

    But what about other aspects of tech are they addictions too? 

    Smart Phones and Addiction

    Over 80% of the UK population now own a smart phone, with the figure being nearly 100% for the under 50s. People on average spend four hours a day on their phones which is 60 full days a year or 25% of our waking lives.

    A recent 2019 YouGov survey found that 59% of 18-34 year olds would feel anxious if they were without their smartphones for a day because ‘they wouldn’t be able to instantaneously communicate with their friends or family’

    Some people are on their phones so much that there is even a term – ‘fubbing’ which means scrolling through your phone while you’re in the middle of a conversation.

    If you think you are spending too long on your phone then you might want to try The Smart Phone Compulsion Test developed by David GreenField and the Centre for Internet and Technology Addiction.

    Pretty much anyone who takes that test is going to fail, and Catherine Price suggests this doesn’t mean that the test is invalid, rather it means that all of us have problematic relationships with our phones.

    Smartphones are addictive by design

    If you wanted to invent a device that would make the population perpetually distracted and isolated you would probably end up with the smart phone.

    Many design features on Smart Phones are deliberately made to be addictive, evidence for this is that many design features mimic those of slot machines, which are widely regarded as some of the most addictive machines in the gambling industry.

    This is especially true of any apps which rely on advertising as advertisers’ revenue increases the more time we spend on these apps, and the more attention we give them!

    It’s also worth noting that slot machine addiction was the first officially recognised behavioural addiction in the United States.

    Catherine Price has is author of How to Break up with your Phone – a 30 Day Plan to Take Back your Life. She argues that Smart Phones have the power to change the way our brains work.

    However her book reminds us that our time and attention are finite and that maybe continually scrolling through our phones isn’t the best use of our time!

    We cannot do two cognitively demanding things at once – for example we can’t think of two things at the same time, so in layman’s terms it is impossible for us to multitask.

    Problems with Smartphone addiction

    Anna Lembke, a Professor of Psychiatry and author of ‘Dopamine Nation‘ points out that SmartPhones light up the ‘reward pathway’ in the brain, from where dopamine is released, in the same way drugs and alcohol does.

    There’s no blood test or brain scan to test for this type of addiction, instead researchers use Phenomenology – looking at individual experiences and the way patterns are repeated.

    People who are addicted are in an altered state: their gremlins are now driving the bus. The prefrontal cortex which is necessary for factoring in future consequences and deferred gratification goes offline!

    People in such a condition, such as compulsive tweeters fail to appreciate how their reward system has been hijacked and see their addictive behaviour as something they need to do.

    Advantages of Smart Phones

    James Ball, author of ‘The System: Who Owns the Internet, and How it Owns Us‘ is sceptical about the idea that everyone is addicted to their phones.

    He argues that tech leads to behaviours that look like they may be addictions but aren’t necessarily addictions.

    A phone fulfils different needs all at the same time – we might be having a coffee with a friend and our phones allow to us to check in with other people quickly while still having that coffee.

    So possibly we shouldn’t interpret someone checking their phone every five minutes as being a ‘compulsion’ – rather it is something that enables us to effectively manage busy lives – and if it wasn’t for the smartphone allowing us to check-in with other people so easily maybe we wouldn’t be be meeting that friend for an IRL coffee in the first place.

    The Metaverse

    The MetaVerse is a digital reality that exists in parallel to actual reality.

    Some authors think the idea of the Metaverse will be so compelling that we’ll forget to log off from the internet altogether!

    Computers have become smaller and the way we interact with them has become more and more intuitive and the Metaverse evolves this make computers invisible, it actually extends into our reality, impinges on it!

    Facebook, Google and Apple are all very interested in the Metaverse and are investing huge sums of money into it. Meta alone invested $10 billion in 2021 and all major companies are developing their own head sets.

    The merging of the real and virtual world could have sever implications for people’s mental health as it could allow people to block out aspects of their realities that they don’t like and don’t want to deal with, but they would have to allow

    The Metaverse could get more and more potent, more addictive – like PacMan isn’t going to do it for a five year old today!

    And the government are very unprepared for this next step in the evolution of virtual reality. A recent Digital White Paper didn’t even mention the Metaverse once. The government seems to be on the back foot and unable to anticipate what’s going to happen in the future.

    A moral panic over the Metaverse?

    James Ball doesn’t think we are into an age of hyper-seductive targeted marketing in the Metaverse given how inaccurate the current targeted advertising is!

    There are also possible advantages – motivational apps for developing good behaviours such as walking more or giving up drinking, and we are rewarded with badges for example.

    Signposting and Relevance to A-level Sociology

    The material above is mainly relevant to the media option at A-level sociology, but this should also be of general interest to anyone with a Smartphone!

    To return to the homepage – revisesociology.com

  • Natural Disasters and News Values

    There was a high magnitude earthquake in Turkey this week, killing, at time of writing (Monday 6th Feb 2023) 1900, and there is little doubt that the death toll will rise significantly.

    When I heard this unfortunate news on Radio Four at 7.00 a.m. I knew straight away that this would probably be filling up the Live news on pretty much every news site in Europe for the next day or two, possibly the rest of the week.

    And when I checked out the BBC News site at around 14.00 this is what I saw on their home page (screenshot below). There is nothing but the Earthquake related stories on the main page, and it is very rare to have so much dominance.

    This should be of no surprise to any student of media studies who has learned about how News Values shape the content of the news.

    News Values are criteria which journalists believe make stories news worthy and include such things as how impactful event is in terms of number of people affected, how unusual it is, and how visual it is.

    The more characteristics and event fulfils, and the more extremely it does so, the more likely it is to get more news coverage, and a major Earthquake hits just about every news value there is…

    News Values and Earthquakes.

    • Negativity – maybe most importantly where the news is concern is that an earthquake is negative, it destroys infrastructure and peoples lives, literally the later in the case of this large magnitude earthquake.
    • Threshold – 1900 recorded dead after just half a day makes this already one of the largest natural disasters in recent history.
    • Unambiguity – It’s a natural disaster, no politics involved (well, maybe with the response), but this is very easy to understand: earthquake happens, buildings collapse, people get died and injured, the community responds.
    • Picture values – it’s got it all: drone footage of the wreckage, shell shocked survivors, toddlers being pulled out of collapsed buildings by rescue workers…
    • Unpredictability – While seismologists can predict earthquakes to an extent, the sheer scale of this Earthquake made it unusual.
    • Continuity – unfortunately this fits with a well established narrative of other earthquakes and the planet becoming increasingly unstable, and in Syria it fits in the the narrative of tragedy following the recent war.

    Natural Disasters and News Values: Final Thoughts

    For sure there are more factors which determine the content of the news, but when it comes to natural disasters it is almost as if journalists go into ‘easy mode’.

    There’s a format for reporting such events that fits in so easily with News Values journalists pretty much have a day off as they’ve done this all before!

    It’s another layer of tragedy on an event that’s already tragic, the way the media kind of treats it as business as usual.

    Signposting and relevance to A-level sociology

    This material is a useful contemporary example for students taking the Media option in their second year A-level sociology.

    Another concept that may be relevant to this is that of hyperreality. When it comes to Natural Disasters, the media reporting is so removed from the reality on the ground that you have to ask yourself whether this isn’t just a fiction by the time it gets to the media!

  • Limited Media Reporting of the Labour Conference 2022 – Ideological Agenda setting or just ‘news values’…?

    The Metro’s reporting (28/09/2022) of Sir Keir Starmer’s Speech at the 2022 Labour Party Conference was definitely limited, and offers students of media studies an interesting contemporary example of how news values and/ or agenda setting influence the news agenda.

    Biased Reporting…

    There are some good examples here of what appear to be deliberate bias against labour…

    Firstly on the headline page not only is the labour conference given half the space of the royals story the headline ‘don’t forgive’ makes them seem aggressive and harsh, AND there’s a little quip about Keir and his wife being dressed in sync which is maybe an attempt to belittle labour.

    And then there’s the order and manner in which the two main items of the day are presented…

    Firstly we have the royals, BEFORE the labour conference reporting…

    And even Eurovision trumps Labour!

    And then on page three AFTER Kate and Will and Eurovision we finally have an item on the labour party conference (well it’s page four, page two was a full page advert)…

    Also note how this is all just dull text – there’s no attempt at all to bullet point the key ideas – there could be a nice infographic where the advert is to the left which would make this material more readable, but there isn’t.

    Rather the message here seems to be ‘ignore this dull stuff but here’s some pictures of Keir and his wife who have dressed well’.

    News Values…?

    Of course it could just be plain old News Values influencing why Kate and Wills are appearing before Labour – the royals are more photogenic, and pictures matters in papers, and we have just had the death of the Queen so there is continuity.

    HOWEVER, given the national interest surrounding the cost of living crisis and Tory economic policy crashing the economy I think there is more than News Values at work here…

    Why I think this reporting might be ideological

    There is some extremely significant political context to Starmer’s speech, rooted in some major socio-economic turbulence this Autumn.

    The recent Tory budget gave some major tax cuts to the richest in society on top of recent hand-outs to the UK’s two biggest oil companies – BP and Shell, while ordinary people are left to soak up much of the increased cost of living themselves.

    In short, the Tories have done more to help the rich than the poor and showed little interest in investing in a green-future to provide long term solutions to increasing energy prices and any potential future price shocks.

    And Keir Starmer, the leader of the major opposition party is, in this speech, outlining a viable alternative strategy to what the Tories are offering.

    And yet this speech has been relegated to small text on pages 4 and 5, after the pictures of Will and Kate in Wales.

    To my mind this seems to be a straight up attempt to offer the masses some royal entertainment fluff rather than reporting on the Labour alternative to the cost of living crisis in an accessible manner.

    I mean, think about it – they could have bullet pointed the key facts but all we have is a very unattractive full text version of the speech, it’s very easy to just ignore it, effectively rendering it invisible to many readers.

    And given that the Metro is a right wing paper, that is probably the whole idea!

    Discussion Questions

    What do you think? Is this an example of ideological agenda setting?

    Are the owners and editors of the Metro using their position of power to narrow the agenda of news reporting and discredit the views of Keir Starmer and the Labour Party…?

    Or is this just plain old news values at work and the paper simply providing what the audience demand…?

    Signposting

    This material should be of interest to students studying the Media option as part of A-level sociology.

    It should also be of interest to students generally – it’s your future the Tories are messing up after all!

    You can watch Sir Keir’s full speech here:

    The Labour Party Conference 2022

    Sir Keir’s Speech Fact Checked

  • Criticisms of YouTube as a Teaching Resource…

    I’ve been updating my A-level teaching resources on social class recently and have found it challenging to find valid and reliable sources of documentaries on YouTube.

    There are SEVERAL problems you need to be aware of…

    Outdated Videos presented as contemporary…

    The first problem is with old documentaries being uploaded several years after their original release.

    For example: School Swap: The Class divide was uploaded to YouTube by an account called ‘Our Stories’ in 2021…

    The problem with this is that the original documentary aired in 2015 on Channel 4, which means that this isn’t necessarily a valid reflection of what is going on today.

    The same can be said for a second documentary: Posh and Posher which was uploaded to YouTube by in 2021 despite being aired originally on the BBC in 2011.

    To my mind the former is more worrying as the account has almost half a million subscribers with the video having received 4 million views, meaning that’s a lot of people with a misleading impression of when it was shot.

    The second example at least has many fewer views and is just on someone’s personal account which makes the credibility of it easier to dismiss.

    Beauty verses Expertise…

    As a teacher I’m not against non experts having a go at explaining concepts they are not qualified to explain, encouraging students to do this is part of teaching after all, and there’s nothing necessarily inaccurate about what the person in this video says….

    But I can’t help but think the the number of views in this case is due to the pretty face rather than depth of subject-knowledge?

    And there are just so many of these videos from non experts – not necessarily in the ‘speak to the camera’ format, some in cartoon format and it isn’t necessarily the case that the person with the most knowledge is going to get the most views….

    That which is the most fun to watch isn’t necessarily the most valid!

    Incomplete videos

    I actually found this interesting – and it’s recent – post Jubilee from June 2022, and one of the subjects even references a book on social class directly.

    The problem is I think it cuts off early!

    The tendency to focus on the ‘Upper Class’

    I get it: posh people are interesting, but I guess they are interesting because they are different, rare, unusual. And there are a lot of videos about posh people on YouTube – but in sociology we are usually more interested in how class affects the masses – so the working classes, middle classes, but there is something of a saturation with the minority class that you need to filter through…

    Bias…

    You might think using YouTube’s Filters would help to get some useable material…. especially if you search by date…

    However, I personally found this revealed how biased many of the videos are – and NB there is nothing inherently wrong with people uploading videos with bias, stating their opinions on social class in the UK, and it’s maybe even more useful than you think seeing how obvious this is when you get your search returns contrasted with each other.

    And that of course reminds us that even a well researched, well formatted documentary that has been professionally produced has its biases, as does the most professional sociological academic lecture that might appear on YouTube too.

    And something else you’ll see more of if you search by date is students own work and exam advice on ‘social class questions’ from teachers, all of which may be more useful to students than ‘regular documentaries’ or educational videos from teachers.

    Using YouTube as a Teaching Resource: Final Thoughts..

    While I wouldn’t dismiss YouTube out of hand, as a teacher it is your responsibility to double check your sources – and be especially wary of well branded accounts such as ‘Our Stories’ which appear to be legitimate educational accounts but in reality may well be just hack accounts which cut and paste anything for the views and advertising revenue.

    Having said that – you can still use the whole YouTube ‘educational’ experience as a good example of hyperreality – what you get is a timeless mis-match of documentaries some contemporary, some presented as contemporary but actually 10 years old; and some based on legitimate research and worth watching, others put together by amateurs with little critical attention.

    And very final word, maybe, just maybe, this whole experience shows us that there is something in the Postmodern view that there really is no way of telling what is ‘true’ anymore, if, indeed, there is any such thing as truth – all you get with YouTube is a confusing mix of timeless resources with different biases and no way you can ever review them all or dig-down into the validity, or lack of validity, for every single video that’s been uploaded!

    Maybe it’s best just to rely on your Text Books – if you believe they are any less hyperreal than YouTube.

    Please click here to return to the homepage – ReviseSociology.com

  • Representing Gender Diversity – The New Netflix Norm…?

    Small confession…. I’ve had way too many Netflix binge sessions over the last year, and one thing I’ve noticed is that most of the Netflix shows have a wider range of representations of gender than I’m used to seeing on the BBC.

    In fact practically every series features pretty major characters who are gay, bisexual or (more recently) transgender and as a general rule these sexuality-identities are incidental to the plots – that is to say that for the most part characters are just gay (for example) and that’s that, rather than their ‘gayness’ being part of the plot itself.

    In other words Netflix seems to be doing a great of job of normalising gender diversity.

    I imagine most students are familiar with Netflix and this should offer some accessible evidence to update the topic of the representation of gender in the media.

    A few examples…

    The Hundred

    FINALLY, A T.V. series which features a bisexual woman as the MAIN CHARACTER – she starts off with a boyfriend, he dies, and then she seems to develop a preference for always women as the series progresses – but no big deal, that’s just how it is!

    The 3%

    Most characters are heterosexual but the ‘Utopia’ in the series is founded by a ‘founding trio’ who are in a three-way relationship, and later on in the series it turns out one of the main characters is a Lesbian, but actually very reticent about sex (not that interested in emotional closeness for various reasons) and there is also one transgender character, B list rather than A-list though.

    Ozark

    One of the best pieces of T.V. I have ever seen – featuring a bad gay FBI agent and a closet gay Hillbilly – they are not the most savoury of characters, but then again neither are most of the characters in this series which also features possibly the most dysfunctional yet functioning ‘cereal packet nuclear family’ ever.

    Star Trek Discovery

    The only show I’ve ever seen which features a non-binary character – the show does make a bit of a thing out of this as at one point they explain their sexuality to someone else (not identifying with any gender in particular.

    Incidentally the main character ‘ is a woman, but with a traditionally male name – Michael – NEVER questioned which I kind of like. Almost like a subtle challenge to one of the most obvious gender markers.

    There are MORE examples…

    I kept this to just FOUR examples, but there are many many more – drop your suggestions in the comments.

    Or it might be more useful/ difficult to drop new shows which DON’T have a gender diversity theme going on – it seems to be the new norm on Netflix..

    For more posts on related topics please see my page on Media Studies

  • Facebook: putting profit over safety

    According to ex Facebook employee Frances Haugen Facebook’s puts its profits over protecting users from harm – over the last several years it has consciously chosen to recommend posts which spread online hate and encourage addictive behaviour rather than protect users.

    Haugen has gone on record stating that Facebook’s own research shows that many children show addictive patterns of behaviour when using Instagram – it doesn’t make them happy, but they can’t stop using the app.

    She also says that Facebook recommends extremist and radical material to people, creating divisions, because such material holds people’s attention for longer and this increases their advertising revenue. This may well include content that is hateful towards to women and is very much in line with findings from this documentary.

    Finally she says that Facebook’s safety department is relatively understaffed compared to other departments – more people are employed in tweaking its algorithm for profit compared to keeping people safe.

    And funnily enough Facebook recently announced it would be rebranding to ‘Meta’ – this is typically what companies do when the criticisms mount up – so as deflect negative attention away.

    Relevance to A-level Sociology

    This is of relevance to the Media Option, and is also supporting evidence of how TNCs spread harms, supporting the Marxist Theory of crime (possibly!)

    Sources

    BBC News article on Facebook’s putting profit over user safety.

    Please click here to return to the homepage – ReviseSociology.com