The Sun Front Page Analysis

 The Sun Front Page

Layout:

The layout of The Suns' front pages is pretty consistent. The top left box shows the name of the paper with a big red box around it. The use of the colour red has connotations with anger which is definitely the mood that The Sun wants its reader to be in after reading it. For example in this article they want the reader to focus their anger towards Muslims which is a common theme in the paper. As for the main article itself we can see that the clear main focus is the headline that claims "1 in 5 brit muslims' sympathy for jihadis". This title is so big that you don't even need to read the article to get its message and in fact they don't even want the reader to read the rest as seen by the fact that only 1 paragraph of the full story is seen on the front page. We also see a man wearing a balaclava brandishing a knife to represent a muslim. This is clearly meant to portray muslims as violent and is used to make the reader fearful of muslims.

Content:
As mentioned before very little content is on the front page. This is because the reader is only meant to be drawn in by the headline. These headlines are made to influence people and those who are likely to believe these headlines are unlikely to seek evidence to these "facts" shown in the headline. As for the story itself, it is mostly vapid and uninteresting. At no point does the writer intend people to think deeply about the story. They are simply meant to believe the headline.

Story:
There is very little actual story here as The Sun simply relies on bold, ridiculous statements to stoke the fire and in order to push Rupert Murdoch's Tory ideology. Something interesting to note is the story to the left of the main headline. It too follows the ISIS theme with the headline "Charles: Climate change link to IS". Its almost as if they are suggesting that ISIS is causing climate change which is almost comically ridiculous. What this story is actually about is a statement Prince Charles made saying that climate change has caused droughts that have lead to the immigration crisis and the rise of IS. Although there is no way that a reader would be able to gather this from the headline.

Political Position:
The Sun is run by Rupert Murdoch and much like everything else he controls it pushes a strong right-wing narrative and strongly supports the conservative party which Murdoch has strong ties to. For example it often tries to slander Jeremy Corbyn whilst promoting Theresa May as "Strong and Stable".
It also pushed hard for Brexit and is very against muslims.

The Guardian

Layout:

Compared to the layout of The Sun there are many immediate differences. The first being that The Guardian has considerably more writing with a much smaller headline. The image is also of a less striking nature and doesn't try to lure in a reader with shocks and outrage. It makes it clear that it is there to appeal to a more engaged and astute audience compared to the sun where the audience barely even has to know how to read to get the message it puts across. The banner is also a much calmer blue which is both a colour associated with intelligence and class. It is clear that The Guardian is presenting itself in a more broadsheet manner rather than the tabloid style of The Sun.

Content:

Not only is there far more to read on the cover of The Guardian but the information is also presented in a less obviously opinionated or biased manner. For example the headline that reads "radical plan to stop Muslim extremism" suggests that rather than all Muslims being terrorists that instead the radicalised Muslims are part of a small group of extremists. There is also no image to accompany the headline which forces the reader to investigate the article to gain further knowledge. One could image that if this article was written by The Sun that the headline would read something along the lines of "DESPERATE PLAN TO STOP MUSLIMS TERRORISING OUR HOMES!" accompanied with a picture of man in a balaclava kicking a dalmatian and setting fire to a church. Furthermore The Guardian also includes a number of other stories on its front page which shows that the front page is used more like all the other pages of the newspaper.

Political Position:

I think its needless to say that The Guardian sits towards the left of the political spectrum.

When looking at the yougov profile for sun readers we immediately see that they politically lean towards the left. Other interesting things to note is that the main audience is males aged 18-24 perhaps showing that those attending university are more likely to read the paper. Its also interesting that the main area for guardian readers is in London which is a largely liberal and left leaning area.

However looking at the demographic of the sun tells a completely different story.

Here we see that the large demographic is not only far older (aged 40-54) but it is also Female which surprised me considering the way the paper treats women, for example on page 3. The Suns demographic is also of those in lower social classes and with less spare spending money than The Guardian. They are also more from the midlands. It is likely that people in these classes and areas are more likely to be angry with society due to the loss of retail work and the failing economy in the north. For these people The Sun provides easy thing to blame this on such as immigrants and Muslims.