Reflective Log

Narrative in journalism is usually written in the manner of storytelling but is more detailed and is much longer as it goes beyond presenting basic information.


The traditional way of storytelling for journalists in news these days is the inverted pyramid. It involves the 6 W’s and How, which is basic information where as features only include two of those which are Why and How. 

‘As a news story tells you the “WHAT” about an incident or situation, a feature can explain the “WHY”’. (Pape and Feartherstone 2006: 2)

The piece that I have written for my assignment is a movie review. The narrative in this piece includes the who, as I introduced the film by revealing who directed the film and the characters in the film followed by what happens in the movie and why it happened. It gives readers an idea of what to expect in that movie which they may be interested in and helps them to decide whether to watch that movie or avoid wasting their time and money on it. However, I included facts about the film, which is the storyline, these are facts because it is literally what happens in the film. This differs to a news story as readers can and may disagree with this movie review as it is my opinion therefore after watching the film, they will have their own opinions.

There are different types of discourse analysis but in my opinion it’s the way you see something and how you analyse it or considering a certain news/feature story or topic and explaining it in more detail and in depth. For example, your keeping in mind, what is the purpose of it or who is the audience? Discourse analysis can be found in pictures, text and in talk. The images, words, language and layouts all aid the reader’s experience of interpreting articles or other text. It’s important as it helps us to understand how feature articles can change the shape or influence a reader’s thoughts and views. 

As well as discourse, stereotypes are something that advertises use as an advantage by planting ideas of what an ideal woman should look like.

To illustrate the concept, I picked a women’s magazine which I believe has discourse. The first thing you’ll notice on this cover is a good-looking female, Scarlett Johansson who is a popular actress. 

Her appearance on this cover happens to come across quite seductive with her bright red lace dress and red lipstick followed by the pose. The colour red is often used which also gives it that touch of it being somewhat sexual and provocative. 

The text on the magazine also confirms what the producer is trying to deliver about the female on the cover for example words like “sexy” and “big beauty” which stand out the most as the size of those texts are larger than the rest.

In one of my lectures in class, I took part in a task where I was asked to pick a story from the newspaper and use discourse analysis to pick out what stood out to me, and the first thing I saw were three Asian men on the cover and I instantly thought it was something bad as that’s how they have been stereotyped in the media and they also didn’t look very happy which doesn’t help. As I got to the page of the story, again the first thing I saw was the picture and I didn’t look at the headline and subheadings till after and I realised it wasn’t like that at all, in fact it was something good which just explains the well-known phrase of ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ which associated with the 1944 edition of the African journal American Speech and it just reminds you that not everything looks as it seems.

I have also used discourse analysis in my opinion column which was about social media and how it can affect your health. I used discourse in the headline as I am using two rhetorical questions which makes the audience question themselves, ‘Is social media addictive? Has it impacted your health?’ I have also included a picture of a bunch of social media apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram as it links to my headline. The image I chose is quite colourful and eye-catching so it would attract that certain audience who associate with all these social media platforms. Words like ‘addictive’ and ‘health’ immediately tell the audience that the article is quite serious as mental health issues are not issues that should or can be ignored and they may read to find out if they have similar symptoms. As well as the article being about social media addiction, I also talked about how children and how they spend so much time on social media and then included an image.

This image is discourse because again it is linked to the article and is relevant to it in many ways. For example, I mentioned children, as well as laptops and then social media which are all included in the picture.

This type of feature is presented to give advice on a subject as I try to explain what parents can do to avoid their children from spending too much time on social media, followed by warning readers as I included research a story on a child who self-harmed due to social media. This is also an explainer feature since I explain the downsides of social media and what it does to people followed by facts and true events. I believe my article would fit in a magazine since they have sections where people offer advice and give tips which I have done in my opinion piece and the example I gave earlier of the magazine cover includes these subheadings on the cover ‘YOUR GUIDE TO GORGEOUS’ although that’s more of a beauty magazine where as my article would fit in to a health magazine.

The advantages of online platforms are that anyone with a computer, phone or tablet can access it, some people may not get a chance to pick up the newspaper or magazines but nowadays, everyone has a mobile phone so they have a stronger platform than print publications. Another advantage is you can customise and edit your blogs and add other elements of convergence journalism such as a video clip or hyperlinks. My final advantage is that the public or even journalists can spread news online extremely fast through social media platforms so everybody is aware of certain topics that are published. The disadvantages are once stories are published on social platforms, anybody can comment negatively and cause conflict in the comment sections. Another is once its published it can be removed which is also an advantage if there has been a mistake made whereas print publication, you already have it. Another disadvantage is people who don’t have social media accounts or access to phones and laptops all the time will not be able to access online platforms so often.

Overall, as I have previously written blogs, I wasn’t totally clueless to it and knew the basics.

My strengths for this assignment were writing reviews as I chose a movie which I have watched numerous times and I knew exactly what scenes I wanted to reflect on. I felt like the opinions column was a slight challenge as I didn’t think I could write about a certain topic as much as I could talk about it. I eventually came up with the social media idea and developed it into something I could relate to and talked about my experiences as well researching on others who faced similar problems. I enjoyed writing both review and opinion column as they were based on my own opinions.

Is social media addictive? Has it impacted your health?

By Zermina Khan

10 April 2018

After using Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for majority of your life, you would think it’s pretty much difficult to take time off them. You’ve dedicated your whole life to posting selfies or updating your statuses, how must you quit and for how long? 

A recent article on BBC (Galer, 2018), researched whether social media addiction constitutes as a mental disorder by asking their twitter followers, is there such a thing as ‘too much time’ on social media? But the real question is, why do you use social media? One of the responses on twitter was ‘I use it to forget about personal problems’ someone else said they got ‘restless or troubled’ if they were prohibited from using it which means it really effects people. I’d say it depends on what situation you are in, for example the response which said they used it to forget about personal problems, it is helpful in that sense but then again there are so many other things you could do to forget certain things, like being active, going out, reading a book or magazine, sketching, find a hobby. 

For me personally, I felt that social media made me feel quite depressed, I spent most my time watching famous people or people who were always having fun and it made me question my life. I would wish my life was like that or I’d see someone else with something and I’d want it to be mine. It became unhealthy to the point where I had to delete all my social media for a month or two, until I felt like I was in a better place mentally. It helped as I found other hobbies and felt a lot happier in my own life. 

A recent article asked if social media was causing childhood depression (Wakefield, 2018), which from my experience is a good question. A 2017 study showed seven out of ten people said Instagram made them feel worse about body image and half of 14-14 yr. olds reported Instagram and Facebook aggravated feelings of anxiety.

As for me, I was aware of what was happening to me and I acted upon it, but it can really affect the younger generation and things could get extremely serious for example this story I came across from the same article. A GP by the name of Rangan Chatterjee said he had seen plenty of evidence of a link between mental ill-health in young people and their use of social media. The article then introduced a story of a 16-yr. old boy who was referred to the GP after he self-harmed himself due to the fact his social media was having a negative impact on his health. The GP suggested he didn’t use social media too often and to limit using for at least 1-2 hours a day. This solution showed a significant improvement in the young boy’s well-being. 

Young people should be monitored on how much they use social media as it does affect them and may become a bad habit. Using social media too often will allow children to lose focus on their school work and may also get addicted to being online all the time.

I spent a lot of time on Instagram scrolling through unnecessary pictures to the point where I couldn’t get any work done. When you’re constantly getting notifications from all these different platforms, using the do not disturb button helps a lot, it stops your phone from vibrating or showing notifications and there is also a setting for a time limit which is perfect for when you’re trying not to use your phone!

There’s always a solution, you just need to allow yourself to find it. 

References

Galer, S.S., (2018), How much is ‘too much time’ on social media?, BBC, www.bbc.com/future/story/20180118-how-much-is-too-much-time-on-social-media- Accessed on 1 April 2018

Wakefield, J., (2018), Is social media causing childhood depression?., BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42705881- Accessed on 1 April 2018

Stay Alive Movie Review – Worth the watch?

Stay Alive is a horror movie directed by William Brent Bell who is known for directing horror films such as The Boy and The Devil Inside. This film was released in 2006, involving a mystery which would be described as a teen horror since it includes gaming and has a virtual side to it. The name of the movie ‘Stay Alive’ gives the plot of the movie away, for a horror film it clearly just means you need to try and stay alive.

The movie revolves around the main five characters, Hutch, Abigail, Swink, October and Phineus. The group decide to get together and play an online horror game called ‘Stay Alive’ to help Hutch take his mind off the death of his best friend, Loomis, who dies after playing the same game. Obviously at this point, the group are not aware of what the game is and what they are getting themselves into, they just believe it’s a regular scary game which Loomis was testing out. The fact that they based it on a true story of a real-life murderer, a lady named Elizabeth Bathory (the woman in red), made it sound a lot more realistic as there was a whole story behind why everything happened and why she returned.

The fact that the film was half virtual and half reality made it quite unique and that’s what I enjoyed about it, especially when everything happening in the virtual game ended up taking place in real life. Personally, I’m not a gaming fan but the game played in this film caught my attention mainly because it was a horror game and that is my favourite genre of movies. The sound effect of the gaming controller vibration made the scenes a lot creepier, I felt it was a clever idea as I would never think of a vibration sound as a creepy sound effect until after watching this, I thought it was brilliant. It was also a way of letting the audience know that the Blood Countess is here which then made it even more suspenseful and scarier.

SPOILER ALERT! 

All the characters had different personalities, Hutch and October were by far my favourite, Hutch since he was the lead character who figured out the trail of the game and then October who already knew the history of the Elizabeth Bathory and being the gothic character who believes in ghosts which was predictable, although it took her a while to realise everything but it all fell into place and fitted her character well. However, there’s always one annoying member of the gang who doesn’t take things seriously and is careless until the worst thing happens to them or they end up dead. I would say that was Octobers brother, Phineus who I disliked the most. He was the most irritating and arrogant person from all of them, but it’s typical to have characters who don’t believe in what’s going on until it happens to them. Swink on the other hand didn’t spark my interest but he wasn’t disliked as he was intelligent and helpful one in the group which made him quite important so I understood why he made it alive till the end. I was surprised to see Abigail survive, she was also my least favourite after Phineus as during one of the end scenes, she did something silly which I didn’t expect since it was the way to her survival. In the game the rose represents a life, so Hutch had given her a rose to keep her alive when she got locked in a chamber as he went to kill the Blood Countess, yet she used that same rose to play “he loves me, he loves me not” which was ridiculous and almost killed her, why would you do that to the only thing that could save you? It just showed a lot about her character and the fact that she wasn’t a bright individual. 

The characters weren’t all the best but I guess this is what makes it all work out, although I didn’t agree to the fact that Abigail survived and October didn’t, I found Abigail quite pointless.

Overall I believe the film was worth a watch as it was more thrilling than scary, Elizabeth Bathory was more of the reason for that since her character was just scary on its own and whenever she appeared I got the chills. Compared to a lot of horror movies I thought the storyline was good and made sense. They should make a part two as the end of the movie shows the game is released in the stores so other people would have started playing, I would definitely watch it.