News Representation: Practise question

Discuss the representations/media language in sources A and B using Gilroy's ideas. (10)

Paul Gilroy's theory of Ethnicity and post-colonialism states how he believes that ethnic minorities are often shown as weak, dehumanised and powerless due to Britain's powerful colonialism history. He believes that the history of Britain is embedded in us and some white Brits feel as if they are superior to other people because of this history and therefore racism is present. This theory is relevant in the media and the representations in which they portray of people.

Source A (the Daily Express) represents immigration in a negative way through the media language in which it uses. The headline is in large, bold typography which is a common feature of the mid-market genre. The headline features sensationalised language which also comes across as aggressive through the use of a personal pronoun 'we' followed by an imperative 'must'. The headline is not informing people on what news is happening, but instead giving them instructions which allows for it to have a propaganda affect- like posters that people would see at war. This makes the front page relevant to the ideas that Gilroy suggests of people still reminiscing about war time and how this affects their representations.The use of the word 'invasion' on the headline shows the paper to be representing immigrants as a threat. The newspaper may feel this way due to the colonialist history of Britain as the paper has shown to clearly support Britain and the history that it has through its logo of St George and the slogan 'We're backing Britain'. The paper may also be representing immigration negatively due to its right wing political leaning which can have these ideologies. Source A features another story 'why our royals just love being together.' This shows the paper representing the royal family in a positive way and enforces the paper's representations of loving British culture and dehumanising other ethnicity. This supports Gilroy's theory as the paper is supporting Britain but not helping people in other countries due to believing that Britain is better.

In contrast, source B (The Guardian) represents immigration in a sympathetic and empathetic way through the media language it uses. The paper represents migrants as suffering people who are being refused help by those who view them negatively due to beliefs of being superior- which Gilroy's theory suggests. The close up image of a vulnerable man who is from Calais causes readers to feel emotional by seeing someone suffering. The readers of the paper should see this image of the man suffering (due to his home being destroyed and now not having anywhere to go) and know that negative thoughts around other ethnicity should stop as the readership mainly consists of liberals due to the paper having a labour party leaning. The main image on the Guardian is met with no main image to go with the main story of the Daily Express. Source A may have no image to accompany its main story as they don't want people to see the migrants and feel sorry for them, instead they want people to not accept them and deny them of help. The images in which they do have are of a white female and a typical British country-side which again shows them to be just supporting British culture. The Guardian has identified that people have these negative views of migrants and wants to represent them as people who need help rather than a threat like The Daily Express makes out. This shows The Guardian to understand Gilroy's theory but not have the 'superior style' views itself in which he talks about. The Guardian again shows recognition that people are viewing immigrants negatively through the use of their headline: 'councils resist pressure to take children from Calais'. The paper is not using sensationalised language unlike source A but is instead representing the British council negatively as it is showing them to be neglectful to other ethnicity just like Gilroy's theory suggests.

Overall, source A uses media language to represent immigration as a negative thing and doesn't want the British people to help. This shows the paper to believe that British people are superior to other ethnicities and therefore convey to Gilroy's theory. Source B, identifies that people in Britain have negative views towards other ethnicties but tries to represent that it is wrong to have these views. The paper partly subverts Gilroy's theory as it doesn't conform to the beliefs itself but represents an understanding for what he thinks is happening as it can identify examples happening of this.