Box 14.2 Main attributes of news

• Timeliness and recency

• Unexpectedness

• Predictability of type

• Fragmentary nature

• Perishability

News and human interest

In Breed's characterization of news, it is at one point contrasted with human interest, implying that the former has to do with serious information, the latter with something else perhaps entertaining, personalized or sensational. In practice it is hard to separate the two, and both have been elements in the newspaper since its earliest appearance. A classic study by a pupil of Park, Helen McGill Hughes (1940), examined the relationship between the two forms of content and concluded that the (US) newspaper had been 'trans­formed from a more or less sober record into a form of popular literature'. In her view, a human interest story is not intrinsically different from other news stories but takes its character from the particular attitude which the writer adopts towards the reader. It is a story that is intended to divert, but also one which is told, as it were, from the reader's point of view. As a result, it can only be told by a reporter who is 'able to see the world as his or her readers do'. Hence it is more akin to gossip or the folk tale. The characteristics of news are derived in part from much older traditions of storytelling (Darnton, 1975). Certainly readers are often more attracted to 'human interest' than to 'news' about politics, economics and society (Curran et al., 1981; Dahlgren and Sparks, 1992). From this point of view, it has a positive contribution to make to democratic communication.

As with other genres, there are several variants that depend on the central code of the news. One example is that of gossip, especially concerning media stars or other celebrities, which purports to offer objective information but usually has no deep significance or any material relevance. The conventions and codes of the news genre can also be used in advertising or in satirical media performances, which outwardly observe the news form but are totally inverted. So-called 'tabloid television' - sensational, gossipy, weird information -is another example of the stretching of a genre. The news genre is also capable of adaptation and extension to new circumstances. News had to be in some degree reinvented for radio, television and pictorial possibilities. The 'happy news format' of television news, which was introduced in the 1970s for greater audience appeal, has been widely adopted (Dominick et al., 1975).

The Cultural Text and Its Meanings

A new form of discourse concerning media texts has emerged, especially with the rise of cultural studies and its convergence on an existing tradition of mass com­munication research. The origins of cultural studies are somewhat mixed, includ­ing traditional literary and linguistic analysis of texts, semiology and Marxist theory. A convincing effort has been made by Fiske (1987) to bring much disparate theory together, especially for the purposes of analysing and under­standing popular (television) culture. New definitions of the media text have been introduced along with ways of identifying some key features.

The concept of text

The term 'text' has been mainly used in two basic senses. One refers very gener­ally to the physical message itself - the printed document, film, television pro­gramme or musical score, as noted above. An alternative usage, recommended by Fiske, is to reserve the term 'text' for the meaningful outcome of the encounter between content and reader. For instance, a television programme 'becomes a text at the moment of reading, that is, when its interaction with one of its many audi­ences activates some of the meanings/pleasures that it is capable of provoking' (1987:14). It follows from this definition that the same television programme can produce many different texts in the sense of accomplished meanings. Summing up this point, Fiske tells us that 'a programme is produced by the industry, a text by its readers' (1987: 14). It is important, from this perspective, to see that the word 'production' applies to the activities of both the 'mass communicators' and the audiences.

This is a central point in what is essentially a theory of media content looked at from the point of view of its reception rather than its production or intrinsic meaning. Other essential elements in this approach are to emphasize that the media text (in the first or 'programme' sense) has many potential alternative meanings that can result in different readings. Mass media content is thus in principle polysemic, having multiple potential meanings for its 'readers' (in the generic sense of audience members). Fiske argues that polysemy is a necessary feature of truly popular media culture, since the more potential meanings there are, the greater the chance of appeal to different audiences and to different social categories within the total audience.

Multiplicity of textual meaning has an additional dimension, as Newcomb (1991) reminds us. Texts are constituted out of many different languages and systems of meaning. These include codes of dress, physical appearance, class and occupation, religion, ethnicity, region, social circles and many more. Any words in a spoken language or interactions in a drama can have different mean­ings in relation to any or several of these other languages.

Differential encoding and decoding again

Despite this polysemic character, the discourses of particular examples of media content are often designed or inclined to control, confine or direct the taking of meaning, which may in turn be resisted by the reader. This discussion relates to Hall's (1974/1980) model of encoding/decoding (discussed in Chapter 3), according to which there is usually a preferred reading encoded in a text - the meaning which the message producer would like the receiver to take. On the whole, it is the 'preferred readings' that are identified by analysis of overt content - the literal or surface meaning plus the ideology. One aspect of this relates to the notion of the 'inscribed reader' (Sparks and Campbell, 1987). Particular media contents can be said, in line with the theory of Bourdieu (1986), to 'construct' a reader, a construction which can to some extent be 'read back' by an analyst on the basis of the set of concerns in the text as written. The 'inscribed reader' is also the kind of reader who is primarily addressed by a message. A similar concept is that of the 'implied audience' (Deming, 1991).

The process by which this works has also been called interpellation or appellation, and usually refers back to the ideology theories of Althusser (1971). According to Fiske (1987: 53), 'interpellation refers to the way any use of discourse "hails" the addressee. In responding ... we implicitly accept the discourse's definition of "us", or ... we adopt the subject position proposed for us by the discourse.' This feature of discourse is widely exploited in advertising (Williamson, 1978), where advertise­ments commonly construct and project their image of a model consumer of the product in question. They then invite 'readers' to recognize themselves in these images. Such images normally associate certain desirable qualities (such as chicness, cleverness, youth or beauty) with using the product, and generally this is flattering to the consumer as well as to the product.

Definition: interpellation (philosophy – of an ideology or discourse) bring into being or give identity to (an individual or category)