Thursday 8 March 2012

Rhetorical functions in academic writing: Comparison and contrast

http://www.uefap.com/writing/function/compcont.htm

The Rise and Fall of The TV News Journalist

Link

Spleen and Modernity: Baudelaire and ‘alternative’ consumption

In his Le Spleen de Paris, Baudelaire encapsulates the attitude of the practitioner of “spleen” in his ‘The Dog and the Vial’, where the dog rejects the vial of perfume in favour of faeces, to which Baudelaire likens it to ‘the public’ who are worth of only carefully chosen dung for their sensibilities would be exasperated if present with beauty or genial and vital experience of senses; only ‘shit’ will do. Baudelaire’s relationship with his readership, the ‘general public’, therefore marks his the function of spleen: it is evidence of melancholy without real cause, direct and projected onto everything that passes over its gaze, dismantling it in all its pretensions and ridiculing it for all its worth. It seeks to take all authority as merely phenomenal, fleeting and ‘mere opinion’, to which it gives us, and him, a leftover – suffering and despair. Baudelaire’s work is a testament to such cold hearted sentiments and desires:

For I have from each thing extracted its quintessence,
You have given me mud and I have made of it gold.

Link

Charlie Brooker's How to Report the News - Newswipe - BBC Four

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHun58mz3vI

Sunday 4 March 2012

Marshall McLuhan's 'Global Village'

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/bas9401.html

Media obsessed with sex and lotteries, report says

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2002/03/18/0000128173

Who reads 'The Sun'?

Here is a website that illustrates the readership of ‘The Sun’ and the demographic key below:


As you will be able to see, 90% of ‘The Sun’ readers are in categories CDE or ‘blue collar’ jobs, whilst only 10% are in the ‘knowledge professions’ (AB).

Also, have a look at the difference in age, gender and region.

National Readership Survey (NRS) demographic categories

Social Grade
Social Status
Occupation
A
upper middle class
higher managerial, administrative or professional
B
middle class
intermediate managerial, administrative or professional
C1
lower middle class
supervisory or clerical, junior managerial, administrative or professional
C2
skilled working class
skilled manual workers
D
working class
semi and unskilled manual workers
E
those at lowest level of subsistence
state pensioners or widows (no other earner), casual or lowest grade workers

Classic Front Pages - 'The Sun'

http://www.nmauk.co.uk/nma/do/live/historicpage?MODEL_IN_THE_SESSION=2296