A DIGITAL NEWS CRITICAL ANALYSIS
NISSERIN BESSIOUA
Student ID: 1510301
Word Count: 2452
Contents:
- Introduction
- Concept and Brand Development
- Agenda Setting
- Impact on Changing Media Landscape
- News genre Research
- Scripting
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- INTRODUCTION
This critical analysis will be discussing the online news channel Student Yak, considering the brand identity and the portrayal and tone of the news content. Whist looking at the development of the online news platform and how it has changed the way audience’s access their news, it will analyse how this has effects traditional forms such as print and TV. It will also explore the online agenda setting and how the constant uploading of news has to be filtered and certain stories prioritised, meaning not all of them will be seen.
- CONCEPT AND BRAND DEVELOPMENT
Andrew Boyd talks about the differences in presenting news in a print form and broadcasting on television, he describes news on television as having “the powerful advantage of being able to use graphic illustrations to bring home a point” (Boyd, 2008: 77). Part of Student Yak is to include lots of graphics and editing techniques to further the originality of the show, this also makes it more entertaining for an audience.
Student Yak had a strong concept right for the very beginning of the development. Initially, the concept aim was to target an audience of students and young adults, reporting on news stories that they would be interested in while maintaining a comedy element to differ from traditional news in order to provide the audience with a something original and entertaining. This was adhered to, and allowed for the branding to be decided on right away.
Student Yak has two strong colours, orange and purple, which stand out against other news brands. Using strong colours and not pastel colours makes our title and logo recognisable and like the BBC, one that audiences remember. We made our logo with the aim that it would be one audiences will see and know was Student Yak without having to see the title. When looking and brand identity, it is important that this is strong as it will be the first thing an audience recognise. The BBC has a very strong brand identity and is something that is recognised all over the world. “Branding is one of the most critical parts of a successful business marketing strategy” (BBC Active), so when people see the logo or hear the news theme tune, it is important that they instantly know this to be the BBC news.
- AGENDA SETTING
Certain stories take priority over others depending on what the audience want to hear and what is popular at the moment. Our audience is students and young people and because student yak is an online news channel, it has to keep up to date with all the latest trends and what’s happening in the world as “news bulletins and programmes that used to be available only on television and radio sets are now available on your phone or computer.” (Hudson and Rowlands, 2012:4). The news stories that we transmit are ones that we know our audiences will want to hear about. This is why we chose the topic of viral videos because we know from seeing all the online talk about them that this is a popular topic at the moment and is something that the audience will want to hear about.
As Rick Thompson explains, “broadcasting and online news, unlike the morning papers, provide round-the-clock services where news stories have to be refreshed all the time.” (Thompson, 2010: 105). Being an online news channel, Student Yak has to keep up to date with it’s news stories and make sure that what is being put out is current and a story the target audience will be interested in; from Thompson’s findings, we can see that online news is always changing and uploading new stories, and “it’s a matter of judgement when an update is required” (Thompson, 2010: 105). Audiences are constantly looking for new and untold stories so it’s important that news channels keep up to date and do not fall behind.
Student Yak takes part in a variety of different social media sites, for example, Facebook. Twitter, YouTube and its website is also another way the audience can assess its content. However there is multiple other news companies that also do the same so in order to stand out, it has to provide its audience with something new and different. It’s important to engage with the audiences as they like feeling included and being able to express their opinions. There are three key roles that social media plays in terms of journalism, “newsgathering”, “audience engagement” and a “platform for content” (BBC, 2011). Social media is currently a very valuable tool in finding and sharing news as it “allows us to engage different and younger audiences” (BBC, 2011)
- IMPACT ON CHANGING MEDIA LANDSCAPE
Audiences are increasingly accessing their news online and using other methods of obtaining it rather than using the traditional methods such as print like newspapers and magazines. Figure 1 shows the statistics of the different ages of audiences and how they most use the Internet. 16 – 24 year olds are the largest group at 93% to use social media such as Facebook and Twitter with 69% also say they use the Internet to read or download online news.
Figure 1 - Internet Activities by Age Group 2013
Source: Office for National Statistics.
Student Yak targets an audience aged 16 – 25, mostly presenting news stories that students would find interesting and entertaining. With online news, there is more competition, as there is a much wider range of news sites for people to seek their news from. Although being online has its benefits, as it’s much easier to reach a wide audience and spread news fast, it also comes with some challenges. With there being so many news stories out at the same time, it’s more difficult to get people to see your article or news programme because it can very quickly become old news. Using an online platform also encourages user generate content, so the audiences can report on topics themselves, which can make it hard to differ from real factual news to just someone opinion. This can lead to people making assumptions and believing the wrong thing. The BBC has to go through and make sure that they facts they are providing their audience are correct which is why it takes them longer to put out news and why the internet is so much faster because it’s not regulated.
“Facebook, email, and Twitter dominate the sharing of news content in the UK” (Newman, 2013) and is currently one of the quickest ways of audiences accessing news stories. The target audience of Student Yak is people aged 16 – 25, so being an online news channel is the best way to reach the audience as “over half of all adults (55%) used the Internet to read or download the news, newspapers or magazines in 2013” (Office for National Statistics, 2013); online news is fast becoming a popular form as accessing news. With news being posted so quickly and sometimes without great detail, “a loss of in-depth, enterprise and policy related stories” (Waldman, 2011: 49) is a known issue. The depth of a story can be easily lost because as quickly as one story is uploaded the will be another straight after it. Having lots of news stories available is good because it means that there is something for every type of audience but it can also take away from the importance of some stories.
Being an online news company, Student yak is able to reach a wide audience as the platform allows for articles and stories to be shared with several people all at the same time. This also gives the audience the opportunity to interact with the news, as they are able to post comments and share it themselves. “The laptop or desktop remains the most important single device for accessing news but smartphones and tablets are not far behind in terms of the proportion of users accessing news each week” (Newman, 2013). The online platform is much more interactive that traditional forms of news such as print and radio and it is much easier for audiences to have their say as they can now access their news on the go from mobile phones and tablets.
And example of good storytelling in online journalism is an article published on The Washington Post titled “One family’s journey from Aleppo to Austria. Written by Anthony Faiola in 2015, the article follows the journey of one Syrian family and their trip to Europe. The online article incorporates a very unique way of telling the story but starting off with a slideshow of images of the family, each one captioned to give an insight into some of the topics the article mentions. It then follows onto the article, which not only includes the story of the family but includes data and statistics to give a wider image of other people’s movements and migrations. The way that this online article includes images brings to life the story they are trying to tell. Hudson and Rowlands emphasise that “the bigger stories are remembered through powerful images” (Hudson and Rowlands, 2012:29). And that “People will talk about great pictures” (Hudson and Rowlands, 2012:29), as the strong images will be what an audience remembers the most.
- NEWS GENRE RESEARCH
In 1997, BBC NEWS 24 was launched, which was an online news platform providing its audience with news 24/7. This was created in order to move into the digital age. However Sky already existed online at the time, which meant that they were the more popular channel and had a strong record of being the first to receive news stories so at the time, the audience went straight to Sky first. Since then BBC News, along with many other major news channels have been “transformed by technology and the opportunities it offers over the last 20 or so years” (BBC, 2011). Not only did moving news from print and television to online mean that it was more accessible for an audience, it also meant that news could be found more easily too “as the internet opened access to information” (BBC, 2011).
Student Yak keeps to the conventions of online news by keeping the episodes short and fast paced to keep the excitement of the show. When it comes to finding news online, it can be easy to locate a new and fresh story, however, there is always the trouble of making sure the news is legitimate and accurate. It is “important to have your own sources” (Brewer, 2016), using someone else’s source can be unreliable. In Student Yak when we were reporting on the rise of YouTube, we located and spoke to a YouTuber ourselves and did not just use an online source, this way we could be sure that the answers we were given we straight from our source.
- SCRIPTING
“Storytelling is at the heart of good journalism…” (Hudson and Rowlands, 2012:5) and this is something that Student Yak does in that it turns the news it presents into a story for its audience as well as relying on a large humour element. Although this humorous style works well in terms of meeting the needs of the audience, it limits the type of stories that we can report on. When selecting the topic of the episode, we had to be sure that it was something that could be made funny without causing offence to anyone in our audience.
Hudson and Rowlands also explain that “journalism presents factual information in a way that audiences can relate to and understand.” Student Yak takes the news it presents and makes it student related and specific to its audience. In the writing process, we made lots of references to online viral videos which we know from us being students ourselves that our audience would understand, but also they were important to the story as many of the jokes and the humour element relied on these videos to make them work. Andrew Boyd explains that attractive visuals “breath life into the coverage of news” (Boyd, 2008:62), so as part of our storytelling, we included edits and incorporate more visual effects and images to further emphasise certain parts of our script.
- Conclusion
Andrew Boyd talks about how television uses graphic illustrations to emphasise a point, Student Yak uses lots of images added in during post production to put emphasise on certain words the presenter says and to add a humour element to our interview section. In terms of advertising for Student Yak, we made sure that our social media pages and website we mobile friendly, meaning that they were all viewable on a mobile phone or tablet. This was important as afore mentioned but Hudson and Rowlands, many forms of news that were only available on television and radio are now much more accessible as it’s online.
Student Yak does make use of some traditional styles, for example having an anchoring presenter, we felt that we needed this as there were lots of different sections of the show that were away from the studio, having the presenter meant that the audience had someone to focus on. In the script writing process, we kept the language colloquial and quite simple to understand, as “news production is less of a lecture and more of a conversation” (Hudson and Rowlands, 2012:4). We also had to remember that our audience is students who wouldn’t want to watch something too complicated.
Images:
Figure 2 - https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/world/exodus/black-route/
Bibliography –
Chapman, J. and Kinsey, M. (eds.). (2008) Broadcast journalism: A critical introduction. Cullompton, Devon, United Kingdom: Routledge.
Hudson, G. and Rowlands, S. (2012) The Broadcast Journalism Handbook. (2nd ed.) Harlow: England: Pearson.
Newman, N. (2013) Executive summary and key findings of the 2013 report. At: http://www.digitalnewsreport.org/survey/2013/executive-summary-and-key-findings-2013/ (Accessed on 24 November 2016)
Office For National Statistics. (2013) Internet access - households and individuals: 2013. Office For National Statistics. [online] At: http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/householdcharacteristics/homeinternetandsocialmediausage/bulletins/internetaccesshouseholdsandindividuals/2013-08-08 (Accessed on 24 November 2016)
Thompson, R. (2010) Writing for Broadcast Journalists. (2nd ed.) London, United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis.
BBC Active. (2010) Discover the secrets of Branding. At: http://www.bbcactive.com/BBCActiveIdeasandResources/DiscovertheSecretsofBranding.aspx (Accessed on 11 December 2016)
Waldman, S. (2011) The information needs of communities: The changing media landscape in a broadband age. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. (Accessed on 11 December 2016)
BBC. (2011) ‘The editors: How has social media changed the way newsrooms work?’ At: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2011/09/ibc_in_amsterdam.html (Accessed on 12 December 2016)
Brewer, D. (2016) Accuracy in journalism. At: http://www.mediahelpingmedia.org/training-resources/editorial-ethics/237-the-importance-of-accuracy-in-journalism (Accessed on 12 December 2016)