Similarities and Differences between British Broadsheet and Tabloid : a Comparative Analysis of the Coverage about Travel in Italy in the Guardian and the Daily Mirror

The main objective of this study is to contribute towards a preliminary understanding on the similarities and differences between broadsheets and tabloids. To achieve this goal, I performed both quantitative and qualitative analyses and comparisons for articles on the topic of travel in Italy published in the Guardian and the Daily Mirror from 2013 to 2017. The two aforementioned newspapers are used as representatives of broadsheets and tabloids respectively. Furthermore, my research mainly focusedd on 50 selected articles (31 published in the Guardian and 19 published in the Daily Mirror). This dissertation is divided into three main parts. The first part focuses on analysing the texts of the 50 articles. Convincing evidence was observed by making word clouds and further counting the word frequency for each newspaper. In both newspapers, ‘food’ is a frequently discussed topic. Further differences between the newspapers are revealed by counting frequencies of specific words, such as adjectives and Italian words. Interestingly, I observed that the Guardian mainly employs neutral and elite words, whereas the Daily Mirror more frequently uses emotionally charged words. This supports my conclusion that broadsheets and tabloids differ on the use of language. Another significant difference observed is that articles in the Daily Mirror are more accessible to audience than articles in the Guardian. I found that the average sentence length of the Guardian is notably longer than the Daily Mirror. Furthermore, in order to measure the readability, I evaluated the text complexity for both newspapers using five different models. Consistently I found that the Guardian uses more complex words. In the second part, I analysed all headlines and leads for the 50 articles. Compared to the Daily Mirror, the Guardian uses much more informative headlines, which reflects its objective character as a broadsheet. The main body of text uses similar language techniques to the headlines and leads of the articles if each newspaper. The feature and function of headlines and leads were also studied in detail. In the third part, I made lots of in-depth analyses and comparisons with a focus on the content of articles. I found several significant differences between the newspapers using the content analysis method. I observed evidence on the similarities and differences on themes involved between the two newspapers. Particularly, the Guardian is concerned more with art, history and legends, while the Daily Mirror prefers to discuss popularities and luxuries. I also found that a lot of commercial content have been embedded in the articles of the Daily Mirror, which is not in the case with the Guardian. Furthermore, by using the discourse analysis method as a reference, some systematic analyses were done for six articles. Interestingly, I found that articles published in the Guardian generally have regular, logical structures, using rational and neutral language. In contrast, the Daily Mirror frequently uses one sentence as a single paragraph with numerous emotive words and phrases. Finally, I concluded my dissertation by summarising all the results achieved. From the combination of various evidences, I obtained more valid conclusions on the similarities and differences between the two newspapers. I also discussed the limitation of my master’s research, and proposed some future directions for improving the outcomes achieved.