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 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.
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 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.
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