Narrative in News Media

Text: The Guardian Article Three Generations of Windrush family struggling to prove they are British

Literal Audience Notes: Age and Race

• The language used in the title of the article connotes ideas about age and nationality which presents initial ideas about a target audience.
• The phrase “Three generations” suggests that this problem is an ongoing narrative.
• Meaning the article could address issues pertaining to an older audience of first generation Windrush victims maybe between their 60–80s.
• It could equally create a narrative of struggle for children and grandchildren of first generation windrush victims. Maybe between 16–25 years old.
• This initial construction of a generational struggle facilitates the discussion of literal audiences within this text.
• This is because the combination of age and race in the windrush scandal and issue of nationality creates two aspects that target specific parts of individual identity.

Virtual Audience Notes: The Guardian Newspaper Readership

• Helen Fulton described virtual audiences as what “producers sell to advertisers” in the context of media products in advertisement.
• In the context of news and journalistic media, the “advertisers” in this case would likely be the readership of the news company.
• What is their political background? What interests and ideologies may they hold because of this?
• What stories would they be most likely to read?
• The Guardian newspaper’s readership is generally left wing.
• Left wing ideology typically values such as freedom, equality and rights.
• It can be argued that this story itself is written to cater to values of the guardian’s readership.
• In the article, it says that Courtney Lawrence needed to show a “passport” to be eligible for “council support” despite being “born in the UK”.
• This account creates a narrative of a struggle for rights among certain British citizens.
• The immigration system is the villain here.

Virtual vs. Literal Audience

• I think its important to analyze the possible audiences that can be derived from my text.
• The virtual audience, which the producer tries to sell to, is constructed for left wing British people to read. People who are interested in social issues.
• An interesting statistic on hurstmediacompany.co.uk also reveals that 54% of the Guardian readers are male versus the 46%.
• I should take these statistics with a grain of salt as there is no date or source for this data provided. But It is still worth considering for future research.
• The connotations of struggle through first hand accounts of non UK can attract a literal audience of racial minorities.
• The best example in this case is the Jamaican community through personal identification with the issues in this article.

Diegesis and Mimesis

• In the article, the writer never explicitly mentions themselves or their own opinions, as is fairly conventional with news media.
• Rather, there are many quotes from the victims of the windrush scandal.
• These quotes articulate their story of struggle with gaining citizenship and the support of their country.
• Courtney Lawrence has struggled with gaining support in “housing” because she cannot “prove” that she is a British citizen.
• This has affected her mental health as she has become “depressed” from identity issues.
• Lawrence is seemingly telling her story firsthand with no contribution from the author Amelia Gentleman in constructing it.
• This article appears mimetic.
• The use of quotes from a direct character so to speak from the story creates a mirror of the truth.
• But it is just a mirror because Lawrence’s story is being written by Gentleman.

Editorial Choices

• The decision to use direct quotes from Lawrence makes the story seem more objective, informative and less like a construction.
• I think had there been no quotes, more people may see this story as a political opinion from Gentleman.