News Revision: Modern Observer online


The Observer Online 

You are expected to be familiar with The Observer Online, including the use of social and participatory media. Click on the image above to be taken to the Observer homepage.
This publication has been chosen as it is unique in that it explores one possible economic future for news organisations by monetising online content through voluntary donations and membership.
You must study the home page of The Observer and at least one other page in order to investigate continuities in the form and content of the pages. You must follow the links for a number of articles and journalists to help illustrate the media language used, representations constructed, modes of audience address and the scope and scale of The Observer’s online content.

Social and participatory media 

You need to look at these different social media links to look at how they are used to appeal to readers in the light of new technologies, such as the internet. You may need to access these at home.
Click here for the ‘comment is free’ website  
Click here for the Guardian Twitter feed  
Click here for the Guardian Instagram feed

 Answer these questions as part of your revision:
1. What is the impact of production processes and technologies on online newspapers and their social and participatory feeds?
2. How is The Observer is owned and funded as a media institution and how funding issues have affected the drive to online media? 
3. How does the convergent nature of media industries across different platforms (print, online, via social networks such as Twitter)? 
4. What are the challenges for media regulation presented by online newspapers and social and participatory feeds?
5. How can online content be aimed at a range of audiences and more specifically targeted by media organisations?
6. How are online audiences categorised and how are readership and consumption measured?
7. How may audiences interpret the same content very differently on different platforms (e.g. online webpage, Twitter quote or Instagram feed) and how these differences may reflect both social and individual differences?
8. List the various forms of media language used to create and communicate meaning across online, social and participatory news media. 
9. How is the selection, combination and exclusion of elements of media language used to influence meaning in online, social and participatory news media?
10. What is the relationship between technology and the media language of online, social and participatory news?
11. What are the ways in which online, social and participatory news media re-present the world? 
12. How do the purposes of media producers and the choices they make influence representations?
13. How are the social, cultural and political significance of particular representations featured on online, social and participatory media in terms of the themes or issues they address?


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

News Revision: The Observer Newspaper (1960s)

Observer front covers  You are expected to be familiar with two contemporary front covers and three historical front covers (The Observer 30 October 1966, 6 November 1966 and 20 October 1968) The historical Observer newspaper covers were chosen to help you gain a knowledge and understanding of how media language was used to construct representations in the 1960s and the contexts that affected those representations. You must study the contexts associated with the set covers and develop an understanding of the differences between how these media products illuminate the changing contexts of the 1960s and the present day, enabling you to develop a detailed understanding of how they appear in mainstream news media and its associated social and participatory media. Consider: • the various forms of media language used to create and communicate meaning on newspaper front covers  • how selection, combination and exclusion of elements of media language can influence meaning on n...
Read more

The Lego Movie - Media Audiences

Image
Learning Objective: To understand how the media operates as a commercial industry on a global scale and reach both large and specialised audiences. The Lego Movie was an extremely successful production for Warner Brothers and Lin Films. The film was produced for $60,000,000 which it made back in its first weekend of release in the USA alone! Not bad for three days... Overall, it made a gross of over $311,000,000 according to BoxOfficeMojo. You will be expected to know the reasons for this success in the exam and therefore you should answer the following questions in as much detail as you can. TASK 1: Copy down the key terms and their definitions into your book. Keywords Intertextuality: the relationship between texts. Genre: a style or category of art, music, or literature. Convergence: The interlinking of computing and other information technologies, media content, media companies and communication networks. Conglomerate: a thing consisting of a number of different and dis...
Read more

Representing Historical Contexts

Image
Explain how broadsheet newspapers reflect the time and historical contexts in which they were published. There are a number of ways in which newspapers reflect their historical contexts, in the way these contexts influence their producers, their audiences and the world that they represent through their news stories. Britain in the 1960s was a more patriarchal society and this meant most journalists were men, that audiences expected patriarchal representations, and the mostly political news that featured on the front pages was about powerful political figures - nearly all men. Only one female politician - Mrs Castle - features in the three front pages below. Britain is becoming a multicultural society in the 1960s but still saw itself as white, and race relations as a 'problem'. What stories in these front pages reflect that tension in British society? The newspaper is trying to be liberal on 'race issues' but still presents a very white point of view. There is muc...
Read more