Digital News: Online Critical Analysis

Online Critical Analysis of the Creative Project (Student Yak) in Relation to Current News Output

INTRODUCTION:

News is “something that is new or current … it’s the things that people want to know about or need to know about” (Edwards, 2012). This critical analysis of the online news channel “Student Yak”, will discuss the production of ‘Let’s Go Viral’, the definition of news, and the genre of news and news production. To do this it will explore elements of news like concept and brand development, audiences, platforms, presentation, storytelling and story development. It will discuss how research from these key areas influenced the creation, development, and production of Student Yak, and lay out the reasons behind all the decisions that were made.

CONCEPT/BRAND DEVELOPMENT:

Student Yak is an online news channel that “aims to find entertaining news and views from all corners of the Internet, and bring it to [students]” (Student Yak, 2016). The channel focuses on the news it believes is important to students, and does so using the ‘News as Infotainment’ method. This method relates to the “type of media which provides a combination of information and entertainment” (Demers, 2009), which means the news is presented in a fun and entertaining manner. It was decided that the programme should focus on student news because as students, we felt we should report on events that we found to be worthwhile. Chapman states “if news is to be worthwhile, it should accord to something we value” (Chapman, 2009: 59), and we believed students would value the stories we chose to focus on. Additionally, with the popularity of other online news brands aimed at young people rising, for example The Lad Bible being “followed by half of all 18-24 men in the UK” (LadBible, 2015), we felt we had something we could offer with our new concept.

Branding in news is very important, as Chapman explains the “style, structure and very look” (Chapman, 2009: 219) of a news program is needed to “underpin their reliability and impartiality” (Chapman, 2009: 219). One brand that influenced some of the decisions made on Student Yak, is The Lad Bible, which uses the simple colours black and white (fig. 1). By using a simple colour scheme, they come across as serious and trustworthy. This influenced the choice of a simple colour scheme of purple and orange for Student Yak (fig. 2), with purple representing power and ambition, and orange representing enthusiasm, creativity and determination. These colours are also bold and eye-catching, and will help maintain the interest of a student, and help the brand stand out on social media.

Fig. 1. LadBible Logo (2015)

Fig. 2. Screenshot of Student Yak Logo (2016)

The overall feel of the Student Yak brand is a relaxed and friendly one. We wanted it to be something not to serious that students would enjoy watching. Student Yak isn’t supposed to be a formal news programme, it is supposed to be a fun, light-hearted news programme that takes a satirical look at the news, and we feel the brand choices made, with bright colours, and an approachable feel, represent these intentions.

AUDIENCE RESEARCH:

An online news brand such as The LadBible currently “reaches over 150 million people a week” (LadBible, 2015). With their target audience being 18-24 year olds, it can be seen that this age range does take an interest in the news, if it is reported in a manner that appeals to them. Other online news brands aimed at students, like CNN Student News, currently have over 1.1 million subscribers (YouTube, 2016), so again it supports the idea that there is an audience out there for student based news. Student Yak is aimed at a student audience that ranges from ages 18-30. This decision was made based on a 2014 report on patterns and trends in UK higher education which found that a “decline in mature students has resulted in a younger student population” (Universities UK. 2014: 2), and that about 850,000 students are aged 20 and under (Universities UK. 2014: 14). A digital news report from 2013 found that 50% of 18-44 year olds get their news online (Reuters, 2013). By using this information, we decided that 18-30 year olds would be our best audience, and an audience that would be most interested in what we had to say. In terms of gender, we tried to aim for a balanced audience as a report from 2014 found that “56% of students were female” (Universities UK. 2014: 13), and so aiming for a 50/50 audience appeared to be the best option.

NEWS AGENDA & BRAND VALUE:

As a news brand, we chose our own news agenda, based on what we believed our audience wanted to know about. Chapman said that a news brand is “responsible for constructing … news agenda” (Chapman, 2009: 75), and so as a news brand, we were responsible for choosing the right news stories to bring to our audience. As well as us choosing our own agenda, we also wanted our audience to choose it to by interacting with us on social media, and by contacting us through our website. In the news industry, channels such as BBC News encourage their audiences to share stories on their website. They also encourage their audiences to get involved on social media, using hashtags and twitter handles. Student Yak attempts to incorporate these methods by having a contact us page on the website (Fig. 3) as well as social media links in the video productions, and the video descriptions (Student Yak: Let’s Go Viral, 2016). This allows the channel to be influenced by its audience’s opinions and helps us decide what our agenda should be. Audiences of modern news productions benefit from “relevant digital content [with] the introduction of alternate voices” (Chapman, 2009: 44).

Fig. 3. Screenshot of Contact Us Page (2016)

PLATFORM RESEARCH:

In today’s world there is more “content available anytime, anywhere on a wide variety of platforms” (Chapman, 2009: 43). The main platforms for news are print, radio, television and in more recent years, online. A report from 2013 found that although “digital may be impacting traditional platforms [it is] not yet replacing them” (Reuters, 2013), as 77% of mobile users still use TV news as their main news source (Reuters, 2013). Using an online platform for a news channel works in its favour as it doesn’t have to reach millions of viewers in order to stay on air, and it doesn’t have to follow the same guidelines as TV news, although that could be a negative. A recent episode of CNN Student News only reached about 12,000 people (CNN Student News- The Dangers of Distracted Driving, 2016) and a month later they’re still producing daily episodes because views are not as important as they are in television news. As well as this, “digital broadcasting has a far cheaper cost of entry and offers interactivity” (Chapman, 2009: 44), and although you can have interactive television, it can be hard to lower the costs involved.

Using YouTube as a platform for news broadcasting comes with many benefits. YouTube has about 22.7 billion visits a day (SimilarWeb, 2016), and “reaches more 18-34 and 18-49 year olds than any cable network in the U.S.” (YouTube, 2016). It is clear that many people visit and use YouTube on a daily basis, thus it has a lot of potential as a platform for digital news broadcasting. Add to this the ability to have interactive features like video cards, and social media links, and the ability to broadcast live, it’s clear that YouTube has many of the features associated with news reporting, whilst maintaining an interactive connection with the audience. Many major news brands like BBC News, and CNN have their own YouTube channels, and YouTube itself has a channel dedicated to bringing together news related videos from across the platform (YouTube, 2016).

CITIZEN JOURNALISM:

In recent years, with the constant development of mobile devices, and data connectivity, Citizen Journalism has been on the rise. Bowman and Willis state that it is based upon citizens “playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analysing, and disseminating news and information” (Bowman and Willis, 2003). It involves people “without professional journalism training … [using] tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media” (Glaser, 2006). In recent years YouTube has played an important part in providing a platform for citizen journalists, and so we decided to use it as the main platform for Student Yak. As well as this, it gave us the chance to mix the traditional elements of news reporting, with the elements that have come about as a result of digital news reporting, like social interaction through Twitter and Facebook.

NEWS PROGRAMME STUDIO/SET DESIGN:

Across all platforms and news genres, the presentation of the news plays an important part in helping an audience understand the story that is being told. It can be argued that if news channels focus too much on presentation and how other channels present the news they could be acting without “any proper consideration of what [they] should be doing” (J’accuse The News, 1994). In terms of locations, TV news tends to use studio sets, and digital news programs tend to use green screens. This may be because for smaller productions, like those seen online, using a green screen is a quicker and cheaper option. One online news production, CNN Student News, uses a green screen studio for all the segments with the main presenter (fig. 4). On television news, a studio set is traditionally used, however ITV News uses a very convincing green screen set (fig. 5), combined with some physical set elements. The CEO of FX Design Group, Mack McLaughlin has said “Someday … more sets will be virtual … they’ll look real enough and the cost of materials and shipping will be such that it doesn’t make sense to … build scenery” (Dodson, 2013). This could explain the use of green screen in digital news broadcasting; it’s cheaper. For Student Yak, we decided to use a green screen, and digitally add in a studio set. We wanted the audience to learn a bit about the behind the scenes aspect of television, and so our digital studio set has television cameras, and lights in view (fig. 6), a method also used by BBC News (fig. 7.).

Fig. 4. Screenshot from CNN Student News (2016)

Fig. 5. ITV News split screen (2013)

Fig. 6. Screenshot from Student Yak: Let’s Go Viral (2016)

Fig. 7. Screenshot from BBC Weekend News (2016)

GRAPHICS AND DESIGN:

Student Yak also used a lot of on screen graphics, however, we didn’t make this decision because of the “need to have constant activity on screen” (J’accuse The News, 1994), we did it because we felt it’d be the best way to represent information and the best way to keep our student audience engaged. We also felt it fit with the news as infotainment method we were trying to follow. As well as this, we were also following the idea that “if there are no pictures, … there is no story” (Chapman, 2009: 98).

SCRIPTING AND STORYTELLING CONTEXTUAL RESEARCH:

For Student Yak, we chose the rise in the popularity of viral videos as our news peg. A news peg is defined as “an aspect or angle of a story that makes it newsworthy” (Oxford Dictionaries, 2016). After some research we found that the viral video ‘Charlie Bit My Finger’ had been “viewed almost 177 million times” (Hoby & Lamont, 2010). We believed this information made a story about viral videos newsworthy, and so we decided to answer the question ‘how do you go viral?’. For our news package we decided to give our audience a step by step guide to going viral, based on the research we had carried out, and for our live package we decided to attempt to go viral by trying to break a world record. We felt this was the best way for us to approach our news peg, and we believed it would maintain the interest of our target audience, and engage with them.

For the final production we looked at the reporting style of major news programmes to decide how we should represent the story on camera. For example, BBC Weekend News uses a studio presenter to introduce each story and give a ‘coming up’ before the programme begins (BBC Weekend News, 2016). They then use additional presenters/reporters in the news packages to expand on the studio introductions. As well as this, they also use live link ups to allow the presenter and the reporter to further expand on the story. And finally, they also use GFXs to represent information that is being spoken about during the reports (BBC Weekend News, 2016). For Student Yak we used studio introductions, pieces to camera, GFXs, and interviews to represent our story in a similar way to that of a news programme such as BBC News or CNN News. For the interview we spoke to a YouTuber as we felt they’d be the best person to gather information from regarding the world of online videos. For the live segment, we chose to use students as our contestants, as they were the types of people we were targeting for the overall programme. We also chose to only use student presenters for the same reason.

CRITICAL REFLECTION & CONCLUSION:

Student Yak resulted in an entertaining, visually engaging, and informative digital news programme, which, based on research, represents the audience it is aimed at. Although it doesn’t follow the same conventions as traditional TV news, it is still structured in the same manner and still uses the same tools, like studio set ups, pieces to camera, and interviews. By introducing social media into our digital news production, we have allowed our audience to contribute to our news, and we have showed them that we care about their opinions on the news stories we report.

In terms of weaknesses, I feel that Student Yak could try not to rely on comedy and gimmicks too much, otherwise this will make it harder to report on serious news stories if we ever had too. Although the decision to include comedy was made because of our target audience, I feel it could be toned down a little, so the audience can still focus on the importance of the stories we are trying to tell. If you look at professional, well respected and trustworthy news brands such as BBC News, they always look at the news with a serious mind-set, however to do like to end with a happy, light-hearted story (BBC Weekend News, 2016).

I think we made a good choice by deciding to focus our attention on branding and social media, as a lot of TV news brands are also now focusing on social media. I also believe by doing this, it allowed us to expand on the entertainment value of Student Yak, and therefore follow the method of news as infotainment. Overall, because of the decisions we made in terms of concept, branding, audience, platform, presentation, news stories, and structure, Student Yak fits with the typical conventions of the news genre and news programmes, whilst applying the modern and interactive elements that broadcasting using a digital platform allows for.

ILLUSTRATIONS:

Figure 1. LadBible Logo (2015) [Logo] At: http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/640/media/images/80801000/jpg/_80801404_80801403.jpg (Accessed on 19.11.16)

Figure 2. Screenshot of Student Yak Logo (2016) [screenshot] At: http://studentyak.wixsite.com/studentyak (Accessed on 19.11.16)

Figure 3. Screenshot of Contact Us Page (2015) [screenshot] At: http://studentyak.wixsite.com/studentyak/contact-us (Accessed on 19.11.16)

Figure 4. Screenshot from CNN Student News (2016) [screenshot] At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVFYwlv_YJ0 (Accessed on 19.11.16)

Figure 5. ITV News split screen (2013) [image] At: http://www.kojoboateng.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/ITVNews_Splitscreen-copy.jpg (Accessed on 19.11.16)

Figure 6. Screenshot from Student Yak: Let’s Go Viral (2016) [screenshot] At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSQJaHz2I4A (Accessed on 19.11.16)

Figure 7. Screenshot from BBC Weekend News (2016) [screenshot] At: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0827rs3/bbc-weekend-news-20112016 (Accessed on 19.11.16)

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Books

Chapman, Jane (2009) Broadcast Journalism: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge.

Demers, David (2009) Dictionary of Mass Communication and Media Research: A Guide for Students, Scholars and Professionals. US: Marquette Books.

Articles

BBC Weekend News [news program] Pres. Brown. BBC News (2016) 20 mins. At: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0827rs3/bbc-weekend-news-20112016 (Accessed on 19.11.16)

Bowman, S. and Willis, C. (2003) We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information. At: http://www.hypergene.net/wemedia/weblog.php (Accessed on 19.11.16)

CNN Student News- The Dangers Of Distracted Driving [online news program] Pres. Azuz. CNN (2016) 10 mins. At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVFYwlv_YJ0 (Accessed on 19.11.16)

Dodson, A. (2013) Green Screen Not Just For Weather Anymore. At: http://www.tvnewscheck.com/article/69033/green-screen-not-just-for-weather-anymore (Accessed on 10.12.16)

Edwards, H. (2012) What is news?: transcript. At: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/071011huw_what_is_news.pdf (Accessed on 10.12.16)

Glaser, M. (2006) Your Guide to Citizen Journalism. At: http://mediashift.org/2006/09/your-guide-to-citizen-journalism270/ (Accessed on 19.11.16)

Hoby, H and Lamont, T. (2010) ‘How YouTube Made Superstars Out of Everyday People’. In: The Guardian [online] At: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/apr/11/youtube-web-video-stars (Accessed on 18.11.16)

J’accuse The News [television programme online] Pres. Pearson. Channel 4 (1994) 25 mins. At: https://estream.ucreative.ac.uk/view2.aspx?id=9642~4v~6hmQEK79 (Accessed on 20.11.16)

LadBible. (2015) Our Mission & Our Company. At: http://www.theladbiblegroup.com/about/ (Accessed on 19.11.16)

Last Ever 60 Seconds on BBC Three [online video] Pres. Naz. BBC News (2016) 3 mins. At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TJ7dthfC3U (Accessed on 19.11.16)

Oxford Dictionaries. (2016) Definition of News in English. At: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/news (Accessed on 19.11.16)

Oxford Dictionaries. (2016) Definition of News Peg in English. At: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/news_peg (Accessed on 19.11.16)

Reuters. (2013) Digital News Report 2013: Executive Summary and Key Findings of the 2013 Report [online] At: http://www.digitalnewsreport.org/survey/2013/executive-summary-and-key-findings-2013/ (Accessed on 19.11.16)

SimilarWeb. (2016) Youtube.com Analytics. At: https://www.similarweb.com/website/youtube.com (Accessed on 19.11.16)

Student Yak. (2016) Student Yak: About Us. At: http://studentyak.wixsite.com/studentyak/about-us (Accessed on 19.11.16)

Student Yak: Let’s Go Viral [online news program] Pres. Jones. Student Yak (2016) 7 mins. At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSQJaHz2I4A (Accessed on 19.11.16)

Student Yak. (2016) Student Yak: Contact Us. At: http://studentyak.wixsite.com/studentyak/contact-us (Accessed on 19.11.16)

Universities UK. (2014) Patterns and Trends in UK Higher Education. At: http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/policy-and-analysis/reports/Documents/2014/patterns-and-trends-in-uk-higher-education-2014.pdf (Accessed on 19.11.16)

YouTube. (2016) CNN Student News on YouTube. At: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFaCoQm2VArZof_egvYRVLA/about (Accessed on 19.11.16)

YouTube. (2016) YouTube Channel: News. At: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYfdidRxbB8Qhf0Nx7ioOYw (Accessed on 19.11.16)

YouTube. (2016) YouTube: Statistics. At: https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html (Accessed on 19.11.16)