The Voice CSP

The Voice

https://quizlet.com/392747361/csp-the-voice-flash-cards/

Who is the target audience for the voice website?
B or c1 or or c2
Black Britons
Aged 22-55 
Male or Female

Who is The Voice owned by and how does this effect the website?
Owned by The Gleaner Company in Jamaica (which has its own Jamaican paper).
- There is representation of key Jamaican individuals in the paper e.g. 'Hottest Name in Danchall' article about Rygin King.
- Jamaica takes on more psycho-geographic importance, in the site, than other places.
- Black Britons who have African heritage now more numerous than those with Jamaican heritage, but there are fewer stories concerning Lagos than Kingston

Why was The Voice created?
- Early 80s = a strong sense from within the black community that they needed a newspaper for the community.
- Events like the riots were being reported on by journalists (on T.V. and in print) who were often negative towards black people.
- Even if positive they were outsiders who didn't really know what was going on.
- Black people were always being represented from a white person's perspective (in this way this links to the post-colonialist ideas of Edward Said).
- 1 year after Brixtons riots 
- Independent niche platform (Print and online) 
- Intially sold in London its only sold its first edition was 'event release' - 1982 August BH weekend (Notting Hill Carnival)
- The voice provides a social and cultual platform for hard news and soft news linked directly to a wider black community 
- Key focus - black British cultural identity 



Who was the paper created by?
- Val Mcalla started the paper in 1982 from a small council flat in east London.
- The paper was an independent.
- It started with a print run of only 4000 copies but within eight years was shifting over 53,000 copies a week

Who did the paper aim itself at?
squarely at the second generation of black Britons. Those whose experience did not lead them to look at another country as home.

Where did McCalla secure funding from?
Greater London Council (The GLC).
- This was run by Ken Livingstone and was often in direct opposition to the Thatcher government of the day. Livingstone was a supporter of minority and working class groups.

Barclays Bank
- The bank had been the subject of high levels of criticism because of its investments in apartheid-era South Africa. Supporting The Voice would be a good P.R. move.

Influential black British media, journalistic, and political, talent who honed their skills on the paper:
> Former Commission for Racial Equality chair Trevor Philips
> ITV's Martin Bashir
> Filmmaker and novelist Kolton Lee

What was the purpose of the paper?
The issue of police racism and harassment being the defining story. Mainstream media was not reporting the issue or framed it through the perspective of the police, government and lawmakers.

What had happened to the paper by the late 90s?
The paper was in a bad way. There were financial irregularities, lots of staff sackings, the readership dropped to 12,000 and the paper was not faring well against the new rival, The New Nation (which seemed much fresher and more in tune with the Zeitgeist).

What happened in 2002?
- McCalla died and the whole enterprise was thrown into disarray.
- Not financially viable and was sold to The Gleaner Group in Jamaica in 2004.
- This media group already had a presence in the UK as The Gleaner was one of their newspapers, consumed by Jamaican migrants, which The Voice had supplanted in the early 80s - although it still sells.

Psychographics:
Reformers : value own independent judgement, socially aware + pride themselves on Tolerance
Succeeders: Tend to occupy positions of responsibility, have a strong goal of orientation
Mainstreamers: core need in life is for security

Give examples from the website that this is aimed at a specialized or niche audience:
Navigation bar gives access to a section of the website called ‘Windrush 70’
The key signifier of most of the images is a black person
The tag line “Britain’s favourite Black Newspaper” i.e provides a specific country and race

What audience’s pleasure are provided by the audience:
Uses and gratification theory:
Surveillance - Conventions of a newspaper platform: Articles about stories that concern those of the black community e.g. “Netflix announces first original African animated series”
Personal identity: Articles addressing issues that directly affect that affect the audience of Black Britons anchored by key signifier of the images (black people)
Entertainment: articles about TV an film , polls in the sidebar, competitions to enter etc

Crucially personal identity with issues affecting the black community
Audience are positioned using Stuart hall into dominant preferred reating - narratives constructed by BLACK British WRITERS FOR A BLACK BRITISH DEMOGRAPHIC


Studying the themes of politics, history and racism that feature in some of the Voice's content, why might this resonate with the Voice's British target audience?
issues that directly affect the audience (personal identity - uses and gratifications theory) issues that are not as commonly talked about in the mainstream media as issues that affect white people/those of Western descent; find themselves being represented more so than in traditional news media, such as BBC news.

Can you find any examples of content on the Voice's website created or driven by the audience or citizen journalism? How does this reflect Clay Shirky's work on the 'end of the audience' theory and the era of 'mass amateurisation'?
- social media hyperlinks; links to The Voice's Twitter, Facebook and Instagram pages = example of convergence, builds a community around the Voice.
- ability to post comments at the end of the articles
- ability to vote in polls on the homepage (above the fold; suggestion that audience participation is important and anchors title of newspaper)

What adverts or promotions can you find on The Voice's website? Are the adverts based on the user's cookies on fixed adverts?
- adverts are fixed rather than cookie-based, suggestion that they don't want any content on website catering for audiences that aren't black
- cookie-based adverts would risk alienating their intended audience
- no adverts on mobile, banner adverts on site but only when viewed on a computer
- e.g. money transfers to African countries; catering for a black, disporic audience

What do the adverts tell you about the level of technology and sophistication of The Voice's website?
- not very advanced, most other websites use cookies and showcase adverts that cater for the person viewing page
- website does not fill the screen, proportions not smartphone appropriate

Is there an element of public service to The Voice's role in British media or is simply a vehicle to make profit?
-When depictions of black people in mainstream media take place in the mainstream, the representation is often problematic. They are sometimes rendered as threatening and this portrayal is supported by sensationalist techniques, headlines and popular stereotypes.
- These types of negative depictions assert the need for an alternative representation and a black press moves towards providing this.
- The Voice looks similar to BBC website; suggestion that there is limited representation of black people in mainstream broadcasting.

Debates about audience segmentation:
Is the product a safe space where the audience can go to build a sense of identity or is it a ghetto which allows the target audience group to be cut off from mainstream culture (not represented or engaged with)?

How does The Voice exhibit churnalism?
It doesn't effectively cover news stories affecting Black Britons (the Guardian led the way on The Windrush Scandal) and mostly seems to process press releases and cut and paste material.
- For example, in March 2019 there were a series of racist attacks in UK cities but most of these were not covered by the paper, and the one that was contained no different information from mainstream news sources.

How can we tell that The Voice Online is not reaching its target audience?
Despite claiming to speak for Black British people, the magazine can only afford one journalist - suggesting they can't have the readership to support major advertising revenue.

In what way is The Voice Online similar to the BBC's website?
Seems to be between the 2003 and 2008 models. This does mean that the site signifies to the audience that it is a news site with headlines, a news-flash scroll and news images, whilst also suggesting a lack of representation of Black Britons in the mainstream news media.


Use of menu bars
On the landing page - clearly signify that this is an internet product however some are misleading (the Racism in Football section contains no stories more recent than 2014).

How is the design of the website outdated?
> Few choices have been made recently.
> The typeface (sans-serif) is supposed to feel modern but within articles is blocky and dated.
> All design signifies values and ideologies to the audience - two big areas that design connotes are either modernity or tradition.
> In the case of The Voice, the website followed modern trends but now subtly signifies that the site has not been kept up with the times (perhaps it also might signify that the site's attitudes may be similarly dated)

What is wrong with TVO's emphasis on sports and entertainment?
There is an over-emphasis on sports and entertainment stars on the pages of The Voice.
- The black Powerlist shows that achievement is from a more diverse field of endeavours

What is wrong with the Faith section of the website?
- Concerns itself solely with black Christianity (at least 15% of the black British population is Muslim).
- Also links to both News and Entertainment through the coverage, and representation of, gospel music
- Makes the site unusual in the U.K. as there is rarely in white Christian culture a crossover between religion and entertainment.

Henry Jenkins - Convergence
Little video on the but The Voice has both Instagram and Facebook presences which allow it to connect with a new audience. Ability to share and promote articles, allowing readers to reply with comments.

How is The Voice limited in terms of online presence?
- Few videos seem to get more than 100 views on Facebook
- Instagram account has 14 thousand followers but only over 1000 following
- No comments on any of the stories on the website
- Some comments on both the Facebook and Instagram pages, but not many
 - Few videos seem to get more than 100 views on Facebook
- Instagram account has 14 thousand followers but only over 1000 following
- No comments on any of the stories on the website
- Some comments on both the Facebook and Instagram pages, but not many

What can you write about in relation to audiences?
 The paper used to have a key target audience.
> Focus on Faith section - paper gives representation to black Christians, and black Christian culture - including gospel music, in a way no other media product does.

How can we apply Clay Shirky's 'End of Audience theory?
 In some ways this theory explains why the audience has left The Voice Online as it is an old, top-down, non-interactive product.
> Although, ability to comment on stories and answer polls on the landing page.

Above the fold 
Links to social media sites and their YouTube channel
Advertisement which specially targets Afro Caribbean 
Trending page
Red leaderboard and typgaphy links with the print masthead in terms of house style / brand identity
Convergent Links to online platfrom  - meaing sharing and moving narratives into the public sphere
Instagram best socila media platform
Clear evidence of a combination of hard news and soft news- mid market tabliod conventions
Convergent links to audio visual media
Campaiging
Below the fold
Galleries 
Advertisement 
Terms and conditions etc 
Instagram Diversity - positive representation of mental healh
Crossing political ideologies to report articles relevent to the black community 
Multi media representation  (Audi -visual content)
Articles appear in the format of a tabloid newspaper ( columns)
High ratio of photography to text 
https://www.voice-online.co.uk/