File Sharing Evaluation

Illegal file sharing; right or wrong?

Evaluation

 Introduction

I have created a feature journalism article based on illegal file sharing and whether it is right or wrong. This included my opinion, artist’s opinions, some facts and figures about file sharing and both sides (positives and negatives). At first we researched the positive and negative aspects of file sharing and how they affected the music industry and different people. We later focussed on finding more specific and detailed research. We then wrote up our articles and later put them onto adobe InDesign where we added images and made it more attractive for our audience. Finally we uploaded the article onto a blog which we created. 

Research Skills

We first started off with an article from news beat on the BBC website which gave us an idea of what our task was based on.  When reading through the article we would underline the main points in the article whilst annotating and taking notes e.g. the positive and negative effects and quotes from people such as Lilly Allen.

When we was researching on the internet it was hard to decide whether the information was reliable or not which is why we would try to stick to gaining our information from more reliable and well know sources such as the guardian or sources that had information that was similar or the same to other information we had come across. One example of this was where I was looking for a quote from Shakira about her opinion on file sharing and found several similar or the same quotes from a variety of websites which meant that the quote is more reliable. Sometimes when we were searching for information there would be thousands of results and sorting through them would take a long time to find what we actually needed. One example of this was when I was researching for information about the Pirate Bay (what they did, who they are, how the website works etc.), most of the results that appeared were not what I wanted but news on one of the founders of Pirate Bay being captured and deported from Cambodian authorities which was due to this news being the most recent information uploaded about the Pirate Bay.

Some of my class mates may not have been as good as researching as others therefore other people may have gained better information than others. When we had the debate we were able to share what information we had gathered with each other. In a way this is another way in which we gathered information.

Journalistic Writing Skills

I am not the best when it comes to writing and I do not enjoy it as much as would with other subjects so writing an article was more of a challenge for me and also something that I am not used to. Although I think that I done particularly well but I could of but more effort into my research e.g.  I could have researched how other magazines structure and layout there articles. Throughout the article I used various writing techniques to keep my audience interested in it e.g. rhetorical questions and the type of language I used for my particular audience I wrote for. The use of a less formal language was due to my audience being of a younger age so they had to they would find it more fitting to them and less boring. Obviously I have read a magazine or a newspaper before and so I knew that the text was to be put into columns, in this case I have three columns on the front page and the second page. Everyone dreads reading large paragraphs of writing so I thought about inserting images related to the article and nearby paragraphs to divide up the text into smaller parts. I do not think that it is the best possible layout and is an improvement for my next article.  

InDesign

When it comes to ICT/ computing it is a whole different world to me; I’m in a maze which takes a long time to figure out and finish. This something I need to work on to be able to complete my work in the future. The layout of my article needs to be improved as it is very basic and lazy. Because I found it hard to arrange a picture in the background which took up the page so I left the background plain. I soon learnt how to arrange columns and create my text boxes using the tool bar on the left of the screen. I chose a smooth font (Comic sans Ms which is used for this article) relates to a less formal theme which relates to my audience of teenagers.     

Web Publishing

At first we created a Google mail account because this was needed in order to set up a blogger account and later upload our articles. At the moment I have only create my new Media AS blog where I posted a small paragraph introducing people to my new blog.

Targets

·         I aim to improve my Adobe InDesign skills by regularly using it to get the best out of it for my coursework and later projects.

·         Aiming to improve my research skills by researching elsewhere but the internet.

·          I will put more effort into my work.

·         Look into the way people write to encourage and fit the needs of the audience and therefore they will gain a greater interest into my article.

Audience (views from colleagues)

Positives-

·         A fluent writing style

·         Layout of columns is neat and evenly spaced

Negatives-

·         Layout needs to be improved, the pictures need rearranging

Conclusion

From this I can see that there are various things that I need to work on especially in my research which I have already started to do. I feel that research is the key to most of my problems; researching the way writers talk and connect to the audience will allow me to create a more interesting magazine which will appeal to my audience whilst developing my journalistic writing skills. Researching the way the different pages are set out and the different formats that are used will make my magazine more attractive for the audience.  Improving my InDesign skills will allow me to create my work quicker.