The Voice CSP: case study blog tasks
Language and contexts
Homepage
Go to the Voice homepage and answer the following:
1) What news website key conventions can you find on the Voice homepage?
Established brand identity - "40 years", commemorating legacy,
menu bar - key convention of news sites with news sub-sections
"subscribe" button - trying to monetize brand
2) What are some of the items in the top menu bar and what does this tell you about the content, values and ideologies of the Voice?
- News, sport, lifestyle, entertainment, competitions, opinion and faith
- This conveys the Voice to be a tabloid newspaper, with more soft news than hard news
- With the faith section it illustrates its values to be rooted in Christianity which are linked to the Caribbean culture
3) Look at the news stories on the Voice homepage. Pick two stories and explain why they might appeal to the Voice's target audience.
"Top Jamaican diplomat and acting legend joins fight to save Black Britons affected by sickle cell"
" Women's health campaigner calls for medical professionals to believe Black women when they raise concerns about reproductive issues"
4) How is narrative used to encourage audience engagement with the Voice? Apply narrative theories (e.g. Todorov equilibrium or Barthes’ enigma codes) and make specific reference to stories on the homepage and how they encourage audiences to click through to them.
With the use of Barthes enigma codes the "subscribe" button using verbal codes encourages the audience to engage with the newspaper regularly. And with action codes the search button encourages the audience to read through their 40 year digital archive
Lifestyle section
Now analyse the Lifestyle section of the Voice and answer the following:
1) What are the items in the sub-menu bar for the Lifestyle section and what does this suggest about the Voice audience?
The items in the sub-menu bar consist of UK news, world news, celebrity, tech and business - suggesting that the Voice's audience have a range of interests from hard to soft news
2) What are the main stories in the Lifestyle section currently?
Urban synergy continues to open doors and "In review: black tech fest 2025
3) Do the sections and stories in the Voice Lifestyle section challenge or reinforce black stereotypes in British media?
It illustrates black men and women as business moguls, entrepreneurs and public speakers - it subverts the idea of black people being only entertainers or sportsman in British media -
4) Choose two stories featured in the Lifestyle section – how do they reflect the values and ideologies of the Voice?
"Top Jamaican diplomat and acting legend joins fight to save Black Britons affected by sickle cell"
" Women's health campaigner calls for medical professionals to believe Black women when they raise concerns about reproductive issues"
Feature focus
1) Read this Voice opinion piece on black representation in the tech industry. How does this piece reflect the values and ideologies of The Voice?
It highlights diversity within the black community with a black hijabi as the cover feature for this article - reflecting the Voice's value for diversity. The article talks about tokenism which POC's view to be a huge problem which reflects the brands ideological position by calling out companies that do this.
2) Read this feature on The Black Pound campaign. How does this piece reflect the values and ideologies of The Voice?
the article is based around the uplifting of the black community and the nuances about black people
3) Read this Voice news story on Grenfell tower and Doreen Lawrence. How might this story reflect the Voice’s values and ideologies? What do the comments below suggest about how readers responded to the article? Can you link this to Gilroy’s work on the ‘Black Atlantic’ identity?
The story conveys that the newspapers values lie within the e black community and the black community only - it falls in line with the rise of identity politics - making everything about race, religion or sexuality anywhere they see fit, even if it there is no evidence for this discrimination. Gilroy’s theory of the “Black Atlantic” fits this article as it takes the transnational identity and pits it against its ambivalent relationship with whiteness.
Social and cultural contexts - 40 Year of Black British Lives
Read this extract from The Voice: 40 Years of Black British Lives on rapper Swiss creating Black Pound Day (you'll need your Greenford Google login to access the document). Answer the following questions:
1) What is Black Pound Day?
It is an initiative to increase visibility of and spend in black owned business across the UK and Europe
2) How did Black Pound Day utilise social media to generate coverage and support?
Following its June 2020 launch, several businesses shared on social media how they had experienced their biggest growth in sales after the event. Black Pound Day not only highlighted issues of systemic inequality in the UK, it held up a mirror to a major shift in how Black Britons supported Black-owned businesses.
3) How do events such as Black Pound Day and the Powerlist Black Excellence Awards link to wider social, cultural and economic contexts regarding power in British society?
The Black pound 2022 report found that minority ethnic consumers have become an increasingly important economic force. They have an annual disposable income of £4.5 billion - the figure for African Caribbean consumers alone is £1.1 billion.
Audience
1) Who do you think is the target audience for the Voice website? Consider demographics and psychographics.
I think the target audiences for the voice are those of black ethnicity mainly of African and Caribbean descent. The class of the audience is working class this is because ti has a very well established tabloid look and looks externally similar to the sun
2) What audience pleasures are provided by the Voice website? Apply media theory here such as Blumler and Katz (Uses & Gratifications).
Personal identity - the Voice focuses on story's to do with the black community.
Surveillance- focuses on informing on different topics such as politics.
3) Give examples of sections or content from the website that tells you this is aimed at a specialized or niche audience.
Focuses on much smaller story's such as events in smaller country's that aren't covered usually such as jamacia preparing for a category 4 hurricane Melisa
4) Studying the themes of politics, history and racism that feature in some of the Voice’s content, why might this resonate with the Voice’s British target audience?
This may resonate with the voice target audience of 40-60 as they are a generation who are very connected in what's going on in the world therefore all those topics are going on in the world.
5) Can you find any examples of content on the Voice website created or driven by the audience or citizen journalism? How does this reflect Clay Shirky’s work on the ‘end of audience’ and the era of ‘mass amateurisation’?
The Voice website contains audience-driven content through user comments, articles submitted by citizens, and active community forums. This reflects Clay Shirky's work because it signifies the "end of audience," where users are no longer passive consumers but active creators of content, and the "mass amateurization of publishing," where the internet has empowered individuals to publish their own work, challenging professional media dominance.
Representations
1) How is the audience positioned to respond to representations in the Voice website?
The Voice website positions its audience to respond by presenting content from a black perspective, encouraging a "preferred reading" that values black culture and activism, and using a mode of address that aims to resonate with and empower its target audience. This is achieved through a focus on black news, images of a strong and independent black community, and content that addresses issues of racial injustice and discrimination. The audience is thus positioned to sympathize with and support representations of black people
2) Are representations in the Voice an example of Gilroy’s concept of “double consciousness” NOT applying?
No, the representations in The Voice are not an example of double consciousness not applying; rather, the newspaper was a response to it, aiming to provide an alternative to the "white gaze" of mainstream media. The Voice was launched to give the Black British community a platform to see themselves represented through their own eyes, directly countering the idea of being seen as "external and estranged from the imagined community that is the nation" as Gilroy described it. This also links with the idea that media is changing and are becoming are critical and progressive.
3) What kind of black British identity is promoted on the Voice website? Can you find any examples of Gilroy’s “liquidity of culture” or “unruly multiculturalism” here?
The Voice website promotes a Black British identity that is forged through diaspora, emphasizing a connection to a Black Atlantic culture and challenging traditional national narratives of exclusion and marginalization. Examples of Gilroy's concepts are the promotion of Black identity as being shaped by travel and hybridity, reflecting his theory of the "liquidity of culture," and highlighting the cultural tensions and hybridity resulting from diaspora which are central to his ideas about "unruly multiculturalism".
4) Applying Stuart Hall’s constructivist approach to representations, how might different audiences interpret the representations of black Britons in the Voice?
Preferred reading
Black British reader might see the paper as a positive and accurate voice, embracing its representations as a reflection of their own experiences because it gives them a chance to see themselves represented from their own perspective, rather than through a white gaze.
Negotiated reading
Black British reader might accept that The Voice aims to be empowering but may still critically analyze specific articles or images, finding some to be more representative than others.
oppositional reading:
reader who is critical of the paper's specific editorial decisions or funding sources might find its representations to be stereotypical or to fail to capture the full diversity of Black British experiences. They may see the paper as reinforcing certain negative stereotypes, even if the creators did not intend to. This is a rejection of the paper's constructed reality, viewing it as biased or as a form of "representational oppression" itself.
5) Do you notice any other interesting representations in the Voice website? For example, representations or people, places or groups (e.g. gender, age, Britishness, other countries etc.)
Yes, The Voice website represents British identity through a specific lens focused on the Black British community, moving away from a mainstream, often biased, perspective. This is seen through its representation of African-Caribbean culture
Industries
1) Read this Guardian report on the death of the original founder of the Voice. What does this tell you about the original values and ideologies behind the Voice brand?
Val McCalla, the founder of Britain's leading black newspaper, the Voice
I decided deliberately to have a newspaper that targeted people who were born here and had spent most of their lives here," said McCalla in a rare TV interview in 1992.
"In doing so I had obviously captured a niche market, a market of people who had never had a voice before."
The Voice, dubbed "the black Sun", has never shied away from controversy, building up a reputation for campaigning against racism an
2) Read this history of the Voice’s rivals and the struggles the Voice faced back in 2001. What issues raised in the article are still relevant today?
The Voice's early sales were poor, but it was buoyed by job adverts from the newly aware London boroughs, which were willing to pour in money to satisfy their consciences, regardless of the response. Sales eventually rose, and by the start of the 1990s the Voice had its circulation officially audited at 45,000 - a figure which was proudly printed on the front page each week above the masthead. Nothing, it seemed, could stop the inexorable rise of the Voice - not even a challenge from me, its former assistant editor, when I launched a competitor, Black Briton, in 1991
Unless the Voice sharpens up its act, though, it may end up being squeezed by both its black and white rivals. As Bonsu says: "The Voice needs to look at ways of making itself distinctive, and it's finding this a challenge. In the current market it will be a struggle to maintain and build on sales."
3) The Voice is now published by GV Media Group, a subsidiary of the Jamaican Gleaner company. What other media brands do the Gleaner company own and why might they be interested in owning the Voice? You'll need to research this using Google/Wikipedia or look at this Guardian article when Gleaner first acquired The Voice.
The Gleaner Company owns several other media brands, including its Jamaican flagship newspaper, The Gleaner, as well as titles like Weekly Gleaner UK, Extra, and radio stations operated by Independent Radio Company Limited (Power 106 and Music 99 FM). The Gleaner company's interest in acquiring The Voice was to serve the British-born black diaspora, believing the purchase was a "golden opportunity" to better serve these readers.
4) How does the Voice website make money?
The Voice website makes money through print subscriptions
5) What adverts or promotions can you find on the Voice website? Are the adverts based on the user’s ‘cookies’ or fixed adverts? What do these adverts tell you about the level of technology and sophistication of the Voice’s website?
The adverts are fixed an shows that the voice technology and effort is not sophisticated.
6) Is there an element of public service to the Voice’s role in British media or is it simply a vehicle to make profit?
The Voice's role in British media involves both public service and commercial elements, though its primary function has been historically linked to serving a specific public need: representing and giving a platform to British-born Black people, which the mainstream media historically failed to do adequately.
7) What examples of technological convergence can you find on the Voice website – e.g. video or audio content?
Social media integration: The site features links and references to its various social media profiles, encouraging audience interaction on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. This expands the newspaper's reach beyond its own website.
8) How has the growth of digital distribution through the internet changed the potential for niche products like the Voice?
It has enabled wider global reach and diversified revenue streams.
9) Analyse The Voice’s Twitter feed. How does this contrast with other Twitter feeds you have studied (such as Taylor Swift)? Are there examples of ‘clickbait’ or does the Voice have a different feel?
Primary Purpose is that it's Informative: To break news, promote articles from its website (Voice Online), and engage its community tweets are centered on news and events affecting the Black British community, covering politics, sports, culture, and business.
Taylor Swift Twitter feed
To manage her public persona, promote her music, and reinforce her relationship with her core fanbase, known as "Swifties" and is are centered on buying merchandise, listening to new music, or seeing her on
10) Study a selection of videos from The Voice’s YouTube channel. What are the production values of their video content?
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