Critical Evaluation
Emily Waddell
Advanced Online Media – Critical Evaluation
“Technology is not the nameless Other. To embrace technology is to embrace, and face, ourselves.”
David Cronenberg, Wired 5.05, May 1997, p. 185
“Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.”
Kevin Kelly
Advanced Online Media has been a module designed to teach us not only the professional techniques used online by journalists and the media but also how to create thoughtful creative ideas for an ever-changing digital world. Only in my lifetime has online media and the Internet has changed the way we interact and communicate with the world exponentially. The rate at which the Internet is creating new ideas is astounding, journalists have to keep ahead of the flow and write about the flow, or become apart of it themselves.
Our first assignment was to create a new online media project or strategy. Having come to University I had been using online property finding websites for the past few years to find houses to rent in London. During that time I had seen complications and inefficiency in the websites I had used and decided that creating a specific London only renting application for students was something that had not been done and I could research it thoroughly.
Looking at current websites such as Find A Property and Right Move, there were a lot of issues with the layout and overall design of the website. Property websites are hard to navigate and prices, bedrooms and location filter through searching. The issue with that is, London boroughs are complicated and not as easy to look at compared to other major cities. In my presentation I highlighted the issue of searching for properties in Harrow near the University, some properties are actually registered as being in Wembley but are actually relatively close to University.
Unless you have a vast knowledge of boundary lines and every London borough postcode, searching for a house in a specific spot because extremely complicated and difficult. London is a mecca for young people and students who are drawn to the city but may be completely clueless where everything is. It’s also important to highlight that young people especially want to hang in up and coming areas that are near transport links and amenities. In London it becomes incredibly expensive if you are searching in these terms, people searching to live in Shoreditch are shown incredibly expensive rent and begin thinking that living central is a lost cause.
Having all this information through talking to various people and looking at websites to see if there were any easy to use and well-designed property websites aimed at students, I saw that there was a distant lack of user-friendly sites. My idea was to focus on using a map to search for properties instead of searching postcodes of borough names. By using a map, someone could search a certain place and if they found that the area was too expensive, they could search the surrounding area for cheaper rent. The map would immediately highlight the cheapest places to live near that area, for example searching Shoreditch would highlight Bethnal Green, incredibly close and a lot cheaper.
In my presentation and pitch document I highlighted the other websites faults. My presentation went well, even though I was a tad nervous, but I felt that I should have highlighted how my application, even though it was a mock up, could be intergraded into other websites easily. I focused on perhaps making it a free application or website powered through estate agents and landlords providing there own information for it. Reflecting on it, using a property website instead because of the wealth of information at their disposal. It would have been a better idea, because the property websites have this information they just aren’t using it as efficiently as they could be. My pitch document unfortunately was let down by simple errors although I felt that my presentation and pitch was strong due to my research into the users of the website and focusing on accessibility.
The next project was our Individual Project, which was broad media project we could do on anything. Throughout the module we had been playing around with Google Maps, infographics and data journalism whilst interesting I didn’t feel that I had a strong enough understanding of technical procedures to do anything I would be proud of. As the brief was very proud I felt I should use the opportunity to do the project on something I was passionate about and an area of journalism I was comfortable and confident in.
My idea for the project was a series of videos describing the plot lines of famous films I haven’t seen, but was culturally aware of through film, TV and print references. I would then actually review the film in a more serious tone and talk about the social and cultural impact of the film in popular culture and whether the film was all hype. I thought this idea was interesting because of websites that exist nowadays, such as one use tumblrs that draw large audiences based on a simple premise. By describing famous films in humorous ways and being slightly antagonistic in my filmed reviews I would draw fans of the film and fans of cultural commentary.
I used Final Cut Pro to edit the videos, something I learned last year and unfortunately hadn’t had a real opportunity to improve on this year, as our sessions were often unorganized and short. Although I was only using it simply by splitting videos and not adding effects, I felt that I was fairly competent in producing a video that edited to create a certain effect. The videos themselves were hard to film, I realized there was a reason I picked Advanced Online Media and not Broadcast Journalism.
Even though I was nervous filming them, it was a new experience and one I’m glad I pushed myself to do, by the end of the last video I had no issue filming them. The videos themselves are supposed to be slightly incendiary, rather then do an academic review, I decided by doing a fun video it may bring people to read the longer more serious reviews. Nowadays asking people to read five hundred words is like asking them to read an entire novel, by bringing them in with something easier to manage I thought it would inspire them to check out some long reads.
The reviews were 500-600 words long, accompanied by four 5-minute videos. The inspiration for the reviews and videos came from digital interaction based journalism, rather then ostracizing audiences with complicated and formal reviews, I wanted them to more personal. The aim was to produce the videos and write the reviews in an opinion piece style but with link backs to other articles and pop culture facts. By doing this I felt that the reviews and videos were entertaining and informative rather then one or the other.
The videos were a success and although not as technically proficient as someone who has more background in producing and editing video, I felt they looked and sounded good. The reviews were fun to write and felt they provided some information that people who were fans of the film may have not thought about. The reviews I felt could have used more linking to other articles and created more networked style of writing. Unfortunately some of the information was hard to find or linked to sources that were not as professional as I would have liked. Analyzing the project I should have provided more information and made the posts more multimedia, maybe by linking to other articles or videos.
Overall I felt like my projects reflected my interests and I was confident in my research of them whilst using new online media techniques. If I could do them again I would hope to be provided with more extensive teaching of some of the techniques we were shown. Info graphic design and videos require a large amount of technical skill, something I felt we were let down on, the module felt more theory then practical and I felt unconfident when we were supposed to show the skills we had learnt.
The module showed that the online world of media is ever changing, that with print journalism in decline, journalists are using more varied and interesting practices to convey information. This is an exciting time to be part of the media and exciting time to learn new techniques, I felt the course didn’t reflect modern techniques but I felt confident to learn them in the future.
