Academic Theories

In the research of the 3 main Academic Theories, I have chosen to look into;

• Web 2.0 - Tim O' Reilly

• Media Studies 2.0- David Gauntlet

• Postmodernism

The three academic theories fit in well with the research and planning of my campaign website and have a huge effect as to how it will come across to the target audience and also marketing it on the internet.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0- Tim O’ Reilly

The theory of Web 2.0 is that there is a fine line between the producer and the consumer. It shows that the consumer can make their own website very easily and putting field specific web designers into jeopardy by websites such as Blogger etc who help the consumer to make their own blog by using templates and much more to make it easy to make a professional looking website and/or blog.

Core competencies of Web 2.0 Companies:

• Services, not packaged software, with cost effective scalability
• Control over unique, hard to recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them.
• Trusting users as co-developers
• Harnessing collective intelligence
• Leverageing the long tail through customer self-service.
  
• Software above the level of single device
  
• Lightweight user interfaces, development models and business models.
  

Some of the above information is secondary research that I found on the internet from www.oreilly.com


Postmodernism

Postmodernism

Modernism started in the 1800’s and has been going on ever since; therefore post modernism comes after modernism and is still happening.

The theory of postmodernism is about the opposing hierarchy, which says that nothing is better than the other and everything is equal.

Another point of the theory of postmodernism is recycling culture; this is where fashions from the past are brought back and put together to make an original idea. Postmodernism is also a modern interpretation of style that is characterized by eclecticism, collage and irony. This means that a mix of different elements, genres and influences is used.

I will use ideas and influences from a mix of different websites to make my website more original. Therefore if I use postmodernism theory I will be using it to influence the making of my website.

Even though I’m not a fantastic web designer, postmodernists will follow the theory and think that it is as equal quality to a website made by a professional web designer.

Case Study 3

Cefn Croes

The Cefn Croes campaign organisation looks at the future of the most powerful wind farm in Wales.

• The producers of the campaign are a small group of people who live in the Cefn Cross area who do not want the wind farm in the rural area for several reasons.
  

• The language of the website is informal but very informative by putting across the point of the campaign by giving lots of facts and very few opinions.

• The layout of the homepage is very simple with lack of colour and also easy to navigate around the website by using a navigation bar and also hyperlinks to each page at the bottom.
• 

Case Study 2

Global Campain For Education

The global campaign for education supports people’s rights to be educated regardless as to where they live.

• The language used is formal to inform the reader about what the campaign is about and persuade them to get involved.

• The layout of the homepage is colourful text colour, pictures and navigation bar on a plain background.

• This specific campaign uses twitter and a newsletter as distribution to appeal to a wider target audience and keep people in the loop who want more information on the campaign.

• The campaign uses advertising also through twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flikr because they are worldwide social networking website and carry large numbers of people who might be interested in supporting the campaign if they knew more about it.

Case Studies

I am doing my case studies on three different campaign websites. As previously mentioned, I will be studying campaigns that from a personal point of view, I think are important, popular but also controversial all at the same time. The campaigns I have chosen are: WWF, Education and University.

WWF

The WWF is a campaign organisation that supports the extinction of rare animals that we usually only see in cartoons.

• The producer of the WWF campaign is the Chief Executive, David Nussbaum.
  

• The language is formal but doesnt use illegiable text which is understood and appealed by all ages.
  

• The layout of the homepage of this website is bright and colourful which attracts all ages of people.

• Distribution of the campaign is only through Twitter so it can be known worldwide.

• WWF use TV advertising to appeal to the correct target audience, but this can be expensive for small businesses.

Institution

Key Companies
The three key companies I will be researching are; WWF, Cefn Croes Wind Farm and Global Campaign for Education.

http://www.wwf.org.uk/
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~hills/cc/
http://www.campaignforeducation.org/

Regulation and Control
I have been researching regulation and control over the past few days and the only restrictions on what you can put on a website are dependant on which hosting company you use to host your website. These may include restrictons on pornography or violence etc

Production Process
The production process of the making of my campaign website will focus on which hosting company I will use to host my website. Different hosting companies have different rules such as charging a certain amount each month to host the webiste. I have chosen to host my campaign website with the reliable and free web hosting company 'Mezoka' at www.mezoka.com

Distribution Process
I have researched the ways in which I can distrubute my website. The first way I can make my website recognised is to use Google AdWords to genarate hits before encouraging the audience to take action.

With over 500 million users on Facebook, another successful advertising strategy would be using Facebook advertising as shown below which are located on the right hand side on www.facebook.com

The last way in which i will distribute my website is through a Twitter feed in which the website can let people know of updates to the website and exclusive news. By using several different kinds of distribution, it should hopefully appeal to a wider target audience and get my website more hits and people wanting to take action after reading about the campaign on my website.


Marketing and promotion
The marketing and promotion side of my website is researching where I will market my website. As explained previously, I will be using several different social networking websites to promote that my website is technologically advanced in ways of communication and marketing my website.

Another way of marketing and promotion of my website would be to add meter tags so that my website will be at the top of Google listings. I would do this by specifying my meter tag to a certain word on my page in which would be repeated 5 times per sentence. This way I should get more hits on my website and more people wanting to take action.

Questionnaire

Interests
In my questionnaire, I will be asking questions about people interests.

Expectations/engagement
I will be researching this in my focus group to find out what my audience wants from my website.
Audience profiling
I will be doing this from the anaylsis of my focus groups answers to get to know what my audience wants from my website.

The questions to be asked in my questionnaire will be as follows:

1. What age group do you fit into?
Under 16/17-28/29-45/46-55/56+

2. Are you male or female?
Male/Female

3. Which TV channel do you watch the most?
BBC1/BBC2/ITV/Channel 4/FIVE

4. How much TV do you watch in a day?
Less than 15min/ 16-30min/ 31min-1hour/2-4hours/5-8hours/9-12hours/13-20hours/21+

5. Do you use email?
Yes/No

6. Do you have an internet-enabled mobile phone?
Yes/No/Don't have a mobile phone

7. Are you influenced by Google advertising?
Yes/No/Don't use Google

8. Which two colours do you associate with organ donation?
Red/Yellow/Pink/Green/Orange/Purple/Blue/Black/White/Other(please specify)

9. Which type of media influences you the most?
Article/Video/Radio/Podcast/

I will be finding out this information from my audience to find out the interests, expectations, engagement and also profile the audience so I can design the website to their liking.

The results of my questionnaire are shown below in pie charts.

Audience Research

Catagorisation

I have been researching the popular campaign webiste 'Recycle Now' at www.recyclenow.com
Campaign websites are presented to the target audience in three different ways, these are;

Language- The language on the 'Recycle Now' website is very friendly but informative. The writer is trying to make a relationship with the reader.

Colour schemes- The colour scheme is very bright to catch the attention of the audience, but also to make the controversial subject of recycling more interesting to make you want to get involved.

Layout- The layout of the website is very typical of a website. It has a search bar, task bar, links to similar websites and hyperlinks to show you how to get involved.

Consuming Habits
The audience will gain lots of knowledge out of looking at campaign websites, this includes;
What you can do to get involvedWhy the writer thinks you should get involvedHow you will help when you get involvedHow to contact the campaigning organisation
The campaign website will know whether the audience will take any action after being influenced by the website. I will know this by people signing upto the website waning to get involved.

Audience effects theories
I will be looking at whether the 'Uses and Gratifications Theory' can be used with my website, if so then how and why?

Audience Effects Theories
The 'Uses & Gratifications Theory' for a campaign is mainly for information as follows although there are several for integration and social interaction;

Information

• Finding out about relevant events and conditions in immediate surroundings, society and the world

• Seeking advice on practical matters or opinion and decision choices

• Satisfying curiosity and general interest

• Learning; self-education

• Gaining a sense of security through knowledge

Personal Identity

• Finding reinforcement for personal values

• Finding models of behaviour

• Identifying with valued other (in the media)

• Gaining insight into one's self

Integration and Social Interaction

• Gaining insight into circumstances of others; social empathy

• Identifying with others and gaining a sense of belonging

• Finding a basis for conversation and social interaction

• Having a substitute for real-life companionship

• Helping to carry out social roles

• Enabling one to connect with family, friends and society

Entertainment

• Escaping, or being diverted, from problems

• Relaxing

• Getting intrinsic cultural or aesthetic enjoyment

• Filling time

• Emotional release

• Sexual arousal

Action Plan

(11th - 20th November)
Audiences Categorisation- I will be looking at how campaign websites are presented to the target audience by the language, colour schemes and layouts. Consuming habits- I will be looking at what knowledge the audience will gain out of looking at campaign websites and whether they will take any action after being influenced by the website.Audience effects theories- I will be looking at whether the 'Uses and Gratifications Theory' can be used with my website, if so then how and why?Interests- I will find out my target audiences interests by doing a focus group at a local business. Expectations/engagement- I will be researching this in my focus group to find out what my audience wants from my website. Audience profiling- I will be doing this from the anaylsis of my focus groups answers to get to know what my audience wants from my website.
(21st-30th November)
Institution
Key companies- I will be researching popular campaigning website companies such as; 'WWF'.
Regulation and control- I will be researching into the rules and regulations as to what you can and cant put on a website.
Production processes- I will research the production process as to how I will be getting my website on the internet.
Distribution processes- I will research different ways as to how my website an get more readers such as Facebook advertisements. Also, making a Twitter account to appeal to a wider target audience.
Marketing and promotion- I will be researching how I can market my website more efficiantly by adding meter tags so that my webiste will be put on the top of Google listings. (1st-9th December)
Case Study's
I will be researching 3 case studies to which are appropriate to my website based task. These will be researched properly and made sure that a thorough investigation into the theories, theorist and how they are appropriate to my website.
(10th-17th December)
Academic Theories
I will be researching into the main 3 academic theories that affact the making of my website. I will explain the theory, theorist and how it will affect my campaign website.

Main Task Action Plan

The deadline to finish my portfolio research and planning is the 10th December 2010. To ensure I maintain excellent time management to achieve the highest marks possible, I am therefore going to write an action plan to make sure I achieve my full potential and get the highest marks posssible by writing an action plan to keep organised with the submission of my research and planning for mymain task.
Research
Audience:
Categorisation/How the audience is targeted
Consuming habits
Audience effects theories
Interests
Expectations/Engagement
Audience Prompting

Institution:
Key companies
Regulation and control
Production processes
Distribution processes
Marketing and promotion

Conventional Features:
Case Study of AT LEAST 3.
Laura Mulvey
Web 2.0 (Tim O'Reilly)
Media Studies 2.0 (David Gauntlet)
Mediasphere: 360-degree environment for consumption (John Hartley)
Any Audience Theory ("Uses and Gratifications" and "Reception Theory"
Postmodernism
"We Media" (Gillmor, 2004)
Genre (Mark Reid)
Narrative theory (Nick Lacey, 2000)
Narrative Theory (Todorov)
Character Theories (Propp or any others)
Theories on representation

Preliminary Finished

Here is the link to my finished preliminary task school website:
http://louvainacademy.mezoka.com/index.html


Evaluation
I think my preliminary task went quite well. Having taught myself how to use the software from scratch and how to actually upload my website to the web, I don’t think the outcome was how I expected it to go and it was not to my best ability.A positive of my website is that it is exactly what the specification asked and the pictures are related to the pages very well.A negative of my website is that it is poorly laid out and I think that the logo on the homepage looks like the layers are wrong, but it is just that the picture is too small and loses its quality. Points for the future would be to make the homepage more inviting by using less writing and more colour and pictures. I think that I need to learn how to use HTML codes within the software to make the website more original and appropriate to my website.

Preliminary- School Website

Today, I decided on the name of the school in which i will be making the website for and I have also started adding text to my homepage.

The name of my school will be 'Louvain Girls Academy'.
I have chosen this name because I think it needs a memorable name for a school which specialises in Media.

The masthead that will be on all pages of the website will look like the one shown below. I have chosen green because it is a colour that is appealing to both sexes and all ages. It also fits in with the green and white home theme.

Preliminary Task Website

I have chosen to use a software package called RapidWeaver to create my website. I started by looking at the templates that they have available and making it my own by editing the layout and inserting additional text.

So far, I have started editing it by changing the original template from a chalk board with chalk and a board rubber to a more modern interactive whiteboard with an overhead projector. I am very happy with the original background colour of green, therefore I am leaving this the same.

I have chosen to change the theme to the interactive whiteboard and an overhead projector so it appeals to a wider target audience that are technologically minded, although Rapidweaver templates do posess the option to change this at any time, to refresh the look and feel of the site.

Media Department Page Research

Today I have been researching school media department pages. In my research I will be looking at the content of the text and the pictures used. Below are some examples of pages I have been looking at.


My resarch has been very helpful and I now know that the content of the text is to tell the reader what the media department have been upto recently, persuade the reader that the media department is the best in comparison to other schools and also to show off recent media achievements that the school has.

Pictures used on the media department page are of students on their own or using technology such as; cameras, computers, headphones and edit pictures.

Homepage Research

I have been researching homepages of school websites to look at the structure of the homepage such as; colours, layout, text, language and camera shots of the pictures.
Below are some screenshots of some of the school websites I have been looking at to help me with my research.

In my research I have found out that the colour of the website stays within the theme colours of the school and their uniform and the homepage attracts the reader by using either a large centralized photo or a series of small photos towards the bottom of the page. I have also found out that the text on the homepage is usually an introduction to the school or used to show off achievments such as sporting team wins, exams results or tropheys earned. Language on the homepage is formal but also easy to read so that most people will be able to understand it, even though a school website is usually targeted at parents. Camera shots used in photos include a range from insert shot, close-up, medium close-up, over the shoulder and long shot which usually include pictures of the pupils or of the school building.

Media Task- Website

I have chosen to do the website task because it was my prefered method of communication and will allow me to show my full understanding of the project. I want to break through my comfort zone of print and video and learn new software to expand my media skills.

Website

• Preliminary exercise: a new homepage for a school/college. This should include a photo of the institution, buttons to provide easy navigation to other areas of the site and appropriate welcoming text. There should also be a working hyperlink to a media department page, also with a photo. The task aims to demonstrate understanding of the software and of webpage conventions.
• Main task: produce a campaign website including sound and video for a campaign (eg political, health, charity, environmental). The site should include a logo, original photographs, (minimum four per candidate), written text, audio, video and easy navigation.