Social class analysis

Analyse the choice of pictures used in terms of framing, shot type and mise en scene. Compare their representations of the social class of the two families. (10 marks)

The picture that is chosen for Madeleine McCann looks sensible and neat because of the location and their clothing. It looks like they are in a park and the mother and the child are wearing simple and bright clothes which could connote their social class. It could connote their social class because this means that the mum has spare time to look after the child and so she is able to spend some time with her child. However, for Shannon Matthews, the picture is a close up to make the audience focus on her face and her expressions. She is barefaced and she has a worrying expression on her face and this could have been done to show the difference between a middle class and a working class , middle class gets to spend quality time with her child smiling and having fun whereas the working class would not have any time for that and has to focus on working and living. It seems like they have almost chosen these photos for Shannon Matthews to be mocked by the audience since they did do something wrong and so they are almost being punished by the article sharing a mugshot of her face.


Also they have chosen a picture where the mum is with her daughter for Madeleine McCann however, the picture that has been chosen for Shannon Matthews, her photo is separated from her daughter and this could give the audience quite a distant feel for the relationship between Shannon Matthews and her daughter. Whereas, for McCann it can covey that the relationship between her and her daughter was strong and can show that she is more motherly than Shannon Matthew's mother. The distant feel can make the audience feel like Shannon Matthews mother may not deserve to be a mum which can be significant from what she did to her daughter and everyone else.

Hall notes that representation is “contested”, in particular, the representation of those with less power in society.  He argues that news coverage can be hierarchical.  To what extent is this evident from the two readings? Make reference to Hall’s theory of representation in your answer. (10 marks)

The one with less power would have less chance to be heard, therefore there are less chances of people with less power to be the headline of the news unless it's very extreme. In order for them to be heard, they will have to do something extreme or work as hard as they can to be heard when on the other hand, the people with power could make just one phone call to make themselves on the headline of the news. News coverage is definitely hierarchical and this is because people would more likely to be interested into something that happened to a more high social class person to someone with a low social class.


For example in this article for McCann, it's seems obvious that McCann is situated in a more higher social class than the Matthews. This can be shown in the article where: "a child psychologist from England will next week fly out to the Algarve to help the couple with the difficult
task of telling their twins that Madeleine is not on holiday, as the toddlers currently believe".
They managed to get a psychologist from England to fly to Algarve for the toddlers, a normal working class
wouldn't have had the power to get someone like that or the money to get someone to fly into a different
country for their kids. Another example is "who has pledged the Government's full support.", they got the
government involved and this is a obvious clue to what social class they must be in to get the governments
attention and the help from the government which is basically the country.


What is the dominant (intended) meaning of The Daily Telegraph? How is the audience supposed to feel about the two families?  Do you take a negotiated or oppositional reading and if so, how / why? Make reference to reception theory in your answer. (15 marks)


The article portrays Madeleine McCann's article in a most sympathetic way and so the audience is meant to sympathise with the incident and maybe take dominant reading. This is because of the way the article has been layered out, they've used a lot of quotations to gather the audiences attention on how the mother feels and how the family is feeling right now because of the situation but also, they have  used adjectives that describes their sorrow and their sadness repetitively.
However for the Shannon Matthews article, there are no quotations regarding to how the family feels about this situation but also into why they have decided to do this and what has put this into their minds. The article reinforces the fact that she has several husbands and her social class which is a working class. I guess the article is trying to stress the fact that she is a working class with several husbands which could possibly mean she didn't get enough education when she was young or something could have happened when she was a teenager that may have caused her to act like this and make this kind of incident.