Social Contexts Question

10 mark question

Changing social contexts, caused by technological advances, have created a long term decline in the circulation of national newspapers. Explain how newspapers have responded to these changes. Refer to The Telegraph to support your answer.

.

In your answer you must:

- Consider relevant social contexts that influence newspaper circulation.

- Use your knowledge and understanding of relevant academic ideas and arguments.

- Explain the relationship of recent technological change to the production, distribution and circulation of newspapers.

- Refer to The Telegraph as an example of how newspapers have responded.

.

Social contexts have changed over time due to technological advances, this has created a long term decline in the circulation of national newspapers. Newspapers have responded to these changes in many ways...

For example, the population in the world has increased over the years, however, print newspaper sales have decreased due to recession; which means people do not have as much spare money to buy daily newspapers as they did in the past years, and people feel as though online news is better as it can be free so saves them money. Also, people are more likely to view or buy newspapers online because it means there is less damage to the environment as less paper is being used to produce print newspapers. Distribution is also a lot more easy online as news online is easily accessible to anyone who has technology and the news can be spread a lot easier due to social media. This is seen as a good thing because if there was serious news that everyone needed to know about urgently, then people can just spread the online news easily and immediately. The older generation are much more likely to buy paper newspapers as that is what they are used to and they may not be able to access any type of technology. Whereas, the younger generation can access technology a lot easier, leading them to just read the news on their phones, instead of wasting money to buy a paper one. Also, the younger generation are more conscious about saving the environment so they do not want to encourage newspapers to cut down trees to produce paper news.

The Telegraph have responded to these changes by creating online news websites that mirror the same content as the print newspapers. For example, The Telegraph has the same house style on the website as it does on the print editions by having the bold masthead, which clearly portrays to the audience what the newspaper is and so know what to expect from it, and both editions use the same colour theme of neutral colours to show its formal layout. Also, both editions have lots of information and an image on the first page to show the similarities between them and to show they are presenting the same information in the articles. The Telegraph deciding to do this makes the audience feel more comfortable reading the news online as they know that it is the same as the print edition, so are trustworthy that the news is official, reliable news.

Furthermore, The Telegraph have created online news that goes with the audience's expectations of wanting 24 hour news as the news is easily accessible when it is online as many people have some sort of technology accessible to them which they can use to view the latest news. Also, news in print editions can be seen as 'old news' as by the time it takes to process the newspapers, more news could be out that is important to know, so people do not buy print newspapers for this reason, they use online news as they can get updates immediately and news is available 24/7. 

The online news still gains a small proportion of money due to creating memberships on the websites. Some newspapers get their readers to sign up to memberships in order to read the news in full and also get daily updates and emails, which print edition newspapers do not include. This allows the company to still gain money from readers and makes the reader feel at ease as they know they are paying for something that is worth the money and feel that the newspaper is trustworthy enough to get their daily news from it and people know that they are not damaging the environment.