Tabloidization and the Teen Market

Succulent Sins, Personalized Politics, and Mainstream Media’s Tabloidization Temptation

“…Tabloidization has become a tool for mainstream journalists (Conboy, 2006). It has been interpreted as a method for attracting younger audiences and as an agent for increasing the audience size overall (Nice, 2007;Gans, 2000). The participants in this study suggested, however, that tabloidized material posted online is less credible than content written in a more traditional journalistic style.…”

“…Tabloidized stories also do not necessarily contain more emotional elements than more traditional news stories (Uribe & Gumter, 2007). While much scholarship criticizes the tabloidization of the media, there is some indication that tabloidization may have positive effects, such as giving the media a way to reach the readers of teen magazines (Nice, 2007). Using journalistic methods to reach large groups of people may not be at the heart of the journalist's professional interest, but in a sense tabloidization or "popularization" could, and perhaps should, be used to increase the audience for news (Gans, 2000, p. 21).…”

“…On one hand, the increase in personalization and sleaze can be viewed as corruption of professional journalism (Esser, 1999;Kurtz, 1993). On the other hand, tabloidization may encourage audiences to consume news (Gans, 2000;Nice, 2007).…”

“…The exact definition of the term varies from one scholar to the next, but it is viewed as a method for attaining audiences in an evercompetitive media environment. Tabloidization has been described as dumbing down the news by giving consumers the stories that they want rather than providing useful public service information (Nice, 2007). The writing tone in these tabloidized stories is designed to be stimulating and exciting (McLachlan & Golding, 2000).…”

Visual Infotainment in the political news

“…Framing devices essentially fi lter such detail into abstractions that are culturally easy to 'read' and recognise, thereby enabling individuals to interpret, appreciate and deliberate on events in (possibly multiple, but not limitless) culturally shared, socially endorsed ways (van Gorp, 2005;Tuchman, 1978). Here, we adopt a defi nition for framing that highlights this purpose: a frame may be any conceptual tool or abstraction that enables the media and their audiences to communicate, decode and appraise information by choosing and/or highlighting some of their aspects and downplaying or omitting others (Gitlin, 1980;Neuman, Just & Crigler, 1992;Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000;Photiou, Papadopoulou, & Maniou, 2017). Framing devices in visual media (in this case, photographs) typically comprise images.…”