Paper 2 Questions 3 and 4: newspapers or online media
Paper 2 questions
What you need to know
Section B is on newspapers in some years and on online, social and participatory media and video games in others, so both need preparing: a 2-mark item (Question 3) and a 20-mark extended response (Question 4), sometimes on a printed newspaper page, before the synoptic Question 5.
The 2025 questions (newspapers): two ways newspapers show political bias, and how far a Daily Mirror double-page spread secures the preferred reading. The 2024 questions (online media): how producers of online and social media make money, and how Uses and Gratifications explains the appeal of Rashford's and Kardashian's online presence.
Past exam pages make good practice, but the set newspaper editions change every year.
A question set out as AQA sets it, with its wording and marks, and a model answer with the level and mark an examiner would give and why, beside a weaker answer and what would lift it.
Timing: about 40 minutes for Section B.
Sentence starters and a short checklist of the steps, for students aiming at Grade 4 and above.
The Close Study Products for 2027 and 2028 exams are His Dark Materials ('The City of Magpies') and Doctor Who ('An Unearthly Child'); the Daily Mirror and The Times; Marcus Rashford's and Kim Kardashian's online presence; Lara Croft Go, with Blackpink The Game for 2027 exams and Lego Fortnite for 2028 exams; the Galaxy, Represent and OMO adverts; the Tatler and Heat covers; Black Widow and I, Daniel Blake; the Arctic Monkeys and Blackpink videos; and Radio 1's launch and Kiss Breakfast. Kim Kardashian: Hollywood was set only for 2025, so past questions on it are practice only.
Back readings of class, gender and ethnicity with specific evidence from the products, as the mark schemes reward.
