THE GUARDIAN CASE STUDY HAHAHAHA.

 

The Guardian is a left wing broadsheet paper in the uk...But what else is there

Originally the Manchester guardian, it was founded to promote liberal ideology after the peterloo massacre in 1821, it went on to receive it's national and international fame under the leadership of cp Scott who made sure to carry on the values layed out by the original founder which he did for 57 years. After him came jp Scott who made the radical decision to hand over his owner ship of the paper to..

Ownership

It's owned by Guardian media group which has only one share holder being the Scott trust. The trust is like a middle man that collects all the money from those who invest in it and gives it to GMG independently. This way those who wish to fund the paper have no influence on the product and It maintains is editorial freedom.

Funding

On the topic of funding outside the Scott Trust the Guardian over half of the guardian's funding comes from it's readers. Consumers of the Guardian can contribute in many ways the most obvious form is through paper sales of which the guardian is racking in the big bucks making 264 mill this fiscal year  but there are other ways. The Guardian has other publications like the observer and the guardian weekly And readers can support more directly by subscribing to the guardian on their site, readers can give from 1£ upwards. if you really want to you can write them a cheque to GMG or leave them money in your will.

Ideologies

The guardian was founded to give a voice to liberal ideas and concepts so naturally they lean left on the political spectrum. However this doesn't mean they support any particular party. When it comes to politics they try and stay neutral in their reporting, the main bulk of headlines are tory slander.

Useful stuff

The Guardian are self regulated. They handle all their own complaints and they can be viewed

on their website and on page 9 of their pull-out. You can argue that them not having this closer shows that they're not proud of their abilities of regulation and want to hide them away. 

 

This cover is a great example of the influence of guardian ownership's. In this example the masthead has had some of it's main elements removed, that being the lifestyle article and the insight article that sits above the guardian logo. This is to give the main focus to the Israeli Palestine conflict. This shows the Guardians editorial freedom, a value of the Scott trust, as they have changed their whole conventions just for 1 story, this in turn also shows their supposed lack of bias as they have given no opinionated take on the story.  This is achieved through the use of print 

Here is Page 9 of the Guardian's pullout. 

Here we can look at the layout to see what the guardian thinks on regulation. By looking at the construction of the layout, off to the side in smaller text "corrections and clarifications" This could say 2 things about regulation. The comparative size of the section to everything else could say that the guardian does not take it's regulation seriously as it doesn't give it any space. 

However it could say that the lack of a more prominent corrections panel could say that they don't receive enough complains to allocate a whole section to them.

This cover shows us 2 important parts of the guardian and what they look like in practice.

First is it's freedom. This issue of the Guardian has droped it's traditional blue banner for a half page picture depicting climate change. This shows us that freedom as they can changes the whole look of an issue depending on the importance of the story

We can also see an example of the guardian's unbiased nature in the second headline as despite being a left leaning paper they don't jump on the chance to parade the liberal leader as we can see in the headline "Starmer must be bold" It doesn't critisise him or parade him it just makes a thoughtful comment on how he must procced showing their lack of bias.  

 

Audience research 

The Guardian has an average print readership of 516,000 and of these 500,000;

86% are ABC1 readers with an average annual income of 28k

The average age of the readers tend to be 54

The people that read the guardian tend to be Explorers, reformers & Succeeders.  people who like to experience the world and try to make change and progress

50% of the guardian's readership are female.

Are Progressives- Guardian readers like to travel frequently and be heavy resteraunt goers

THE GUARDIAN ONLINE

e  The Gaurdian.com is the online version of the Paper. This website has had huge success and has helped make GMG the third largest paper in the world

The website has offset the loss in sales as 34 million people actively use the site globally and their is a Aussie and Mercian globalisation.

These 34 million can access the Guardian online through many ways such as 

Desktop 

Mobile/tablet

and through their social media 

The website has increased 50% of GMGs profits

The Production !!

The online version of the paper keeps the progressive liberal opinions of it's parcment counter part

The site offers exclusive content such as opinion which is a whole section of the website which is dedicated to giving stories that are strongly opinionated and attempt to challage ideas.

The website has a front page for general content but also has niche pages for certain topics, their is also a rolling news section that is constantly updated.

The Distribution !!

This online content can be found on a wide variety of devises and all over the world

certain countries have their own news sites with their own content and 

the Guardian has a deal with yahoo where users in India and Singapore access the guardian content through the browser

The Gaurdian online 

like the paper self regulates meaning that all the complaints that come into the guardian are handled by the guardian and 

Much like the Mail the Guardian resolve their complaints by correcting the mistake however this doesn't do the issue much justice as the article has already been read and no on will re read it.

Digital convergence has positively affected the gaurdian and propelled it to great hights.

The production of the guardian has gone up with launch of the website as more content can be put up on the website whenever which removes the need for audience to be patient and allows them to be informed on currant affairs. We can see this on the guardian as on the website stories are put up throughout the day rather than daily on a paper. Distribution   

The Guardian has Over 4 million daily users, these Readers can be identified by the following Demographics: 67% of the readers are above 35 and 33% are younger being 15-25 with the majority being 

Part of the ABC1 group- these people tend to be educated in high up positions and like to stay informed, the Guardian appeals to them as it has a more middle class speach code and is heavy on hard news and international news

These are the home pages for the Guardian Uk and US. Looking through the Uses and Grats. The Guardian online provides information on a wide amount of topics, we can see this here as we have stories on the economy and the potentail recession as well as a Story on lab grown eel meat- 

The more light hearted story Provides entertainment as it's soft news but relates to a wider bigger issue which makes it still appeal to the audience

The guardian Online Follows the ideas of Harcup and Oneils news Values. While celebrity news isn't very present looking at both examples is obvious that the Guardian places stories with the The elite higher than other stories, on the main page, We can see this through the use of pictures as they are shown as superior as they use low angle shots to portray there superiority over us, however the lexis used in their articles gives them negative conotations using words like "condem' and "tests". While the gaurdian acknowledge the power of these people they do not show any support towards them. This reflects the ideas of the Guardians audience being ABC1 as they are educated and would understand the Power these people over and critisese them for their actions. These complex representations created by the Guardian prevent what gerbner calls mean world syndrome where prolonged exposure to a certain kind of media can cause people to believe things which aren't true, if the guardian were to make these powerful elite look a fool all the time their audience wouldn't understand their influence and become ignorant.

The Guardian Applies to the uses and gratification theory as it provides different kinds of content to it's users. We can see this in the sports section of the guardian online, sports are a personal interest to most and act as a way to escape. We can see this in the lexis used in the articles as the Australian open is described as a "five-set Thriller" and "alcaraz sweeps past". The words chosen increase the intensity of the Article and the sport do more than inform people on the match but encaptivating them by turning it into a story. What this shows us that the audience are a part of the ABC1 demographic as they have a more in-depth interest in sports. 

They utilise click streaming to understand the audience preferences which can be seen blatantly as they have a "most viewed" section

34.7 Million global users Access the site monthly and 24.2 Uk users do the same

They lead the market in Online news across desktop and twitter platforms

The Guardians masthead takes you back to the beginning

Social Media 

Codes and conventions, using similar assets to create brand identity and recognition. the same icon is used across all the social media platforms to create an idea of semblance. 

They also use the shade of blue

Their videos are also adapted to the format of phones 

On the social media 

They have adapted their articles to a Instagram format as they have implemented using multiple images to swipe across the story.

Their are comments where you can comment which is standard on all social media

their stories have been made more concise to fit the social media audience

On Instagram they post adapted stories 

They keep the tone of their stories but also include more soft news probably to keep peoples feeds from being to negative

 

Has all the stuff you would expect  

Contains video content

The Text is minimal unlike the print. As to draw people into the article

You 

Twitter posts are more comments on situations and live news rather than stories themselves. 

but also they post ads for the stories and the paper

They have the masthead and the G 

They all have links that relate them back to the guardian website 

Which 

You can see the amount of engagement a post has gotten to see weather or not it's interesting 

From this article you can see the guardian's People centric view and views on the government as it goes into level of industrial death that took place during Covid. It instills an idea of fear and helplessness through describing the weakness of the patients 

They also prade the social workers in the image used as it frames the doctor as a hero and fearless and the government is made to look like shit. We can see this as using Binary opposites of the heroic doctors suffering in death

This article we can see the guardians Liberal and people centric views. 

As for the liberal ideas we can see this in the content of the article we can see the government as carefree tyrants who partied as thousands died. The terms of 'industrial scale of death' creates a bianary opposition of the The tyranical doctors and the suffering patients