News, Online and Participatory Media | OCR A-Level Media Studies (H409)
News, Online and Participatory Media
- 195 questions
- 13 subtopics
- The media theoretical framework, examined on both papers
- Component 01 and Component 02
News, Online and Participatory Media is examined in Component 01, Media messages.
It covers the Daily Mail as a mid-market tabloid, the Guardian, the Scott Trust and the liberal broadsheet tradition, front page construction and the language of the printed news page, news values, gatekeeping and the setting of the agenda, ideology, discourse and the positioning of the news reader, representation of social groups in news coverage, mail Online and the Guardian website as digital products, social and participatory media feeds, digital convergence and the changing newsroom, ownership, plurality and the concentration of the press, paywalls, subscriptions and online monetisation, news audiences: targeting, reception and interpretation and press regulation from the PCC to IPSO and the online challenge.
Sample questions from News, Online and Participatory Media
Answer each one closed book first, then open the answer.
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The Daily Mail as a mid-market tabloid
What is Femail, and what does its existence tell you about the paper's audience strategy?
Show the answer
Femail is the paper's long-running women's section covering fashion, health, relationships and consumer advice, and it shows the paper deliberately building around a female readership that most tabloids do not hold. -
The Guardian, the Scott Trust and the liberal broadsheet tradition
Give the reasoning behind The Guardian's refusal to put its journalism behind a paywall.
Show the answer
Its trust remit commits it to a public-interest mission, so keeping reporting free at the point of use serves readers who cannot pay and maximises the paper's global reach and influence. -
News values, gatekeeping and the setting of the agenda
Why does elite status make an event more newsworthy?
Show the answer
Events involving powerful nations, institutions or well-known individuals are assumed to matter more to the audience and to have wider consequences, so they clear the threshold at a smaller scale. -
Ideology, discourse and the positioning of the news reader
How does the choice between the words riot, protest and uprising demonstrate ideology in news language?
Show the answer
All three can denote the same event, but each carries a different judgement of its legitimacy, so the word selected assigns blame and sympathy before any argument is made. -
Mail Online and the Guardian website as digital products
Describe how The Guardian's website is organised.
Show the answer
It is arranged into sections and topic pages held in a grid of containers, with an edition switcher for the UK, US, Australia, Europe and international readers and a persistent navigation bar rather than one endless page. -
Social and participatory media feeds
Which kinds of article generate the most audience participation on a newspaper's feeds?
Show the answer
Stories that are emotive, morally charged, identity-relevant or contentious, because sharing them lets a user express who they are and argue a position, whereas routine reporting is read but not passed on. -
Ownership, plurality and the concentration of the press
Why does concentration of ownership matter for democracy?
Show the answer
If a handful of owners control most of what most people read, the range of arguments in circulation narrows and those owners gain disproportionate influence over public opinion and over politicians who fear them. -
Paywalls, subscriptions and online monetisation
Define clickbait and explain its economics.
Show the answer
Clickbait is a headline that withholds or exaggerates in order to compel a click, and it pays because revenue is earned on the page being loaded rather than on the reader being satisfied by what is on it.
The 13 subtopics
One subtopic is one session. Work down the list.
| Subtopic | What it covers | Questions |
|---|---|---|
| The Daily Mail as a mid-market tabloid | Recall questions on the Daily Mail's founding, ownership by DMG Media, right-of-centre politics and older Middle England readership, Femail, its Stephen Lawrence front page and Banish the Bags campaign, falling circulation, sister titles and its separation from Mail Online. | 15 |
| The Guardian, the Scott Trust and the liberal broadsheet tradition | Recall questions on The Guardian's origins as the Manchester Guardian, the Scott Trust and C. P. Scott's principle that comment is free but facts are sacred, its page-size changes, liberal politics and readership, its reader-funded model without a paywall, overseas editions, investigations and readers' editor. | 15 |
| Front page construction and the language of the printed news page | Recall questions on mastheads, splashes, standfirsts, plugs and bylines, the fold, captions and reversed-out type, serif and sans serif type, tabloid and broadsheet conventions, headline lexis and intertextual puns, and front-page photography. | 15 |
| News values, gatekeeping and the setting of the agenda | Recall questions on news values from Galtung and Ruge to Harcup and O'Neill, including threshold, personalisation, elite status, negativity, continuity and composition, and on gatekeeping, agenda setting and the effect of real-time analytics. | 13 |
| Ideology, discourse and the positioning of the news reader | Recall questions on ideology, discourse and hegemony in news, applying Barthes, Lévi-Strauss, Todorov and Baudrillard to news coverage, preferred readings, news as construction, and how grammar, word choice, cropping and juxtaposition position the reader. | 14 |
| Representation of social groups in news coverage | Recall questions on applying Stuart Hall, van Zoonen, bell hooks, Gilroy and Butler to news representation, symbolic annihilation, migration metaphors, moral panics about young people, source choice, framing poverty and protest, and the invisibility of the norm. | 15 |
| Mail Online and the Guardian website as digital products | Recall questions on Mail Online's launch, scrolling homepage, sidebar of shame and overseas editions, The Guardian website's organisation and contribution ask, scope and scale, hypertext, live blogs, interactive journalism, comment threads, most-read lists and mobile-first design. | 15 |
| Social and participatory media feeds | Recall questions on participatory media, Shirky's end of audience and publish then filter, Jenkins's participatory culture and textual poaching, prosumers, how newspapers use X, Facebook and Instagram, engagement measures, the risks of feeds, and comment threads read through Stuart Hall. | 14 |
| Digital convergence and the changing newsroom | Recall questions on media convergence and Jenkins's account of it, continuous publication, multiskilled journalists, search engine optimisation and analytics, citizen journalism, churnalism, editing news photographs, and how one story changes meaning across print, web and social platforms. | 18 |
| Ownership, plurality and the concentration of the press | Recall questions on Curran and Seaton's arguments about the press and the internet, media plurality and democracy, the ownership of the Daily Mail and The Guardian, proprietor influence, Hesmondhalgh on risk, integration and diversification, merger tests and alternative funding models. | 14 |
| Paywalls, subscriptions and online monetisation | Recall questions on hard and metered paywalls, freemium news, the commercial logic of Mail Online's advertising model and The Guardian's contributions, subscription apps and puzzles, programmatic and native advertising, affiliate links, clickbait, and the loss of print and classified revenue. | 14 |
| News audiences: targeting, reception and interpretation | Recall questions on demographic and psychographic profiling, the social grades of the set newspapers' readers, uses and gratifications, Stuart Hall's reader positions, Gerbner's cultivation theory and mean world syndrome, Bandura, filter bubbles and echo chambers, and online audience figures. | 15 |
| Press regulation from the PCC to IPSO and the online challenge | Recall questions on press self-regulation, the Press Complaints Commission and the phone-hacking scandal, the Leveson Inquiry, the Press Recognition Panel, IPSO and IMPRESS, the Editors' Code and public interest defence, Livingstone and Lunt, and the Online Safety Act 2023. | 18 |
How the guide is worked
Answering a question from memory stores it far better than reading the answer again. The guide runs that as a fixed procedure on one subtopic at a time, about twenty minutes a session.
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Step 1 · Closed book
Cover the answers. Work through one subtopic and write down what you can. Leave blanks where you have nothing.
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Step 2 · Open book
Go back to the top. Read each printed answer and write it out in full, including the ones you had right.
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Step 3 · Closed book again
Same questions, same order, from memory. The gap between pass one and pass three is the session result.
Read the full method, the return schedule and the research behind it.
Nearby topics
OCR A-Level Media Studies Active Recall Guide
Every topic, not just this one. 1,986 questions with their answers.