Audience Interpretation (first teaching 2022) GapFill

Copyright info – The Sun © News UK, 2019

Fill in the gaps to complete the analysis of how different audiences might interpret the front page of The Sun newspaper pictured above.

This front page was published in the months leading up to the 2019 general election. Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson was trying to start the process of Brexit. Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party, was one of many politicians who were trying to prevent the prime minister from passing a hard Brexit.

In order to understand how audiences might interpret this front page, it is important to look at the  signswordsthemesimages The Sun has created.

We can start by looking at the  characterisationdenotationplotconnotation of the front page: Jeremy Corbyn’s face has been  drawnsketcheddigitally imposedremoved onto the body of a chicken; the phrase ‘Is THIS the most dangerous chicken in Britain?’ and the phrase ‘Corbyn clucks up Brexit!’ are written in red text.

We can now look at the  surface readingdenotationspoint of viewconnotations of these signs: Jeremy Corbyn is displaying the cowardice of a chicken by not allowing Brexit to proceed; The Sun believes Corbyn is dangerous enough to block Brexit forever and Corbyn is refusing to honour the result of the Brexit referendum by ‘clucking it up’. These elements improve our understanding of The Sun’s  charactershistoryideologyproducer – we know that the paper supports Brexit, strongly opposes Jeremy Corbyn and his party, and is generally supportive of Boris Johnson and the Conservatives.   PassiveProgressiveFunctioningEffective audiences are likely to accept The Sun’s messages as entirely factual – they will automatically agree that Jeremy Corbyn is a dangerous chicken and take  an adversean antia preferreda negotiated reading of the front page.

However, a large portion of audiences will be more  activequietindifferentapathetic in their approach and interpret the front page in different ways. Certain audiences may take   a negotiatedan oppositionala preferredan aberrant reading – for example, they might dislike Jeremy Corbyn’s politics but object to how The Sun mocks him in such an infantile manner.

Many audiences may take   a preferredan oppositionalan approveda negotiated reading if they support Jeremy Corbyn and his attempts to block Brexit.

A select few audience members may interpret the front page differently from most based on their own personal experiences, e.g. knowing Jeremy Corbyn first-hand, owning a business that could be negatively affected by Brexit – these individuals would take   a negotiatedan aberranta preferredan adopted reading of the paper.