Digital News: Conventions of News Channels: Workshop

What was the Workshop Task?

A few weeks back, we were set a workshop which consisted of comparing the key conventions between two news programs. We were given the choice to choose from:
     - BBC
     - Channel 4
     - Channel 5
     - ITV
     - Sky

This is basically what we have to do for our essays, however Helen provided us links to the day's news for each channel which we could use. The idea of today was to highlight the key comparisons to help us with our essay, and then create a presentation at the end of the day to show what we came up with. I partnered up with Kate and another colleague from my class, Mike.

All of the news programs were on the same day, which was on remembrance day. This is quite interesting as it enables us to view directly on how news programs report differently on a huge global event.

Unlike the essay, we compared three channels instead of two. We decided to choose BBC, ITV and Channel 4. This is because BBC and ITV have a few similarities which we can pick out as well as being very different to Channel 4. Nonetheless, below is a word document which we created highlighting the key conventions and differences between the three news programs.

We begun by analysing the structure and key conventions of each news program, as you can see above. This then led to a brief comparative conclusion between the news channels.

BBC Workshop Task

Conclusion

All in all, this workshop to me was very helpful as it was literally a test run for writing our essay. It shows how you don't have to rely on theoretical content all the time and that you can instead directly compare channels with their visuals and reporting styles. This helped me to form my essay and also makes you think more in depth after listening to everyone else feedback, as you can find good points to write about from the smallest of things e.g. the colour branding.