Friday 8 July 2011

Context & Anchorage

Anchorage: The way different media language elements combine to help fix meaning.

For example the way that music will influence the message translated through film or the way that text is paired with images to manipulate a story.

Smiling Britney Spears Attends Court Hearing | Britney Spears
The image above is a photo of Britney Spears on the day of a court hearing. This image is used within a story the holds the headline: 'Smiling Britney Spears attends court'. When looking at the image you can see why the denotations support it, of course the smile holds connotations of happiness and positivity which is supported by her choice of clothing which is a stereotypically 'girly' colour which could symbolise the history of her image which goes back as early as the mickey mouse club. The bottle that she is holding could possibly be the most unhealthy drink possible but the image has captured it in a way where it looks like a water bottle displaying a healthy lifestyle to go with this controversial celebrity. However, the story does go onto explain what Britney actually wears to court which is hugely different than what is in the image, proving that this image is not at all related to the story but still achieves its purpose of creating a certain image of Britney that the readers will appreciate. 

                                 Britney Spears

As you can see the image above is of Britney taken on the same day yet the headline gives it an entirely different meaning, ''Scruffy Britney Spears ignored a court date to go shopping in very poorly fitting bra'' You can instantly see that the image is very unflattering compared to the first one we saw and instead of showing her lifestyle as a healthy one, instead she is shown smoking which holds connotations of being bad or rebelling against what is good for you. The headline draws attention to her 'scruffy' image and her smile, paired with her thumbs up, looks almost sarcastic as she reacts with the paparazzi. The story reveals that this is actually the day where Britney missed a court hearing which proves how invalid the first image is to it's story.

Both images portray a different Britney and the reasoning behind this can be put down to the audience of the papers/websites that supplied the stories. The first image was provided by People.com which runs off of a 50/50 mix of celebrity and human interest articles. Therefore the headlines have to attract a readership that is genuinely interested in celebrity news and not centre itself around stories that criticise celebrities even though in this case it has manipulated the story.

However the second image is from the Daily Mail which began as a newspaper for women and to this day still holds a readership with a female majority. Because of it's genuine interest in news affairs as well as a variety of sports, fashion and music articles, it can be seen as more of a reliable source for news proven by its ability to use images that act as evidence for the story that is told. I believe that the story has been manipulated in this way because the ''lower-middle class audience'' that it aims itself at are more likely to be intrigued in the negativity surrounding the celeb culture.

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