We live in an digital age, “the present time,
when most information is in a digital form [..]” (Cambridge Dictionary, 2016).
This analysis will critically explore the genre of news by examining both
established news corporation content and the digital news channel Student Yak,
and the episode “Let´s Go Viral”. It will do this by looking at the different
elements that can be found in news such as concept and brand development,
audience, platforms, presentation, storytelling and development. The report
will discuss in what way research from these elements has contributed to
influence, as well as to develop the idea and production of Student Yak.
Additionally it will thoroughly look at and examine the reasoning behind the
decisions made in relation to the production.
CONCEPT
/ BRAND DEVELOPMENT
“If news
is to be worthwhile, it should accord to something we value” (Chapman, 2009:
59) which as a brand was something we took into deep consideration while
creating our concept. While developing the brand of Student Yak we knew, as
students ourselves, that we had to develop a concept that we would value and
believe would be worthwhile our time, in order to know that our target audience
would be interested.“Student Yak aims
to find entertaining news and views from all corners of the internet, and bring
it to [..]” students (student yak, 2016) We wanted our potential audience to be
engaged in and with the content, as well as to be able to relate to and feel
connected to the channel and each other, as an audience. In order to achieve
these goals, we decided to incorporate humor and a lightness to our news, as
well as we had to find out how our content could be categorized in order to
interest and capture the audience´s attention. After doing research I found
that our channel uses the ‘News as Infotainment’ method to convey its content.
This is a “type of media which provides a combination of information and
entertainment” (Demers, 2009), that
makes it easier for younger audiences to find the news channel relatable,
useful and fun.
In the
constantly evolving media and news circus of the digital age we live in today,
a channel´s branding is crucial for its reputation, recognition factor,
affiliation and furthermore its credibility in order to as Chapman states “underpin
their reliability and impartiality” (Chapman, 2009: 219). One of the digital
brands that contributed to inspire to some of the choices made for Student Yak,
is The successful LadBible (fig. 1). This channel has a very minimalistic logo
design and aesthetically pleasing colour palette consisting of the colours
white and black that contributes to convey the brand´s name in a clear and
precise way and strengthen the credibility of the brand. Influenced by The LadBible´s
simple colours, our digital news channel Student Yak uses a colour palette
consisting of three colours – white, orange and purple (Fig. 2). Whereas the
colour white represents purity, simplicity and has a positive connotation. Orange
highlights, catch attention as well as produce energy that contributes to
mental activity and which makes the colour highly accepted amongst young
people. Purple represents ambition, independence and creativity. The two
colours, orange and purple, was carefully selected as they are complimentary
colours (Fig. 3) and combined the darker shade of purple evoke and can cause
frustration, while the bright shade of orange engages the audience mentally and
affects the audience of young people subconsciously to engage and get involved
with the content, news cases and themes brought up on the channel.
Fig. 1 Ladbible Logo (2015)
Fig.
2 Student Yak Logo (2016)
Fig 3. Complementary colour palette (2016)
Fig. 4 Student Yak Logo / Banner design (2016)
The overall style and design
of Student Yak is created and developed to be suitable for a young audience, it
is not supposed to be a formal news show, in contrast to traditional television
news channels such as BBC or ITV, known for their simplicity in colours used to
gain trustworthiness. – Student Yak´s simplicity but boldness in colour choices
with wild pattern to engage a young audience, whereas it is a more relaxed genre
of television in a new era of the digital age.
AUDIENCE
RESEARCH
The Television broadcast show
and online YouTube channel “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” has been
of big importance to our content development, production value as well as storytelling
style. In particular the two-episode series, published in April and May this
year 2016 called “Topical Waffle” – “Topical
Waffle is a web show news squish that covers everything [..] Politics, Sports,
Movies, TV” (YouTube, 2016). Whereas it has a humorous take on presenting news,
adding visual effects as well as having a well planned sound design to add on
to and emphasise the content and its ridiculousness. The target age group for
this television show would estimated to be between 16-50 years old. However, when
it comes to Student Yak, although it was decided during the creation of the
channel and brand that the target age group for our production was 18-30 year
olds. The content created and channel design that was carried out, resulted in
being rather more suitable for a younger audience, 15-20 year olds, as of the
logo design, webpage and way the script and humour was presented on screen.
Looking at Jimmy Fallon´s YouTube channel with 12,6 million subscribers it is
clear that it can be stated that young people in this age range do pay attention to
news and engage with it, as long as it is offered to them through the right
platforms and the topics are interesting and relevant. A general look into the
YouTube world on some of the biggest YouTubers, such as Zoella (11,3 mill subs,
YouTube, 2016), PewDiePie (50,5 mill subs, YouTube, 2016) and nigahiga (18,8
mill subs, YouTube, 2016) reveals by looking at their amount of subscribers,
views and comments that a young audience, such as students, like to engage in
topics brought up by public personalities – whereas they talk about news the
audience have requested or that the YouTubers know the audience will like.
Which confirms that students desire and want news content, but perhaps not in a
typical and traditional standardized news program kind of way, potentially rather
customized with the viewer in mind. As well as they have a saying in what is
brought up, and in that way they contribute to set the news agenda.
With Student Yak as our news
brand, the way we went about to create our content was by choosing our own
stories and setting the news agenda by taking in to consideration our own
interests, demands, needs and looking at the topics we feel is not talked about
enough or maybe not even mentioned at all yet and bring these into focus. However
even though we as a news channel are entitled to set the agenda for our own
production, we wanted to step into the new way of creating news agenda, by
including the audience in the decision making of what is important to them. To
get to know what they want to see, we set up a Twitter account, a Facebook
account, YouTube Channel and a website. As we wanted to connect with, as well
as to create a sense of unity and relationship with the viewers, encouraging
them to get involved, share stories and contribute to shape what is important
to them, to us and to others.
PLATFORM RESEARCH
“The
vast majority (90%) of 16-24 year olds own[..]” (Ofcom, 2015) a smartphone as
of today, whereas this with super fast 3 and 4G allows for content to be
available to the user, at any time they wish to access it. This has become a
game changer when it comes to the television industry and broadcasters in
general, as a lot of them gradually as a result of the continuously evolving
technology develops, have had to start to adapt their content to fit on social
media platforms. To do is crucial as in order to connect with their audiences,
and . Our TV viewing habits are changing – “Most 16-24 year olds are watching
on-demand and catch up programmes on computers and smartphones rather than on a
TV connected to a set-top box.” (Ofcom, 2015) which tells us that the way in which
the audience is now able to customize their own television viewing will have a
large impact on how we not only consume but will have to create content.
However, “[..]despite the growth in online viewing, TV still reaches the
overwhelming majority of people. Over 90% (92%) watch TV each week, down
slightly from 93% in 2013.” (Ofcom, 2015) Which confirms that Television will
still be around, but that mainly the form of how and on which platform we
consume it from might change completely with time.
Through
the research conducted it was found that in order to reach the target group,
students, the channel would have to adapt and truly pay attention to the
branding, platforms and in what way entertainment would affect the interest
from the students. Due to the fact of a constantly evolving and educated
audience, all used to the typical structures and styles of news reporting the
element of entertainment is key.
With
YouTube as one of the main platforms for Student Yak, there is clearly an
advantage as YouTube has “[..]over one billion
views each day, and over 300 hours of video uploaded every minute.” (YouTube,
2016) Being able to reach out to audiences all around the world at the same
time, and as our production is presented in English, we are able to connect to
a much broader audience in contrast to if we only had the website in UK, or the
production was presented in a different language, like for example German. It
would only reached a limited number of audience and been restricted to a
smaller audience even though the platform is the same. YouTube has become
somewhat a global phenomena compared to the start in 2005, now “with 95% of the
global internet population watching worldwide in 76 different languages”
(YouTube, 2016) resulting “With over one billion views each day.” (YouTube,
2016) It has in other words become more and more important to interact with the
audience on a completely different level compared to early on in the television
industry, not only is the platform changing, content and interest areas – but
the audiences are constantly getting experienced, demanding and intelligent. It
takes more to impress, and the expectations are higher as the audience are no
longer baffled by films such as “La Sortie
des ouvriers de l’usine Lumière” (“Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory”) at an
industrial meeting in Paris in March 1895; [..]considered to be the very first
motion picture.” (History, 2014)
The
negative side and aspect to the different social media platforms now available,
such asFacebook, Twitter, Instagram,
Snapchat, Vine, YouTube etc. In the sense that “It lowers the motivational level of the
people, especially of the teenagers and students. They mainly rely on
technology and the internet instead of learning the practical knowledge and
expertise of the everyday life.” (Techbead, 2015) And when it comes to the
industry“it is also more costly to keep up with the ever-changing technology and
may require the creation of new strategists who can think and create digital.”
(Smallbuisness, Chron, 2016)
PRESENTATION
When it comes to news, despite platform no
matter where it is broadcast from or published to, the way it is presented is
massively crucial for several reasons, such as credibility, engaging the
audience and when first captured the attention of the audience – being able to
keep them there, in their seats in their very own homes. How the news is
presented is also important as to getting the points and information across to
the audience. Location wise TV News are most often filmed inside studios,
either with in real life set design, virtually created studios when working
with green screen or a combination of the two.
“if there are no pictures, ... there
is no story” (Chapman, 2009: 98), therefore with Student Yak we wanted to make
sure that with the use of graphics on screen, along with picture and video
referencing it would contribute to tell the story in a better way. Compared to
if we were to only have our presenter in front of camera, without anything
happening and engaging the audience. In association with the internet, we have something called meta element.
The meta element provides information about the web page and can be used by
search engines to help categorise the page correctly. They are tags that are
used in HTML as well as XHTML documents to provide structured metadata. How the
metadata is set up has an effect to how the rules on search engines read them
and rank the different websites. Meta elements in film and television
production, means that the characters step out of the action and addresses
the audience directly. Just like the internet uses metadata to step out and
detect using the tags to see what is most popular amongst websites, as well as
to rank them. One of the important things with this, is that the presenter is
stepping out of the action and directly, as well as actively addressing
the audience. Additionally, as a brand, we will use our web page to collect
important information from the audience. In the form that they will give us
feedback and we will be in direct contact with them collect
"metadata" on what it is that they care about and want to see the
content of.
SCRIPTING
AND STORYTELLING
With the vast coverage of viral videos online
and the internet content relevant to Student Yak, channelled and broadcast out
to a younger audience, students, there was challenges on how to stay original
and stand out amongst all other online content available. Therefore we decided
to look at what we find interesting and engaging that gets brought to us
through social media everyday. Viral videos, “A
viral video is any clip of animation or film that is spread rapidly through
online sharing.” (Techopedia, 2016) Which resulted in wanting to find out “How to go
Viral”, for instance “television has always had
commercials, but social media and the Internet have changed the way they’re
presented. For instance, companies are always trying to come up with commercials
that’ll turn into viral videos on YouTube.” (Social Media Explorer,
2014) We therefore decided to look into this, and try to go viral ourselves, as
there is a constant demand or desire for fun and ridiculous viral content.
We explored reporting style on other big
channels such as Late night starring Jimmy Fallon, BBC, CNN, ITV and NRK
(Norwegian broadcasting) as to how we in the best, and most engaging way
possible could present our news for the set target audience. We ended up
gathering inspiration from all of the different channels, and combined with the
theory gained through the unit we set up a structure as to the news genre
requirements consisting of an introduction, package – a step by step guide to
how to go viral, interview with a YouTuber relevant to our topic and platform,
live-piece where we tried to go viral ourselves live with a water bottle
challenge, pieces to camera – meta, GFX and conclusion combined with a round up
and informational ending. We chose to have two presenters, one main presenter
and one co-presenter for the live piece, it was an important decision we made
to use students as presenters as well as the contestants in the water bottle
flip challenge were students, as we felt this best represents and conveys our
content out to the audience in a believable and trustworthy way.
However one of the few aspects from the production that slowed down pace and
lowered engagement and interest, was the set up interview with local YouTuber,
Kaite Joslin. The interview set up was rather standardized, with set questions
not following up on “in the moment” answers leaving the chat between presenter
and interview object more formal and uptight than sought for. It may also not
have been paid good enough attention to the interview as a whole, and instead
have created the interview in the sense of it being a necessity to fulfil the
criteria of being a news channel. Not reflecting on how the interview set up at
least could have been more engaging, revolutionary or fun. Affecting the
overall fast pace, and snappy edit of the rest of the episode, in a negative way.
However there waere steps taken in post production in order to weigh up for
this. Suitable fast paced music was added as well as, on screen pop-up images
accompanied with interesting sound design. Nevertheless, thanks to the massive
amount of research into viral videos and how people becomes internet sensations
over night, as part of the assembly of the script, reflects and portrays the
channels credibility, value and quality.
CRITICAL
REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
The positive results of the channel production
is due to inspiration from and research into other student channels or content,
as well as looking at generic news channels and deciding what to, and what to
not take on board for the Student Yak Channel development has been key for its
success and final result in production value.As the audiences are getting more
sophisticated in the sense of themselves controlling what to watch when, and
wherever they want. In relation to that, Student Yak does fit into the criteria
of digital news channels, and programs. Adapting to the changing media circus
basing itself out from platforms reachable and popular for the target audience.
Additionally Student Yak being a new take on news by the use of humour, and
relevant topics for students, it does make use of concept, branding, audience,
platform, presentation and structure contribute to set the agenda for students,
as well as having a contemporary take on the news genre itself. By being
broadcasted on digital platforms, and conveying news stories important and
interesting with the audience in mind and and also considered as new media. It
does not use the exact standardized traditional television news, but manages to
contain a somewhat similar structure and fulfils the criteria of a digital news
channel.