Key Assessment.

Key Assessment.

Explore how audiences can respond to and interpret the ideological perspectives of newspapers?

The story of the Finsbury park murder of a baby in a hammer attack by his dad was mostly met with shock and horror, wondering how this could have happened. A theory created by Stuart Hall, surrounding a polysemic ideology, states that there are three readings to every text, these are: the dominant reading, the negotiated reading and the oppositional reading. The dominant reading is the most common and widely-accepted interpretation of the text. In this article, the dominant reading is one of outrage and shock, wanting nothing less but to "put him in jail for life." The second reading, the negotiated reading, means that a member of the audience partly agrees with some parts of the product but also holds a different opinion. From the comments made on this article we can see that some readers of the piece agree with the idea that the baby's death was horrific. However, they also believe that the public should take action to prevent this from happening again and suggests giving money to charities. The final reading discussed in Stuart Hall's theory is the oppositional reading which means that the audience or some of it's members completely disagree with the products main message. Although most people are in agreement over this subject, other choose to focus on issues that were not previously discussed by others. One reader commented "would be called a terrorist if he was muslim" which suggests that they want to focus on issues outside of the article, rather than the death of the child. 

The article uses traumatic language to evoke a sense of sadness and horror in it's reader. Some ways in which they do this is by using a large bold font displaying the words "MAN HELD AFTER TODDLER DIES IN HAMMER ATTACK." this shocks the audience and makes them feel that they have to read the article. As well as this the news paper has used the image underneath the headline to anchor the story. The image has been carefully selected for the way that the baby in the foreground of the photograph is looking up at the camera, making the reader feel that he is begging them for help. On top of this the baby in the background of the shot, who is likely his twin sister, has had their face blurred out, implying that they are not as important to the article as the boy is. The colour of the boys clothing (blue) as well as his facial expression, which makes him seem like he is sad and almost in pain, have been combined to make the audience feel guilty and want to read the article to find out what happened to the poor boy.

A strong article can create a large amount of audience negotiations and this piece is no different. Although most people are in agreement that the father of the twins is to blame and he should be sent to prison, some readers started a debate about the religious views and nationality of the man. One comment which sums up the way that most people felt about these debates is "You're all mad, blaming ethnicity and nationality." The comment suggests that more people care about the main message of the article rather than the underlying issues discussed by some of the audience.