Differences of One Story in 3 Platforms

Rose McGowan made her first public speech at the Women’s Convention in Detroit on the 27th of October after she accused Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of sexism. At the convention, McGowan delivered a rousing point’I am brave, and I am you.’ Different genres of platforms reported the story with video. In this draft, I am going to review narratives in 3 platforms: Twitter, television and web video.

storytelling on web-native video

BBC website is chosen as the example of web video. When we move on it, there is a 1-minute clip about Rose’s speech. The shot sizes are mostly medium long shot and mid-shot. Medium shots are used to a small group of people are acting(Jones 2007), as they give the viewer a partial view of the background and also show the subjects’ facial expressions in the context of their body language. We can clearly see Rose McGowan’s emotion from expression, and we can feel her anger and appeal from her arms movement.

In news website, a story usually cover the entire page, so it is supposed to contain enough details. For audiences, they need detailed information of stories by surfing the website and they are willing to spend enough time reading paragraphs. Sometimes, the text is belong to long form narratives including strict structure and exclusive information. Video becomes a supporting role and cannot have dramatic visual effect. What the web-native video need is showing the story directly and simple.

The video on website tells story directly without any comment or direct narration, and it remains one minute speech video without any cue or subtitle. This is a traditional video storytelling shows serious and objective story by effacing narrator. Below the video there are three sentences to give the important details like who( Rose McGowan), where(the Women’s Convention event in Detroit, Michigan) and what (public speech). Weinstein’s opinion at the end of news shows the news can’t sand any side, and it ensures statement of each side exists in the news to reflect fairness of news.

storytelling on Twitter

It is noted ( Brogan, 2015) that ‘ Twitter is changing the narrative approach by providing users with their own personal channels to find and provide information that is important to any current event, including the disasters that affect many people’s lives’. Because of this unique subjective way of narrative, audiences accept a story and accept the opinion from the content maker, which will form a stereotype in advance.

Twitter is a sensitive site for this story, because it claimed that McGowan broke Twitter Rules for limiting others’ freedom of expression and temporarily limited McGowan’s account. That’s a part of reasons why it becomes a heated platform for audiences to express opinions about the story.

Short form storytelling is popular on social media especially on Twitter platform, and it usually come with visual storytelling such as GIF, pictures and videos.

There are 280 character limits audiences’s in Twitter’s text rule, it means users should use these 280 characters to finish a entire structure including abstract, orientation, complication, evaluation result and coda(Fulton H., Narrative and Media, 2012). Users cannot write word with all elements of structure. However, users prefer using dynamic ways to complement the text in order to ensure the integrity of the structure. In this condition, users treat text as a tool to attract audiences for deep reading — — watch video or click the relevant link.

On the Twitter, reporters could use live blogging and word narrative to report a story. Some unknown activities, like committees and games，are more suitable for live blogging than other activities such as McGowan’s speech. For speech, reports sometimes can get speech draft in advance, so it is effective for reports to extract main idea from entire speech.

Here is a news video example reported by individual reporter AJ+ News on Twitter. The main assumption of social media is that it is now mainly consumed by mobile phones or tablets rather than desktop computers. This represents the need for fast paced, succinct news coverage. News on social platforms is fragmented, partly because users cannot stay focused on one news for a long time, and partly because news updates on social platforms in a high speed.

To make short form news stand out, all the necessary information of this story has to be told by visual picture, subtitle and graphic. The video use clips to narrative the story with yellow and white subtitles, and it uses yellow to highlight the words to show keywords. Like we love GIF in Twitter, people’s’ eyes will be attracted by flashing out. In this example, social-native video uses flashing-out subtitles to catch eyes. Many videos on social media use background music instead of narrator voice, because subtitles contain all the key words. In this example, there is still background music together with Rose McGowan’s speech.

storytelling on TV

As a traditional news platform, TV news has almost been seen as an official media. The audiences of television trust firmly in TV news and have strict requests on it. Video is carefully edited on TV platform, not only depending on the time line for editing, but also tend to attach all the relevant series data, so the video is full of information.

Broadcast journalism usually has a character speaking as a narrator to describe the story and introduce the background in the video. from CBS NES, this genre of video based on a powerful and professional team and has layered information.

The TV video contains videos and sounds, and the broadcaster won’t leave a blank for the audience. The sound is coordinated with video. In the case, video weakens the original background voice of video, and broadcasters use a third-person narrative voice to tell story. They can give more details for the story. What’s more, third-person narrative voice to tell story make it objective and avoid narrator’s view.

Sometimes, if the story is a heated problem, television reporters prefer to use video to show public opinions by vox pop. It is similar with video on web-native that video cannot have subjective point of view, and tv language cannot have strong emotion.

Linear narrative is often used in broadcast journalism video to make news firm, and it is popular in traditional video narrative voice. In the video, narrator provide information with linear chronology. It also cross the video of Rose McGowan and copy story of Weinstein to offer a conflict. It ensures the news provide two sides views and stands in the middle. In the video, it is inverted pyramid storytelling to clearly show the main information.

Reference

Douglas J. Yellowlees, The End of Books — — Or Books without End? Reading Interactive Narratives, Ann Arbor： The University of Michigan Press, 2000.

Fulton, H. (2005), Narrative and Media, pp10–47. Lincoln: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Riedl M., Stern A., Dini D., Mixing Story and Simulation in Interactive Narrative. American Association for Artificial Intelligence, 2006.

Ryan, M., The Interactive Onion: Layers of User Participation in Digital Narrative Texts. In: Ruth Page and Bronwen Thomas, eds. New Narratives ： Stories and Storytelling in the Digital Age. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011.

Related posts:

A longer is a versatile and common building material on Fogo Island. In order to prolong the durability of the wood, the builders remove the bark as soon as the wood is harvested and before the…

The availability and accessibility of emergency contraceptives and contraceptives are crucial for the protection and empowerment of women. These methods help women plan their families and prevent…

Custom table covers are a great way to add a touch of style and professionalism to any event. They can be used to promote your business, showcase your brand, or simply add a touch of color and…