To our surprise, there aren't really any student news websites in general - especially ones which include news reports. We only managed to find a website which has some similarities to our idea, called Student 365. So below I've decided to pick out the key interest points of the website and generally the themes and conventions which it conveys.
Student 365 (website link below)
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| The website's branding also includes links to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter |
First of all I looked briefly at it's main categories, which are: entertainment, lifestyle, advice and events. This has some similarities to our website however we are planning on being less formal as this site, as it has a category for 'advice'. This straight away suggests that this site is here not only to entertain students, but also to help them - which in a way is quite useful. Nonetheless, we haven't decided to do this as we didn't think it would be very necessary, as it may not have the advice a student is after. We also thought that you could easily just look on Google for the answer so didn't find it very useful.
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| 'Lifestyle' categories |
Moving on, the lifestyle category seems to be quite interesting. It has frequent posts (every week) which include any general lifestyle advice particularly for students, as well as some informative articles such as 'Britain's top 4 student cities'. However the website also includes 'News in Brief' articles - literally showing the daily news but in brief. This in my opinion is a very useful technique as most students are more than likely not going to be bothered about politics and general news stories in detail, but they may
want to be at least aware of what is happening in the world. The lifetyle also contains categories such as health, travel, and campus life - making it easier for the viewers to navigate through the website
want to be at least aware of what is happening in the world. The lifetyle also contains categories such as health, travel, and campus life - making it easier for the viewers to navigate through the website
The most effective idea which I found about this website was the entertainment section. It has a few posts focusing on the subject of 'funny student nights out' which can be associated with all students - considering they are students. This may even attract those who aren't students i.e. will attract people of a similar age. Or of course, people may want to read it to conform to their enigma, which is 'why is it funny?' etc. As well as this, the entertainment section also contains your conventional symbiotic features: links to new movies and the newest songs. However I found this a bit broad as not everyone likes the same movies, as well as the same music.
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| The website homepage. You can instantly recognise the iconography of students (such as the flying hats). Even the adverts relate to students as you can see driving adverts. This too will be incorporated into our website as mentioned in my previous post |
Conclusion
All in all I'm glad that my group and I looked at this website. It gave us an insight to what the conventions are for students - a brief introduction into what they are interested in and not (even though I have a brief idea as I am a student myself, however it's best to research!). One of the main disadvantages with this website however is how it has narrowly targeted students and students only. Although are channel too is focusing on students, we don't want to narrow it down and instead generally just attract young people purely for the fact that we will have a broader audience to target.
Furthermore, you can instantly gain an idea that this website is meant purely to be informative however they have tried to liven up the website with relatable posts and entertainment. Which leads me to my next point, whilst looking through this website I came up with a similar idea to the posts of funny student nights. We could possibly include an almost 'student forum' feature - allowing them to tell us funny memories which have happened which can be viewed on our website. This will maintain our audience's engagement as everyone will know that the stories are all real (unless the story itself is fake or has been altered by the student).
Therefore, I have gained an understanding of our competition as well as allowing me to develop ideas (like the student forum) which we can use for our own news channel.
To view the website, click on the link below:
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