Tabloid culture is, in simple terms, gossip. Anna Hummel, a student of University of California, quoted Robin Dunbar; a published expert on gossip, in her short paper called ‘The Evolutionary significance of Gossip’. She says, ‘As humans, we take pride in our ability to think critically and express ourselves through art, music, religion, politics, and science. But in reality, most of these subjects are not discussed in the majority of human social discourse. About two-thirds of all human conversation is gossip (Dunbar 1996: 4); informal, trivial chatter, usually about the lives of other people’. The meaning of gossip itself is defined by Oxford Dictionary as ‘Casual or unconstrained conversation or reports about other people, typically involving details which are not confirmed as true’. I will organise my investigation into 2 separate ideas of how tabloid culture affects the lives of ordinary people. The first part will investigate the idea that we establish societal bonds over injurious information of enemies and high-status people. The second part will investigate the idea that we look at the actions of high-status people in order to clarify the norm. On an evolutionary perspective, gossip was developed as a way of maintaining social relationships. Itself, it serves a form of ‘verbal grooming’ which may be similar to ‘social grooming’ (Hummel, 2009) seen in primates. In depth, primates were seen to have groomed other primates ‘far beyond necessity’ (A. Hummel) which would suggest that grooming is a very important aspect of socializing and building bonds in primate life. As humans, gossip facilitates the need for social maintenance. It functions ‘to facilitate the establishment and maintenance of relationships…reinforcing soc... ... middle of paper ... ... the lives of ordinary people. The research more than backed up the ideas brought up in both sections of the investigation. To conclude, tabloid culture has an interesting effect on normal people. Essentially, gossip can be looked at an instrument to build bonds with another person and to maintain that relationship with damaging information of non-allies. However it can also be looked at as if we are subconsciously looking out for one’s self when we seek damaging information about others as we want to improve our status, enhance our image to others. The other main idea of gossip is that we govern our lives by the mistakes that high-status people make in the spotlight. This aspect of wanting to clarify social norms is exploited by tabloids; who publish stories that rescind the reputation of those in the limelight, enticing readers therefor generating more revenue.
398).It is also stated that news divisions reduced their costs, and raised the entertainment factor of the broadcasts put on air. (p. 400). Secondly, the media determines its sources for stories by putting the best journalists on the case and assign them to areas where news worthy stories just emanates. (p.400). Third, the media decides how to present the news by taking the most controversial or relevant events and compressing them into 30 second sound-bites. (p.402). finally, the authors also explain how the media affects the general public. The authors’ state “The effect of one news story on public opinion may be trivial but the cumulative effect of dozens of news stories may be important. This shows a direct correlation between public opinions and what the media may find “relevant”. (Edwards, Wattenberg, Lineberry, 2015, p.
Bradford is very negative towards television tabloids. Her tone towards everything in the article is strong and negative. She uses profane and Informal language, like tits-and-ass raunchiness and rubbernecking at the oddities of American life. Her language has a lot of trashiness to it. She also says TV tabloids do not mature the mind, they mutate it. In the article, Bradford doesn’t make the mistake on using too big of words. She uses words that everyone can understand, not just her colleagues. For instance, she uses the word “bigwigs,” basically everyone knows what that word means. She also uses the phrase “Joe six-pack.” A lot of what has to do with articles are the race of a person their attractive ness and their sexual orientation. The truth is TV tabloids discriminate against people of different race, gays, and unattractive women. They also use racial slurs and that will upset a lot of people. These are some of the negative points she uses against tabloid television.
Celebrity blogs typically provide great insight into the three important theoretical perspectives in sociology. This paper will analyze the data obtained from five selected celebrity gossip blogs, such as Celebitchy, Yahoo Celebrity, The Huffington Post, Time, and SheKnows. The analysis will be based on the theoretical perspectives of celebrity gossip, particularly conflict theory. For instance, it will address the inequalities that exist in the gossip blogs based on race, gender, class, or sexual inequalities. Additionally, it will identify the interests of those served by the blogs as well as those who get exploited or suffer as a result of the publication of the blogs.
Gossip can be a form of either informal or conversational talk that is not usually planned but happens spontaneously in conversation (Tholander, 2003). Gossip is a distinct and unusual form of storytelling as it involves a non-present third person. In order for a story to be considered as gossip it must handle a past event of which the absent third party was involved in. It often occurs within friendships,
Celebrity gossip is becoming something everyone is staying to know about from such celebrities as Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Ben Cousins, Miley Cyrus etc. These celebrities are being to take over news articles, internet articles and now also in magazine articles. This has pushed journalism articles to the back of the magazines and newspaper articles and has made them less important and has made these articles much smaller which is showing less importance. This can be seen in (____).Have we become so caught up in finding out gossip that we have left the real news article behind? Our society is becoming more and more obsessed with celebrities either for music, movies or just for their name in Hollywood. If you were to simply read a blog, watch commercial news or read Australia's largest selling magazines, we would be pushing ourselves to be able to find any or very little, if any, information on world issues unless it is a disaster or something that everyone will need to know. The sad reality is that it requires a tragic natural disaster before our media realizes that there are other world issues of more importance than that of Hollywood or the sporting arenas. Our society has lost touch with the political, humanitarian and economic plights of nations if within Australia or outside Australia. Our focus is becoming more caught up in celebrity marriages, affairs, births, deaths and adoptions or the latest sports hero, drug abuser, tribunal or 'out-of hours' brawl. Instead of focusing on what is happening with Australian finance or with local issues or with outside issue in other countries.
...phere as the “sphere of private people who join together to form a ‘public’” and through the celebrification of politicians, the public sphere has been widened. We live in a world where anyone in the news, a politician, a footballer, a reality TV star, is a celebrity. Although we do not need to know the behind-the-scenes of each of their lives, it is of interest to the public and stories that are interesting to the public, sell the most newspapers. But because people buy newspapers because of celebrity gossip etc, the public sphere widens as a result. This stark fact was candidly recognised by Rupert Murdoch and as the head of News International, he described his company as being “in the entertainment business” (Shawcross, 1992: 261) and for this reason, the celeberification of politicians will neither cease, nor damage democratical debate within the public sphere.
A relatively great deal of research has addressed the detrimental effects of entertainment for democracy and political engagement (Putnam 2000) and linked, for example, the ‘tabloidization of news’ to the media giving up on its informational role and capacity to ‘teach’ the public rather than simply ‘tickling’ it (Thussu 2005: 15). Giving way to entertainment values and trivial human-interest ...
The cultivation theory suggests that “the cultivation of attitudes is based on attitudes already present in our society and that the media take those attitudes which are already present and re-present them bundled in a different packaging to their audiences” (Griffin, p.366). The Truman Show is an excellent example of the cultivation theory as it gives us an interesting insight into the effects that the media has on society. It is no secret that the media has altered our way of living. From the fears they can instill from the news we watch, to the clothes we wear, the music we listen to, the sports we watch and even our political opinions are all influenced in some way shape or form by the media.
Gossip in the workplace is described as a type of “storytelling discourse” that exists in the “unmanaged spaces” of organizations (Michelson et al., 2010, p. 373). Gossip allows employees to express their opinions, emotions, beliefs and attitudes about workplace life. As a result, gossip is usually expressed in small, trusted groups, which ultimately plays a significant role in the maintenance of relationships within the organization (Michelson et al., 2010). Social norms usually influence whether gossip is accepted as a type of organizational communication, as well as establishing the expectations of who gossips to whom and about what subject (Michelson et ...
However, people claim that it doesn’t debase the public sphere because Prior said that people don’t watch the television to gain knowledge. Taylor and Harris (2008) discussed that the public sphere is now dominated by amorphous and intangible associations”, meaning that it has no real structure to it this supports Farrell’s argument about ‘dumbing down’ the public sphere because it seems that people don’t really know what they are talking about. Overall these studies show that celebrity centred journalism doesn’t debase the public sphere because of the amount of online communication people have with each other and by receiving the latest breaking news all the time in our modern society.
Gossiping is a problem of information distribution, described as a group of individuals connected by a communication network. For gossiping to work every person in the network knows a unique piece of information and has an urge to communicate it to everyone else.
Comparing two newspaper articles, one from a tabloid and one from a broadsheet will convey the different techniques that tabloids and broadsheets use to present stories. Media in general, aim to inform and interest the audience which consist of many different types. Diverse emotions and ideas are created by the media; foremost tabloids. Tabloids are papers like ‘The Sun’, ‘The Mirror’, ‘The Daily Mail’, ‘The Express’ and ‘The Star’. In contrast to these are broadsheets like ‘The Times’, ‘The Guardian’ and ‘The Daily Telegraph’. Broadsheets are often known as the ‘quality press’ being more informing and formal in the manner they convey information and news stories.
The gossip industry has become popular in the last few decades. Our society enjoys knowing about the lives of celebrities. We obsess over celebrities on gossip websites, and even obsess to the extent of stalking these celebrities. This industry has impacted our culture immensely. It has tainted our culture in several ways from creating bad role models for our children to making stalking an everyday affair; either way, the media has changed our society greatly. The gossip industry has brought new entertainment for our pleasure, but it has come with negative consequences.
O’Shaughnessy, M., Stadler, J. (2009)Media and Society: An introduction. Dominant Ideology and Hegemony. London: Oxford.
Csigó, P., eds. "EastBound vol. 2010 issue 1: Popular Culture and Citizenship.", “Broadening the Concept of Media Rituals: Tabloids as “Low Holidays of Television” (2010).