I have divided my project into three parts and each part is categorized by three types of different interviewees: homosexual, people’s attitude or opinions, and at last the media.

Homosexual
I contacted with a local lesbian who meanwhile is an activist of homosexual action of Hong Kong. She is expected to tell her own experience and opinion towards the issue and according to her, the changes on this topic in the last ten years in Hong Kong. This part is mainly relying on text, and photos. But maybe I will try to get an audio from her, it’s not that sure now.

Different attitude and opinions
I put two main opposite parties in this part. One party is the pro people and the other is anti ones. I interviewed several people who are in different ages and from different regions. They talked about the homosexuals in their eyes and the changes they experienced in Hong Kong. Besides, there are some people who don’t really care about this issue also including in this part.
I will choose some audios in this part and of course the text.

Media
I interview people working for In-media, which is the most active independent online media in Hong Kong. Workers there talked about their initial motivation to be a base for people to discuss homosexuals openly. And they will also tell us the influence from media in Hong Kong in the past ten years on this topic and changes they experienced. This part will be a combination of photo, audio and text.

My project is mainly based on the following questions for interviewees:
1. What do you think about homosexuals?
2. What do you think about the difficulties for homosexuals in Hong Kong?
3. Do you think there are any changes of residences’ opinions towards this issue in Hong Kong in the past ten years?
4. Do you think gay marriage is a good idea and why?
5. What do you think media’s influence on this topic, especially the new media?

As I planned last week, my final project is mainly going to use the text, photos and audio as the basic types which present the homosexuals in Hong Kong over the past ten year. According to my arrangement, I detailed the forms of my final project this week.
Text and photos
Because I am still relying on the text content in my project, I divided a whole story into four or five short parts (depends on my interview progress) in order to tell the story easily and clearly. For each part, I have a relevant topic of homosexuals in Hong Kong basically categorized by the interviewees’ opinions and standpoints. Basing on the text, I illustrate each part with several photos (at least two) related to the topic I discussed in the part. For instance, I am talking about the activists of homosexual action in Hong Kong so in this part, readers will see short paragraph with more than two photos about this topic. The form relying on text with graphic illustrations is quite common for people writing blogs today. The most popular blog in mainland China “Lao Qu” is generally using this kind of form. To me, it’s a easy understanding and casual design for people to read. However, since my project is not a personal blog but a online journalism project, I try to tie the text closely with photos in order to attract viewers’ continuing reading.
For the length of the text, both Foust and Mindy emphasize “the shorter the better” principle. It’s true that short paragraph will be more available for drawing readers’ attention than long ones do in the age of online journalism. But to me, compared with short text, I’d like to focus on “writing tight” principle that Mindy mentioned in his tips.

My online final project is about the homosexuals in HK. Since the topic is still sensitive in the city, it’s necessary for me to design a suitable combination of media types for my project, which firstly can attract more readers and then still need to help me to avoid some sensitive issues. I am going to analysis some of the types and try to find the best way to combine those types.

Text
As Foust said in his book “despite the Web’s great potential for delivering a multimedia experience with sounds and visuals, words are still the most important element of online communication”, I will still focus on the text in my project. Considering the readability of online text, I believe that long text story is not available compared with some short series of stories. Besides, if I interview some people, using series of short stories is better to tell their story respectively and clearly.

Photos
I strongly agree with Foust on that photographs can help us see the things that words can’t cover, but on the other hand, to me, photograph can’t tell the whole story even powerful ones. That is to say, photograph is an indispensable element in my project; however, I will not make a stand-alone photograph essay. For this project, as I mentioned at the very beginning, it’s still sensitive for some people in this city, so there are limitations for me to use the photograph, for example, it’s not very easy to post homosexuals’ photos in the internet with their permission which will reduce the readability more or less. Anyway, I still want to add some photos inside to illustrate the stories.

Audio
To me, all of the media types should be used to help tell stories, according to the principle, I need to consider whether my stories can benefit from sound. For my project, I think the interviewees’ voice will be indeed attractive if he/she is glad to tell their own stories, however, the audio can’t be too long. If it is possible to use their voices, I am eager to select several powerful sentences to help readers understand the stories but don’t make it looks like a voice record file.

Video
Video is quite a powerful tool which enhances the readers to understand the stories. But sometimes, video is too powerful compared with text. According to my online reading experience, if an article with video inside it, all the other elements including text, graphic and audio will lose utility. Therefore, in my project, I decided to use text as the lead type, thus video will not put in consideration.

Interaction
The most charming point of online journalism is that it can get feedback quickly and it provides possibility for the author to communicate with the readers more smoothly. For me, I am very glad to see the readers leave comments and discussions after my works. It’s the easiest way to know what they consider about it. And I am glad to link it to the bloggers in order to attract more readers and more discussions.

Juliet’s final project is about the influx of mainland mothers to Hong Kong. The above photo took by her is the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, which receives a steady flow of women from mainland China.

Researching on the topic for her master project, Juliet found the phenomena that more and more mainland mothers’ influx these years has brought many social problems to Hong Kong. For example, because hospital wards crowed with mainland parturient, the local mothers-to-be were protesting in the street for their own right. Besides the impact of local people’s benefits, Juliet also thinks that the government’s attitude towards the mainland mothers’ issue is considerable. Under the pressure from the prevailing voice in the city, the government enforced a new measure on February 1 this year to limit the current influx. But the measure didn’t work well; new term of protest is under planning.

Juliet exploring the issue considers the social discussions and conflicts brought by mothers’ have an inevitable relationship with people’s attitude changes in this city over the past ten years since handover. She holds the opinion that Hong Kong people start to pay more attention to the government policies and actions meanwhile become aware to express their own opinions compared with ten years ago.

She has already collected much information about the topic and interviewed some mothers from mainland as well as the local mothers-to-be to complete her project. Here comes the audio that Juliet talked about her new media final project.

mainland-mothers.mp3