Eduqas A-Level Media Studies A680QS
Media Language
Media Representations
Media Industries
Media Audiences
Contexts of Media
Newspapers
Advertising and Marketing
Music Video
Radio
Video Games
Film Industries and Marketing
Television in the Global Age
Magazines: Mainstream and Alternative
Media in the Online Age
Newspapers
News values, selection and the construction of reality
- 3 things to know
- Component 1
Overview
News values, agenda setting and combination in media language.
What you need to know
Answer each one before you reveal it.
What are news values?
Who first set out a systematic list of news values?
Questions from this subtopic
Each one with the model answer underneath.
- 1
What are news values?
Model answer
News values are the criteria journalists use to judge whether an event is worth reporting. News values explain why some events dominate and others never appear.
- 2
Who first set out a systematic list of news values?
Model answer
Galtung and Ruge set out a systematic list of news values in 1965. The 1965 study examined how foreign events reached the Norwegian press.
- 3
Name three news values that make an event more likely to be reported.
Model answer
Threshold, negativity and elite reference all raise the chance of coverage. A story scoring on several values at once is likely to lead the paper.
- 4
What is meant by gatekeeping?
Model answer
Gatekeeping is the filtering process by which editors decide which stories pass through to publication. Every gate closed is a version of events the reader never sees.
- 5
Define agenda setting.
Model answer
Agenda setting is the media's power to shape what audiences think about rather than what they think. Prominence and repetition tell readers which issues matter.
- 6
How does selection construct a version of reality?
Model answer
Journalists select a small number of events from an unlimited supply and discard the rest. The published paper is therefore a construction, not a window on the world.
Other ways to work this
The same content, four other ways.
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Six ways to work the same material.
Every question in Newspapers, on a schedule.
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