2. 
Mass media representations of social
classes rarely focus on the social tensions
or class conflict that some critical
sociologists see as underpinning society.

3. 
contemporary media coverage of the
monarchy has focused positively on
every trivial detail of their lives, turning
the Queen and her family into an
on-going soap opera, but with a
glamour and mystique far greater than
any other media personality.

4. 
Furthermore, mass media representations
of the Queen are also aimed at
reinforcing a sense of national identity, in
that she is portrayed as the ultimate
symbol of the nation. Consequently, the
media regards royal events, such as
weddings and funerals, as national
events.

6. 
Mass media representations of social
class tend to celebrate hierarchy and
wealth. Those who benefit from these
processes, i.e. the monarchy, the upper
class and the very wealthy, generally
receive a positive press as celebrities
who are somehow deserving of their
position.

8. 
The British mass media hardly ever portray
the upper classes in a critical light, nor do
they often draw any serious attention to
inequalities in wealth and pay or the
overrepresentation of public-school
products in positions of power.
(1) the Hon. Edward Sebastian
Grigg, the heir to Baron
Altrincham of Tormarton and
current chairman of Credit
Suisse (UK)
(2) David Cameron
(3) Ralph Perry Robinson, a
former child
actor, designer, furniture-maker
(4) Ewen Fergusson, son of the
British ambassador to France, Sir
Ewen Fergusson and now at
City law firm Herbert Smith
(5) Matthew Benson, the heir to
the Earldom of Wemyss and
March
(6) Sebastian James, the son of
Lord Northbourne, a major
landowner in Kent
(7) Jonathan Ford, the-then
president of the club, a banker
with Morgan Grenfell
(8) Boris Johnson, the-then
president of the Oxford
Union, now Lord Mayor of
London
9) Harry Eastwood, the
investment fund consultant

9. 
The media focus very positively on the
concerns of the wealthy and the
privileged. The media over-focuses on
consumer items such as luxury
cars, costly holiday spots and fashion
accessories that only the wealthy can
afford

10. 
There is also an enormous amount of
print and broadcast media dedicated to
daily business news and stock market
quotations, despite the fact that few
people in Britain own stocks and shares.

11. 
Four broad sociological observations
can be made with regard to mass
media representations of the middle
classes.

12. The middle class are over-represented
on TV dramas and situation comedies.
 Part of the British newspaper market is
specifically aimed at the middle classes
and their consumption, tastes and
interests, e.g. the Daily Mail.


13. 
The content of newspapers such as the
Daily Mail suggests that journalists believe
that the middle classes of middle England
are generally anxious about the decline of
moral standards in society and that they
are proud of their British identity and
heritage. It is assumed that their readership
feels threatened by alien influences such as
the Euro, asylum seekers and terrorism.
Consequently, newspapers, such as the
Daily Mail, often crusade on behalf of the
middle classes and initiate moral panics on
issues such as video nasties, paedophilia
and asylum seekers.

15. 
Most of the creative personnel in the
media are themselves middle class. In
news and current affairs, the middle
classes dominate positions of authority –
the ‘expert’ is invariably middle class.

16. 
When news organisations focus on the
working class, it is generally to label
them as a problem, e.g. as welfare
cheats, drug addicts or criminals.

17. 
Working class groups, e.g. youth subcultures such as mods or skinheads, are
often the subject of moral panics, whilst
reporting of issues such as
poverty, unemployment or single-parent
families often suggests that personal
inadequacy is the main cause of these
social problems, rather than government
policies or poor business practices.

19. 
Studies of industrial relations reporting by
the Glasgow University Media Group
suggest that the media portray
‘unreasonable’ workers as making
trouble for ‘reasonable’ employers.

20. 
newspapers aimed at working class
audiences assume that they are
uninterested in serious analysis of either
the political or social organisation of
British society. Political debate is often
reduced simplistically to conflict
between personalities

21. 
The content of newspapers such as The
Sun and the Daily Star assumes that such
audiences want to read about celebrity
gossip and lifestyles, trivial human interest
stories and sport.

22. 
When the news media turn their
attention to the most destitute, the
portrayals are often negative or
stereotypical. Often, the poor are
portrayed in statistical rather than in
human terms by news bulletins that focus
on the numbers unemployed or on
benefits, rather than the individual
suffering and personal indignities of
poverty

24. 
McKendrick et al. (2008) studied a
week’s output of mainstream media in
2007 and concluded that coverage of
poverty is marginal in British media, in
that the causes and consequences of
poverty were very rarely explored across
the news, documentaries or drama

25. 
Dramas such as Shameless presented a
sanitised picture of poverty, despite
featuring characters who were
economically deprived,

26. 
Whilst family issue-based programmes
such as The Jeremy Kyle Show treated
poverty as an aspect of entertainment.
Cohen notes that the media often fails to
see the connection between
deprivation and wealth.

27. 
Whilst making notes divider your page
into the sections below:
Mise- En Scene
Cinematography
Sound
Editing