News and online media theory

SEMIOTICS

Language elements in print:
colour
layout
headline
images
language use
typography

Online:
web pagelayout
functionality
same as print

DENOTATION- Literal meaning
CONNOTATION- associations of the denotation
SIGN- Any unit for language that designates an object or phenomenon. It consists of a signifier and its meaning.
ANCHORAGE-Use of language to ‘anchor’ the meaning of an image to suit the producer.
SEMIOTICS- Combining elements to create meaning
TYPEFACE- A family of fonts. “arial” “times new roman”
MASTHEAD-Title of a printed publication
SKYLINE-A line of text above the masthead promoting a newspaper
FORMAL LANGUAGE REGISTER- Language used in formal situations
INFORMAL LANGUAGE REGISTER- Language used in informal situations

Masthead is written in a serif gothic typeface which suggests "solidity and reliability"

Coverline is in Serif also (hard news)

Secondary coverlines written in sans serif (usually soft news)

Representation "duchess sparkles". Women/Duchesses should be glamorous
Tabloid so focuses a lot on gossip rather than politics

GENERIC CONVENTIONS

Tabloid	Broadsheet
Softer news	Harder news
Less formal language register	More formal register
Both mastheads in sans-serif often white on red	Traditional mastheads in serif fonts, often black on white
headlines in bold, capitalised, sans-serifs fonts	Headlines in serif fonts capitalised as in a sentence
Pages dominated by headlines and images	Pages dominated by copy
addresses a more down market audience	address a more unmarked audience
Often news as entertainment	offers news as information

Mostly focusing on hard news although a few soft news aspects

IDEOLOGY

Meghan section- Sexism/patriachy

   "Sparkles" suggests she must be elegant and glamorous. Different language would be used if male

Brexit- Nationalism

   "Wrecker suggests that JC is trying to destroy brexit and destroy britain also. The headline is caring for the concerns of this country

Brexit- Demo 

Minecraft Essay

Create a 1000 word essay discussing the evolution of Minecraft.  As part of the essay you will address

·      How the ownership of Minecraft has affected the games evolution

·      How Minecraft is marketed to a variety of audiences

·      How users interact with the game including how they create their own content

Minecraft is the second highest selling game in history, after Tetris. This is due to it having a very wide target audience, which is targeted through many different marketing techniques. This large audience has also come with the fast evolution of the game.

Marcus “Notch” Persson and a small company that he founded with two others in Sweden called Mojang first developed the game Minecraft with a very small team. Some players of the game in the early stages helped with early bugs and there was a lot of room for audience interaction as it was open for people to modify the code. The game was available in a downloadable, cloud version which allowed the game to be constantly updated with new features and bug fixes so the game was always working with minimal glitches. The game was available with most games consoles, computers as well as mobile devices. In 2014 Microsoft acquired Mojang and all the rights to Minecraft for $2.5 billion and this change in ownership resulted in a lot of changes to the game itself and the way the game was consumed.

One of the first large changes that Microsoft implemented was cross platform play. Xbox and Windows 10 are both owned by Microsoft so they allowed PC players to play with Xbox players. They soon expanded this function to include many other devices such as the Nintendo Switch and mobile devices. This allowed people to play with their friends on Minecraft, no matter what device they played on. This is a very rare function in games as only a few other large games allow this (eg Fortnite and Rocket League). Minecraft was one of the first large games to allow this cross platform functionality and there was a lot of hype built around it as many people were excited to finally be able to play on massive servers with people they usually could not play with.

Microsoft also had a partnership with Oculus in 2014, soon after they acquired minecraft, to develop a virtual reality version of the game. Virtual reality is a new, exciting concept so when they released Minecraft (an already very popular game) in a VR format there was a lot of people that were intrigued by the concept. This introduced a whole new audience to the world of Minecraft.

Minecraft itself is marketed to a wide variety of people through different ways. Due to the game being a sandbox game, it allows for many different angles to market the game. The game is attractive to all these different audiences because it allows you to do whatever you want.

Minecraft Education is a program that is given to schools for free to help students with STEM subjects as well as artistic subjects. This allows for students to learn in a more interactive way. This also means that the game reaches an entirely new audience as these kids may go away and purchase the game for themselves.

Minecraft made a product with Lego to target their product towards a younger audience. Lego is targeted towards a younger demographic (3+) and because the games are quite similar it allowed for the two companies to share their large audiences. This plays on the creative side of minecraft and the building.

Minecraft features in a music video of the very popular singer, Lady Gaga. This targets and entirely different audience as her audience is mainly younger girls. Most of the other marketing techniques are targeted towards boys. The use of the game in the video is enough to spark an interest in the game for the viewers.

Youtube is also a platform in which  the game is marketed to a wide audience. Youtube appeals to a very wide range of people as the content creators make their videos differently. Most Minecraft youtubers are very family friendly and appeal to a child audience. These youtubers are put on the Youtube Kids app which means they are more likely to be recommended to children. Some youtubers however are less censored and therefore appeal to a much older audience. The people that make the content are usually 20-30, despite the game being stereotypically targeted at younger children.

One of the largest minecraft youtubers is The Diamond Minecart. According to Forbes he is the fourth highest paid youtuber as he made $18 million (not including sponsorships, merchandise or any other revenue streams). His content is very family friendly so he appeals to a younger audience. Another youtuber, SkyDoesMinecraft, is a lot less censored and therefore appeals to a much more mature audience, even thought the game is the same. This is one way that people are making their own content with minecraft. There is evidently a lot of money in the industry of “lets play commentaries” where someone plays a game and uploads their footage to youtube for people to watch.

 One feature that is quite popular with the game is the ability to add mods to the game to alter the original game in order to implement more advanced gameplay. For example there is mods to implement nuclear arms into the game or to add more animals and mobs. This makes the creative possibilities of the game endless as these people make their own mods and release them to the public to play with. This is alternative way of creating your own content through the game as they use an already made game but add to it for extras.

Minecraft

•Digitally convergent media: Video games consoles are an excellent example of a digitally convergent device, you can not only play games but access social media, surf the internet, stream films and TV content and upload content into cloud based servers. Cross-media content helps maximise profits and also improve reach to new customers.

•Production: This refers to all phases of designing, developing and making the media product;.

•Distribution: This refers to all processes linked to delivering the media product to audiences both through tangible (disc) and digital (Cloud based) media.

•Consumption: Explores the way in which the media text is used by audiences for pleasure but also explores the rise of user generated content across several platforms.

The success of the games market.

–The UK’s   US$4 billion;

–China,   US$24.4 billion

–America’s   US$23.6 billion.

•A recent report by the UKIE1 suggests that the global games market is now worth in excess of US$100 billion.    

•Minecraft is the second most successful video game of all time behind Tetris.

•It was created and designed by Markus Persson,

a game programmer, who also developed and published the game through his company Mojang. A full version of the game went on release in November 2011.

•To date, well over 121 million copies have been sold across all platforms, including over 27 million PC copies, making it the biggest selling PC game of all time.

Minecraft partnered up with lego to release toys. The lego blocks were inspired by minecraft and this is an example on convergence. It benefits both companies as the two products are quite similar therefore it will impact both audiences positively.

Minecraft is used in education because is it interactive and fun. Lets children be more comfortable and creative. Used within STEM subjects as well as  arts as you can learn to code and design. You can collaborate with others.

Multiplatform and cross platform

Game Genres

Action

Arcade 

Adventure

RPG

Fighting

Racing

•Why Microsoft purchased – Minecraft for

2.5£Bn?

–Given the nature of the parent company and

the loyal fan base of PC gamers, it was in the

company’s interest to invest US$2.5 billion to

purchase Mojang for long term revenue.

–Microsoft have since developed the product

using more complex coding C++

–This has enabled multi platform access

(mentioned previously)

–They have launched newer more traditional

programs such as Minecraft Story mode

–Minecraft

in November 2014 of that year, plans to work on

a virtual reality version of Minecraft in

Partnership with Oculus 

•Minecrafts commercial success

–Budgets for games vary and Minecraft is a

good example of a game that was made and developed

using readily available open source software within the

gaming community; creating the original Minecraft using

Java gave it the advantage of being cross-platform: it will

run on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

–other mainstream games that require entire teams of

programmers, artists and engineers to make video games

that have budgets equal or exceeding that of mainstream

films.  AN example of this includes CALL OF DUTY

COD MW2 cost $250 million to make and made

$310 million in its first day. Now on $1 billion+

•Minecraft’s not for profit funding of projects

–Minecraft has also been linked to non-profit projects such

as the UNs Block by Block project, which encourages

communities around the world to redesign their

neighbourhoods using Minecraft.

–An educational version has also been developed,

MinecraftEdu (2012), which has several applications to help

teach subject and develop a culture of computer

programming amongst digital natives.

Block by Block is a charity

Radio One Breakfast Show (Greg James)

1 Service Broadcasting (PSB): refers to broadcasting intended for public benefit rather than to serve purely commercial interests. Funded by TV license, therefore, no need for sponsors and adverts however they must conform to the BBCs remit.


23/43 53% british music

Unknown T- grime

Duke dumont - edm

Jonas Blue - DJ

Clean bandit- electronic

Little mix - pop

Biffy clyro - alternative rock

James Arthur - pop

Jax jones - house

Lewis capaldi- pop

George Ezra - blues

M-22 - dance 

The 1975 - indie pop

Not3s (rapper)

Loyle Carner (hip hop)

MK (american), Jonas Blue and Becky Hill (house)

Sam Fender (alternative rock)

Mumford and sons (folk rock, alternative rock)

You me at six (rock band)

Ellie Goulding (electro pop, synth pop, etc)

The streets (alternative hip hop)

Disciples (house)

Friendly fires (indie rock)

Jess Glynne (pop, R&B, dance, soul)

*Contemporary artists

up and coming artists- Sam Fender, Unknown T, Not3s\

Important to support these artists as it gives up and coming British artists a platform to share their music.

Shows like radio x will not be playing music to support up and coming artists because it is a show for an older demographic. 

layout (every half an hour)- Newsbeat, talking about gossip/trending topics, music, activity half way through, music, Newsbeat

Play a variety of A-C list music, where A list is played most frequently

–How does the content suit the target demographic of 15 – 25-year-olds?

Topics include celebrity gossip, sports, and pop culture. Audience interaction and benter between the hosts. 

–What does the above content hope to achieve?

To entertain

What news features were aired, why are they relevant to a youth audience?

Cardi B

Discuss the BBC’s position as the World’s largest producer and its ability to create original high end media content, to what extent does the license fee impact on their production content.

The budget for Radio on is just under £35 million (34.7) which is paid for by the TV license fee. Because other shows must rely on adverts and sponsorships they wont have this much money to spend

Males- Sports

Female- Gossip

Age(15-29)- Pop music

Declining radio 1  audiences

Fewer people listen to the radio

more competition eg more young people will listen to Capital

Discuss whether in your view R1 has made the right decision in selecting G. James considering other options e.g. a female /younger presenter?

A younger presenter may have been better suited to the role however Greg James has a lot of banter and is funny and therefore makes up for this. He tailors himself to the audience therefore he was a good choice

BBC 1 maintains its listeners through social media as young people do not listen to the radio as much as they used to. Youtube and facebook are platforms in which the producers of the show can record clips and upload them to maintain their audience through video rather than just radio. Increases sharability. 

The ability to stream the show after it has been live has changed the listening habits of people as it means that people can listen whenever it is very convenient to them.

RADIO X

“Radio X – the first truly male-focused, fully national music and entertainment brand for 25-44 year olds”

Discrimination of any kind is bad, but Radio X isn’t suggesting women should stop listening to the radio altogether, any more than Closer orGlamour are suggesting that men should stop reading. We need a healthy balance of role models across the media, and advertisers need to find ways to target a representative proportion of the UK population.