Transcript Writing for the web

J333 Writing for Multimedia
Storytelling
Print
Image
Video
Audio
New Media
New Media
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What is new media?
How do we use new media?
Blogsphere
What is the aesthetics of new media?
 Content/People/Usability/ Web design
What is new media?
• New media is a term used that includes digital,
computerized, network information and most
communication technologies.
• Online and digital ways of receiving information.
• CD-Rom, websites, broadcast email and web
casting.
How do we use New Media?
•We are no longer just consumers of media, we are
Consumers and Producers (Facebook, Twitter,
Social Networking, Profiles, Amazon feedback).
•http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEHcGAsnBZE
•Judgment, negotiation, appropriation, play,
transmedia navigation, simulation, collective
intelligence, performance, distributed cognition,
visualization, multitasking.
•For New Media we need SKILLS that involve and
invoke citizenship.
The Blogsphere
Community of bloggers
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Participatory journalism
Pushing messages directly to the public
User-generated content
Blogs, vlog, linklog, sketchblog, photoblog,
tumblelogs
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Personal
Corporate
Genre (travel, political, education, etc)
Is the Blogsphere dying?
Overload of
average joes.
Media stated this
might be the end
for “pro” blogger.
Two years later-is
it over?
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Has it changed?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN2I1pWXjXI
Traditional media vs New Media
Traditional media was often a one-step
flow in communication
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Laswell’s Formula
New Media makes it a two-step flow
process.
Two way street leads to…
A new audience
A new way to write for this audience.
A new way to design for and create
content.
Content, content, content
People come to websites for content
Web users skim and scan
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Alternative to this is “We tell Stories”-Penguin
Web users read, but it’s primarily links, short
descriptions and search results
Put the action in the verbs, not the nouns
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Doing=action=verbs
What makes writing for the web work well?
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It flows like a conversation
It answers people’s questions
It lets people go and grab
Using illustrations effectively
There is a continuum of types of illustrations
that serve different purposes-from
representational to emotional.
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Evoke the mood you want
Don’t make people wonder what or why
Choose appropriate size
Use illustrations to support content
Use animation where it helps-not just for show
Don’t make people wait through splash or Flash
Make illustrations accessible
People, people, people
We all interpret as we read
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People aren’t passive receptacles into
which writers can pour information.
 Polysemic by nature
Steps to understanding your audience
and creating personas
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Demographic
Social and cultural environments
The essential message
Give people only what they need
Cut! Cut! Cut! And cut again.
Key point/Inverted pyramid style
Understand “pull” technology while your
“pushing” messages.
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Web users come to you
Marketing 101
 Marketing worries how to draw people in, we need to
worry how to not drive them away.
Break down the walls of words
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Large blocks of text that look like a wall are
barriers to web users.
Final things to remember!
People make impressions on the page of a
website before they even read it.
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Layout, Fonts, Colors, Background, Images, etc.
Appearance of a web page is more than
aesthetics, it’s about usability and
functionality.
Design and writing styles complement each
other
Different audiences=different needs
Web page analysis Exercise:
Go to our Wordpress site and click on the
resources tab.
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Find “The 19-Hour Website Analysis, in 20 minutes
or less.”
 Once in the article, read over and find the “website
design” link.
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There are 25 elements that must be considered in every
website and you will need to examine each one.
Choose a NPPA package (also linked in the “resources” tab
of our Wordpress site) and analyze it using these elements
as guidelines.
Hand in the analysis at the end of the class.