Week8: Media types using in my project
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.
