Critical investigation Task #5

Introduction (200 words)

• Introduce the general overall perspective, lay out primary, secondary texts and historical texts
• General focus on the negative way that young people were presented during the coverage of the EU referendum
• If not negative there was little to no representation of young people in the media at all
• British Youth Council work with the EU referendum
• Vast difference in the way that the Leave and Remain parties were viewed in the media
•  Remain, was younger
•  Leave, was older
• Specifically talk about what "media coverage"; newspaper/TV/digital media?

2016; annus horribilis. Depression has been at an all-time high. Bowie, Prince, Muhammad Ali; the deaths of these prominent figures left the world in mourning. Yet some, to this day argue, that nothing was worse than the death of democracy on the 23rd of June, 2016. For on this day, the United Kingdom, once an empire of the past, chose to listen to the blatant lies of dirty politicians and the fear mongering of smear campaigns. After the dust had settled, it became clear that the huge driving force of the Remain campaign was the 73% of 18-24 year old. Yet how was the youthful population represented during the campaign? This essay will be focusing on the way that young people were presented as part of the coverage for the EU referendum and exploring the media's influence on political engagement. 

Critical investigation tutorial 02/12/16

Introduction – lay out argument, define primary text(s) and any secondary/historical texts. What does ‘media coverage’ mean? Present your angle/hypothesis. 200 words. 

Section 1 – Historical context / past media coverage of political events. 1975 and 1992 – that should work well. Consider 1997 too (especially since there is a lot out there in terms of New Labour and media coverage, spin etc.) 300 words.

Section 2 – Statistical analysis of voter behaviour and media influence. Academic research and set out the conditions which the referendum then took place in. 250 words.

Section 3 – During the campaign. Textual analysis of primary texts. Deconstruct newspaper front pages etc. 400 words.

Section 4 – Post-referendum. Did anything change? Focus on youth. 400 words.

Section 5 - Effects theory and research. What impact does the media have on audiences in political campaigns? Are young people part of this or excluded? Bias etc. There must be loads of both academic texts AND Guardian/MM articles that explore this issue. This is a crucial section to demonstrate academic strength of essay. 500 words.

Section 6 - Future of this debate. Are young people getting more power/influence as a result of new technology? Are newspapers / influence of media on the decline? Fake news. Facebook. How might future election campaigns be fought? Trump etc. 400 words.

Conclusion – sum up your argument, snappy ending please! 150 words.


Next steps… update/finish your plan based on this tutorial. You don’t need to stick to the above by any means but hopefully it has at least clarified your thinking and provided a potential structure that will be easy to follow.

I need to have a quick read of your opening paragraph when it’s written but otherwise you are good to go.

This essay has great potential – the key is making sure there is a strong media focus throughout. The sections on effects theory/research and new technology should be particularly good.

Publish this tutorial to your blog with your next steps as usual.


Next steps

• Improve on essay plan with modifications
• Focus more on academic research
• Catch up on notes and quotes
• Media Magazine and academic articles from google Scholar

Critical investigation Task 4: essay plan

“To what extent did the media coverage of the EU referendum affect the engagement of young people in politics?”

Introduction (200 words)

• Introduce the general overall perspective, lay out primary, secondary texts and historical texts
• General focus on the negative way that young people were presented during the coverage of the EU referendum
• If not negative there was little to no representation of young people in the media at all
• British Youth Council work with the EU referendum
• Vast difference in the way that the Leave and Remain parties were viewed in the media
•  Remain, was younger
•  Leave, was older
• Specifically talk about what "media coverage"; newspaper/TV/digital media?

Section 1 – Before the referendum (300 words)

• Web articles and media coverage just before the EU Referendum
• How did this affect the turn out?
• What were the preferred readings and dominant ideologies?
• How were young people targeted?
• Historical text - Media coverage of past elections: 1992 general election/1975 EU referendum/Possibly 1997?
• Focus on the media coverage and how this affected voter behaviour, especially the 1992 general election, coverage by The Sun
• Compare how the coverage was done in the past, with the coverage in the 2016 referendum 
• Do the strategies differ? Have they changed in anyway? How are they the same?
• 1997 too (especially since there is a lot out there in terms of New Labour and media coverage, spin etc.) 

Section 2 – During the referendum (400 words)

• Primary text - Textual analysis
• Take the front page cover of one of each major newspaper during the referendum, deconstruct 
• Lack of young people focus? Too much young people focus?
• The analysis of each front page cover, and how would that have affected the engagement of a young people
• EU Referendum coverage was one that was infamous for its spread of lies, negativity and fear mongering
• Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph, Times, Sunday Times, The Guardian, Financial Times, Independent

Section 3 – Post referendum (400 words)

• Huge focus on the youth
• “Young people were marginalised”
• https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/09/young-people-referendum-turnout-brexit-twice-as-high 
• "Turn out was twice as high than expected" 
• Young people were a lot more keener to get involved with politics, most specifically the referendum
• https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/24/meet-the-75-young-people-who-voted-to-remain-in-eu
• “When we tweeted a callout asking young readers for their responses, rather than the 20 or so we expected, we received more than 200 emails in half an hour.”
• Young people are angry and annoyed that they were not listened to
• Could create an unintentional reading amongst older readers as it would reinforce the fact that young people do not appreciate authority and are not happy with democratic vote. Unintentional view of anarchistic, rebellious, immature young people
• http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/720956/brexit-voter-apologies-for-leave-vote-lbc
• This made the news and was very famous for the fact that it was an actual Brexit voter admitting that he made a mistake
• “My lad’s 13. He’s getting to an age now and I will apologise to him. I will say sorry to him.”
• Emotional, admits that he had not thought about his young child and effectively young people around the UK
• Shows that even Brexit voters are starting to realise they have voted for something that will negatively affect young people

Section 4 - Statistical analysis (250 words)

• Voter behaviour and media influence. 
• Academic research and set out the conditions which the referendum then took place in. 
• http://opinium.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/the_impact_of_brexit_on_consumer_behaviour_0.pdf
• Report and data which focuses on the psychological behaviour of the average voter
• This data could have been used by marketing strategists and campaigners for both Remain and Leave teams to target voters
• There is a significant lack of focus on young people in the report's data
• If that was the case, could show that young people were not targeted for the campaign and reinforces the fact that they were not a priority

Section 5 -  Effects theory and research (500 words)

• What impact does the media have on audiences in political campaigns? 
• Are young people part of this or excluded? Bias etc. 
• Academic texts AND Guardian/MM articles that explore this issue. 
• This is a crucial section to demonstrate academic strength of essay. 

Section 6 -  Future of this debate (400 words)

• Are young people getting more power/influence as a result of new technology? 
• Are newspapers / influence of media on the decline? 
• Fake news. Facebook. 
• How might future election campaigns be fought? Trump etc.

Conclusion (150 words)

• Sum up argument
• Snappy ending

Critical investigation tutorial 24/11/16

• Notes & Quotes document currently a problem – version in front of us is 800 words but USB problems (latest version is apparently 1,500). Either way, this is a long way short of where it needs to be. This may be largely due to lost work needing to be re-done… Always back your work up somewhere – blog, school drive etc. In terms of what you’ve got so far, fantastic selection of web articles which for EU-related stuff is always going to be the starting point. There is so much coverage of recent events that it will take a lot of time to read, select quotes and make notes on all the online coverage. However, we now desperately need to develop this with academic books and journal articles. The BFI trip will hopefully help with this but remember for such a recent topic your BFI list may be somewhat shorter than others.

• Textual Analysis – this was Task #1 and was due last week. Obviously this is tricky in terms of the subject matter but I would focus on newspaper front covers from the period of the referendum campaign and perhaps look at one cover from each of the major newspapers. This doesn’t necessarily need to be focused on young people – it may be equally interesting for, say, the Daily Mail and Telegraph to focus on how young people are excluded or marginalised from the coverage. The other option is to approach this from a totally different perspective and do a content analysis of the news coverage of the referendum. Further details: http://psc.dss.ucdavis.edu/sommerb/sommerdemo/content/intro.htm

• Task #2 is academic research and bibliography. Good to hear you’ve started the bibliography but I’d like to see it on your blog to check the progress. Remember, EVERYTHING needs to go in there regardless of whether you end up quoting it in the essay. If you’ve read it or watched it – put it in the bibliography. One request: please export your bibliography and post it to your blog next time you do this. On the subject of watching stuff, I’d certainly check out some documentaries on Brexit – the BBC have done two (one before and one after the referendum).

• Vital website for you: http://ukandeu.ac.uk/research-papers/ 

• You may also want to read web articles on bias and news reporting and extrapolate from that thoughts regarding young people and politics: e.g. http://www.newstatesman.com/broadcast/2013/08/hard-evidence-how-biased-bbc or http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2016/10/broadcasters-were-biased-during-eu-referendum-campaign-not-way-you-think 

• In terms of academic research, you will hopefully get some good stuff from the BFI trip next week but there should be a good starting point in DF07 with recent purchases. The Contradictions of Media Power by Des Freedman; Media Regulation by Lunt and Livingstone; Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky (look for politics in the index); Power without Responsibility: Press, Broadcasting and the Internet in Britain by James Curran; Misunderstanding the Internet by James Curran, Natalie Fenton, Des Freedman (again, look for politics in the index).

• Also check out Google Scholar and journal article PDFs. E.g. http://www.academia.edu/download/37184279/Gerodimos_and_Ward_2007.pdf ; http://irep.ntu.ac.uk/13766/1/196453_HENNUninterestedYouth.pdf  ; there are 10 on political engagement on the M: drive so make sure you read every single one (even if it is just the first few pages and you ultimately reject – still goes in the bibliography!) 

• Last week’s task is historical text analysis – this also needs catching up on. Looking at previous general elections could work – famous ones like 1992 perhaps? You’ve also got the 1975 European referendum which you should read up on and obviously not so much historical but as a secondary text the Scottish referendum is a great idea (particularly the votes at 16 stuff).

• Tasks #1-3 – make sure you develop these urgently to move the word count up to and beyond 4,500. New task is essay plan that you can work on over the next week or so.

• LR: Copy this into a new blog post called ‘Critical Investigation tutorial’ and write the next three steps in your research below my feedback.