1. The document discusses the personalization of news media through an increased focus on human interest stories, celebrities, and ordinary people in extraordinary situations. 2. It explores the reasons why news outlets may personalize content, including to explain events through individuals and engage audiences, but also notes dangers like detracting from factual information or oversimplifying issues. 3. The document concludes that while personalization helps news producers connect with fragmented audiences, it can encourage a passive response and lower news quality when it replaces substantive news with infotainment or tabloid-style content.

1. 1
Personalisation
#MAC201
Are we being served?
Dumbing down, infotainment
and social media.

2. Human interest
There is no subject, no abstract thing, that
cannot be translated into terms of people
- Horace Greeley, editor New York Tribune, 1841-
1848
2

3. 3
Overview
 Mode of address
 Tabloidisation
 Personalisation
Why personalise?
Forms of personalisation
Potentials
Problems

4. 4
Mode of AddressMode of Address
X
A B
Social environment
(rock gig)
Receiver (friend)Communicator (you)

5. 5
 The description of the event will be
organised ‘by the expectation you have of
the hearer’s attitude to the event and to
you’ (Hartley, 1982: 87)

6. 6
Mode of AddressMode of Address
X
A B
Communicator (you)
Social environment
(car crash, football
match, strip
show, illegal
rave)
Receiver (police, opposite
sex, boss, parent)

7. 7
 Communication as product of both
‘speaker and listener, addresser and
addressee’ (Volosinov, 1973: 86)
 ‘[The press] must develop a practical
“mode of address”’ (Hartley, 1982: 88)

8. 8
Formal, official, parochial
Informal, personal, intimate

9. 9
TabloidizationTabloidization
Dumbing down?
Infotainment?

10. 10
Bob Franklin (1997: 4-5): ‘newszak’
 ‘a product designed and “processed” for a
particular market and delivered in
increasingly homogonous “snippets” which
make only modest demands of the
audience’.
 Franklin (2003): ‘McDonaldization of news’
and ‘junk journalism’

11. 11
Consequences:Consequences:
 ‘urg[ing] us to look but not care, see but
not act, know but not change’
(Nichols, 1991: 194)
 ‘The focus is on those things which are apt
to arouse curiosity but require no analysis’
(Bourdieu, 1998: 51)

12. 12

13. Clickbait?
13

14. Clickbait?
14

15. 15
xkcd

16. 16
 ‘at some level the criteria for “good
journalism” must in part depend on its
capacity to attract and engage the
audiences, to stimulate the processes of
meaning-making and critical reflection’
(Peter Dahlgren 1995: 50)

17. 17
PersonalisationPersonalisation
 The presentation of a news story in terms
of the people or personalities involved; an
emphasis on potential for “human interest”
in a story
“There are newspapers, even in large cities,
edited on the principle that the readers wish to
read about themselves”
 (Walter Lippmann, 1922, Public opinion)

18. PersonalisationPersonalisation
There is no subject, no abstract thing, that
cannot be translated into terms of people
- Horace Greeley, editor New York Tribune, 1841-
1848
18

19. 19
PersonalisationPersonalisation
 “[has] derived … not only from the
common human interest in other people’s
lives, but also from the peculiarly strong
working class attachment to the concrete
…the local and particular”
(Richard Hoggart, 1962, The uses of literacy)

20. 20
Why personalise?Why personalise?
 To explain events with reference to personal
motives and character
 The relationship between USA and UK was seen as
one between George W. Bush and Tony Blair
Arnie & Cameron?

21. 21
Why personalise?Why personalise?
 To explain events with reference to personal
motives and character
 Barack Obama (co/o Buzzfeed) posing without
cameras? Really?

22. Why personalise?Why personalise?
 To breach the gap between the public and
the private, where it serves the public
interest
The public are “interested” in knowing whether
Tulisa is a drug user
22

23. Why personalise?Why personalise?
 To breach the gap between the public and
the private, where it serves the public
interest
Ed Miliband’s personal image may impact on
the public’s decision to vote for him
23

24. Forms of personalisationForms of personalisation
 The ordinary
individual in
exceptional
circumstances
NAKED DAVID NICKS
A BURGLAR STARK naked David
Staines caught a night-time burglar in his Tring home
and refused to let him go until police arrived.
The plucky pensioner (pictured with his dog), who had
been woken by his dog, gave officers a shock when he
answered the door wearing nothing but his birthday suit
and handed over the captured intruder.
Hemel Hempstead Today
24

25. Forms of personalisationForms of personalisation
 The exceptional
person in ordinary
circumstances
25

26. Forms of personalisationForms of personalisation
 Comment of the
“insider” journalist
26

27. From the journal section…
 Rod Brookes et al (2004) “The media
representation of public opinion” Media,
Culture and Society Volume 26(1), pp. 63-
80.
On Sunspace
27

28. 28
Forms of personalisationForms of personalisation
 Citing “the public”
 References to opinion polls
 Inferences about public opinion
 Vox pops
 Interactions between members of the public and
authority

29. 29
Potentials for personalizationPotentials for personalization
1. Merely provides an illustrative aid to
journalism’s expository objective
2. Detracts from informational objectives
via a focus on spectacle
3. Offers fresh insights into social and
political processes
 (Macdonald, 2003: 65)

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Dangers of personalizationDangers of personalization
 ‘the isolation of the person from his [sic]
relevant social and institutional context, or
the constitution of a personal subject as
exclusively the motor force of history’
(Hall, 1973: 183)

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Dangers of personalizationDangers of personalization
 The focus on individuals can lead to failures in
exploring wider relevant social factors
 The inclusion of personalities into their own
reports

32. 32
Dangers of personalising newsDangers of personalising news
in terms of the individualin terms of the individual
 Offers (and misrepresents)
extreme individuals as
giving insight into the
character of the whole
 Places undue stress on the
emotion over the rational

33. Dangers of personalising newsDangers of personalising news
in terms of the individualin terms of the individual
 News agendas can surrender
to popular sentiment, and
submit to a “tyranny of the
majority”
 News makers can mobilise a
constructed discourse of
“public opinion” in whatever
way they please
33

34. ConclusionConclusion
 Fragmented and declining audiences means
news producers have had to modify modes of
address in order to connect to their core
audience
 An increase in human interest stories with
emphasis on the personal
 Negative impact on news quality (tabloid-style,
infotainment agenda): encourages a modicum of
passivity in audiences
34

35. 35
SeminarsSeminars
 In thinking about personalisation, how do
we distinguish between “news” and
“gossip”?
Think of whether there is a distinction
between the public and the private
 Under which circumstances is it
acceptable to examine culture and politics
through the personalities and personal
activities of individuals?

36. 36
Sources and further readingSources and further reading
 Pierre Bourdieu, 1998, On Television and Journalism, London: Pluto Press.
 Rod Brookes et al, 2004, ‘The media representation of public opinion’ in Media, Culture and
Society Volume 26(1), pp. 63-80.
 Peter Dahlgren, 1995, Television and the Public Sphere, London: Sage.
 Bob Franklin, 1997, Newszak and News Media, London: Arnold.
 Bob Franklin, 2003, ‘“McJournalism: The McDonaldization Thesis and Junk Journalism’,
confernce paper presented at Political Studies Association -
http://www.psa.ac.uk/journals/pdf/5/2003/Bob%20Franklin.Pdf
 Stuart Hall, 1973, ‘The determinations of newsphotographs’ in S. Cohen and J. Young (eds.), The
Manufacture of News, London: Constable.
 John Hartley, 1982/1994, Understanding News, London: Routledge.
 Richard Hoggart (1962) The uses of literacy
 Walter Lippmann (1922) Public opinion
 Myra Macdonald, 2003, Exploring Media Discourse, London: Arnold.
 Bill Nichols, 1991, Representing Reality, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
 John B Thompson, 1995, The Media and Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press
 Graeme Turner, 2001, ‘Sold out: recent shifts in television news and current affairs in Australia’ in
M. Bromley (ed.), No News is Bad News, Harlow: Pearson Education.
 V. Volosinov in John Hartley, 1982, Understanding News, London: Routledge.
 Frank Williams, 1958, Dangerous Estate, London: Readers Union.