Essay Feedback

WWW: Your response stays focused on the idea of power in the media which is good to see. The inclusion of Pluralist perspectives is good and definitely something you need to include in your real exam essay but you talk about this at different times rather than a clear, focused paragraph on it. Your writing has really improved and you have made a massive effort to write sentences that make sense and are focused well on the question and your point, with embedded examples. You do have some of your own opinion and you do mention some of the things we have studied to focus on the question - Fake News, Paywalls and hegemony all used accurately. 


EBI: Your main issue is how the essay is structured. Essay writing technique is another area to look at. Make sure you are writing sharp topic sentences that clearly link to the question. Use the key words from the question and show the reader clearly where the paragraph is going. Make a clear plan so that you know exactly what you are arguing in your Thesis statement (introductory paragraph) and in each of your paragraphs, marked out clearly with a topic sentence that makes an argument rather than a factual statement e.g Instead of just writing a short sentence and expect it to speak for itself, give your own argument related to the question and then add an embedded quote within your point. You have missed the opportunity to use statistics (there are lots available). You need to embed quotes and theories and stats into these sentences.

There’s a huge amount we’ve covered over the last 14 weeks that doesn’t appear in this essay -David Simon, Clay Shirky, News Values, Globalisation, Alain de Botton etc. Another area that is really lacking is statistics – there are so many out there that exemplify the changes in consumption and production due to new and digital media. Find them, revise them and use them! To achieve balance, I would also build Alain de Botton and Gramsci’s Hegemony into a paragraph on an ‘illusion of power’ where you could discuss the notion that pluralism and empowerment is simply a myth and a false idea when, in fact, the hegemony / Marxist viewpoint could still be argued (Google? Top 5% of websites account for 75% of the volume)? Finally, if you can find somewhere for Clay Shirky’s on news that’s another excellent A2 theory to add to the essay and will push you up to the higher grades.

LR- Your conclusion is really confusing as you focus entirely on the pluralist side of the essay and then do not look at the Marxist view point in detail but conclude that we live in a predominantly Marxist society?! You need a fully developed paragraph where you consider globalisation, the dominance of conglomerates like Google in the advent of digital news, develop your ideas about Mail online - give clear examples of the Right wing agenda imposed on people (e.g the Steven Gately example we looked at). You need to explicitly say in your introduction that your case study is news as the examiner will not know this.


Re-write your opening paragraph making sure you clearly answer the question and lay out both sides of the argument. Also add an extra paragraph with a Marxist viewpoint and examples from current news to support an alternative idea. Use some of the quotes from our quote sheet (‘The great leveller’ and ‘Paradigm Shift’ – Krotoski- versus the dominance of Sky and Daily Mail both online and in print which promote a Right wing agenda and is still the most read newspaper in UK)  we have used in class and embed them along with statistics. 

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