MECO3602
Friday, 9 September 2011
Thursday, 8 September 2011
What makes for good web design?
Social Media Marketing and Web 2.0
Web 2.0 and Interactivity
Flew defines interactivity as “the capacity to easily connect interactions across different networks” (Flew 2008, p.29). Our web feature will encourage users to interact, engage, learn and discuss the content on the site and also through links to our social media pages. Interaction channels will allow users to write opinions and foster debate, similar to this “comments” section below. This will seek to drive more users to our feature. In Flew’s context of the ‘new’ media he believes that interactivity “stands for a more powerful sense of user engagement with media texts, a more independent relation to sources of knowledge, individualised media use, and greater user choice” (Flew 2008, p.28.) This definition is very much applicable to us as we are essentially designing our web feature within this context that is the ‘new’ media with competition against other journalistic and feature based sites that have already covered the Tahrir Sqaure protests. In this “greater user choice” context, we must make our web feature unique and different, taking a new investigative stance on the story.
Comments section from a existing documentary feature website “Go Back To Where You Came From”
http://www.sbs.com.au/shows/goback/
References:
Flew, T, 2008, “New media an introduction,” 3rd ed., Oxford University Press, Australia.
http://media.sbs.com.au/sbscorporate/documents/240104_online.pdf
Tuesday, 6 September 2011
Who To Target?
Our target publication is the SBS. The Egyptian protests – a social media revolution – fits the mould of a type of story that SBS would cover. Whether a television documentary or online feature; the story is solid. However, for the purpose of this assignment, we propose an investigative web feature.
SBS’s digital media unit allowed for the expansion of SBS news programs and documentaries online, which currently comprises of more than 150 individual websites. In 1997, SBS Online had seven websites and each month recorded an average of 35,000 page impressions (SBS). In today’s 150 websites, there is a monthly average of about 6 million page impressions (SBS). This growth online has been particularly rapid within the past five years.
The SBS “documentary” section (hyperlink from SBS homepage)
http://www.sbs.com.au/documentary/
With all this in mind, our web feature will serve as an extension of the SBS network, specifically from the “documentary” section of SBS. Our focus on social media as a powerful democratic tool in the Egyptian context, will be another website adding to the list which currently stands at approx 150. Noting the rise of online participation, particularly within the last five years, our web feature targeted for SBS users will seek to enhance their knowledge on the Tahrir Square Protest and give the story a new meaning. This in-depth focus on the use of social media as means for communication amongst citizens to collectively overthrow a corrupt government will give users a new side of the story to consider.
Furthermore, SBS websites act as an extension from aired television programs by the station. Research indicates that a total of 94% of website users watch the corresponding SBS television program. Interestingly, only a small percentage of users (5%) speak languages other than English. Whilst the SBS network does cater for various audience ethnicities, specifically Italian, Mandarin, Dutch, Croatian, Syrian, Arabic, Vietnamese, Greek and Cantonese, our web feature will simply focus on the international language of English. SBS websites aim to “both initiate and reinforce viewer/listener attachment to particular SBS programs and to the SBS brand” (SBS). Recent data reveals that SBS television’s largest demographic is people over the age of 40 (49%), however it is interesting to reveal that 74% of the users of the SBS websites are in fact under 40 years old. Clearly younger audience members are engaging in the online world, as according to Flew (2008) they represent “digital natives”. However, one cannot simply omit the older audience members when creating a web feature, who’s to say that are not or will not become technologically savvy?
References
http://media.sbs.com.au/sbscorporate/documents/240104_online.pdf
Monday, 5 September 2011
Egyptian Online Timeline

Activists and bloggers begin to undertake early steps to change
April 6th2010 Youth Movement
Maximise use of blogs to counter state control of news
January 18th Asmaa Mahfouz produces this rally video
February 2Twitter produces 'Speak to tweet' technology.
Protesters more efficiently post statements through this new Twitter technology
http://twitter.com/#!/speak2tweet
January 25th Egypt’s Day of Rage
Protest culminates in massive turnout, Tahrir Square, central Cairo
January 27thInternet is shut down
January 27th: Facebook, Twitter and Blackberry Messenger services are disrupted.
July-August 2011: Ongoing broadcast of Mubarak trials streamed on almasryalyoum.comand other sites
Manuel Castell's 'The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication Networks, and Global Governance
Castell's explains in this text, that
*Without an effective civil society capable of structuring and channelling citizen debates over diverse ideas and conflicting interests, the state drifts away from its subjects (Chapter 2, p 38)
*'Civil society’ is an organised expression of the views of this public sphere, and it is through the public sphere that diverse forms of civil society enact this public debate (Chapter 2, p37)