obstructing teenagers engaging with current affairs
arriers B
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree BA (Honours) Graphic Communication
Avenue Campus, University of Northampton March 2015
by Semih Yilmaz
Abstract This study will investigate the barriers that are obstructing teenagers — particularly for the age group between 16–18 — from engaging in not only current affairs and international news, but also major socio-economic, political and ethical events taking place domestically and globally. It will explore the aesthetics, theories and philosophies of news delivery methods in an attempt to firstly understand the fundamental difficulties involved in consistent and meaningful youth engagement, whilst exploring more appropriate and conducive ways to encourage and secure long-term participation and contribution — both on the Internet and TV.
Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor Trevor Brown for his tremendous support throughout this journey. Also, a big thanks to my classmate as well as housemate Lara Koedoot for her help, and thank you to all the respondents for taking the time filling out the questionnaire.
Contents
05 07 10 14 32 48 52
ABSTRACT
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
THE IMPORTANCE 16. 18. 20. 22.
Future Generation Religious Tensions Current Events Media Bias
24. 26. 28. 30.
Global Events Sensationalism Education Conclusion
BARRIERS 34. Branding and Principle Content Delivery 40. Personalisation of Content
42. Politics 44. Excessive Textual Content 47. Conclusion
CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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FIGURES
Introduction Figure 1 Daybreak at Gale Crater (NASA 2011)
“Make them part of the loyal army of readers who want to take his paper every day. To do that he must instinctively know the men and women out there, what they love, hate, dream about, are indifferent to, the prejudices they cherish and the passions he must now articulate.” Mike Molloy. Editor in chief of Mirror Group Newspaper, 1990
To better engage young people, newspapers and broadcasters need to understand the youth. To do this news corporations need to better understand what this demographic’s likes and dislikes are, their technology habits, cultural and historical references, along with their perceived understanding of these
‘events’, its relevance to them and the way in which they relate to the potential future ramifications of such ‘events’. Raising their awareness initially through providing content and a mode of delivery that is more interesting, dynamic and engaging to young people seems the most logical starting point.
Introduction This study is divided into two chapters concerning the significance of engaging with current affairs and the aesthetic barriers that prevents them from engaging with it. The first chapter will discuss various factors to why this study is important as well as why it is essential to understand the relevance to young people. The following chapter will identify the various barriers and investigate how the youth is reacting to the aesthetics of news delivery today, and how it may be transformed and redesigned into a more teenage friendly environment.
So why are teenagers inactive when it comes to engaging with the news? One of the prevailing interests of the contemporary teenager is the pursuit of ‘entertainment’ through social networking, video games, music and films. One of the principle current interests for teenagers is social networking, evidenced by their subscription to various social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Young people — primarily age 16–18 — are not interested in reading, especially when presented with excessive amount of textual content, even if it is not related to current affairs. This has a detrimental effect on gaining knowledge as well as having a perspective about significant events taking place both locally and globally. In most cases, those people have less knowledge about current events than their elders (Rogers, 2010b). Furthermore, most of the delivery forms are focused on adults who are developed to a greater extend compared to young teenagers, who should also be considered consumers of news and should be focused on (Rogers, 2010b). Young people may become more interested in news and current affairs if the branding principles and delivery methods are adapted to engage them more. According to a 2009 research study from the Newspaper Association of America Foundation and the Media Management
Centre at Northwestern University there are several influences to the responses of teens to news today. They are only interested when the news stories are delivered in bite size formats, such as a ‘quick news fix’ offered on search engines or social media. Teenagers are also expected to have a certain degree of contextual background knowledge about a specific news story. Understanding the news is most of the time a challenge for them. They have troubles with absorbing information or become disinterested when they are confronted with long, uninterrupted blocks of text unless it is divided and illustrated. Too many details, too much text and content that are long or too difficult to understand triggers the teenagers to quickly click away as they feel it gets too much and too many things are competing for their attention (Newspaper Association of America Foundation and the Media Management Centre at Northwestern University, 2009). Especially when you look at Twitter, it is widely popular among teens thanks to its simple concept of sharing quick and bite sized information, which enables the users to be in touch with each other and with the world in a very simple and intuitive way. This ‘short burst’ information sharing culture has grown immensely since the introduction of hash-tags, which are simple keywords that users can include in their Tweets to categorize those Tweets and help them show more easily in Twitter Search. Clicking on a
hash-tagged word in any message shows you all other Tweets marked with that keyword, which again, keeps them in touch with the world. This short burst information culture could be a factor that has made young people more likely to decline long news items and encouraged them to only read short information.
As it will be discussed further on, teenagers seem to be more interested in articles when they are delivered in magazine-style format in terms of combining images with video and text, and tend to disengage when there is an overload of textual content as well as excessive politics and global issues stories.
The Importance Figure 2 Figure Xbackground with Vintage Name quill pen (Year) and inkwell on table. (BrAt82 2013)
“Those who improve with age embrace the power of personal growth and personal achievement and begin to replace youth with wisdom, innocence with understanding, and lack of purpose with self-actualization.� Bo Bennett, Year to Success, 2010
Why is news important for teenagers? Why should they realize knowing about current affairs will work in their advantage? This chapter will discuss the various factors and reasons why the news should matter to teenagers.
Future Generation Religious Tensions Current Events Media Bias Global Events Sensationalism Education Conclusion
Firstly, it is important to engage with current affairs because ultimately this will facilitate the youth to have a deeper understanding of the world around them, providing them the opportunity to firstly and simply broaden their view of the world and secondly, and may even more importantly, have an informed and rational individual opinion of the issues. Even though the majority of the younger generation know they are not ready for leadership, they still desire it. And who can blame them? Eventually, they will replace the current leaders in the world governance, policy making, ethics and leading industries, just to name a few. They want leadership and they want it in their own way. However,
a study conducted by Deloitte Research demonstrates that even though those young people have many opportunities in front of them they do not feel ready to be in a leading position and they are very aware of their lack of leadership skills (Bersin, 2013). Inevitably, teenagers who watch the news on a daily basis will likely have a better understanding about what is happening in the world. This could lead them into broaden their view of the world — in the sense of understanding the important and pertinence of negotiation, compromise and empathy, along with the significant advantage of potentially gaining leadership skills.
Future Generation Religious Tensions Current Events Media Bias Global Events Sensationalism Education Conclusion
Within the general comprehension of worldviews gained through news engagement, by additionally watching varied and multicultural news channels they will expand and develop another vital global contextual skill; faith and its myriad of sub divisions, tensions and belief systems, which will hopefully help them combat any ill informed, and potentially dangerous preconceptions and views. Especially when a news service is broadcasting a news story — related to a religion — in a subjective format. There are numerous and frequent news items broadcasted in relation to religion daily across the world. Some of the subjects acted as a contrary to religions and some in the name of it, for instance harassment of women because of religious dress and violent attacks on minorities such as the murder of a Rabbi and three Jewish children by an Islamist radical in France (Reuters, 2014). To conclude this, reading the news will “Religious wars are not caused by provide young people certain understandings the fact that there is more than about religions. The history of mankind and one religion, but by the spirit of civilizations are accompanied by faith and intolerance... the spread of which beliefs, thus the respectful understanding can only be regarded as the total is an integral part of knowledge of historical eclipse of human reason.” knowledge. As they follow current events they will likely be better educated, know how the Charles-Louis de Secondat, 1721 leaders are dealing with tensions, have their own opinions and be much less prone to join an extremist movement. Being aware in the present day may prevent tensions in the future.
Future Generation Religious Tensions Current Events Media Bias Global Events Sensationalism Education Conclusion
Current events and their repercussions is another fundamental reason why young people should watch the news to expand their horizons and to understand what is happening nationally and internationally as well as to stay abreast of current events. The main purpose of news delivery is to cover things that are going on in their community as well as outside their society (Scheff, 2012) and as stated before, they will likely be better educated and comprehend current events with more consideration and empathy.
Gaining knowledge and being updated about global matters will give them a sense of confidence as well as comfort when there is a public debate or a conversation within their own social groups, and again, they will have their own opinion which will help them immensely during national elections and they will realize the importance of electoral politics, and therefore they will be encouraged to vote more, and vote from an informed and knowledgeable viewpoint.
Future Generation Religious Tensions Current Events Media Bias Global Events Sensationalism Education Conclusion
Media bias can have a potent effect on how the audience perceive particular events or social issues and from my research it is clear that several news corporations are subjective when it comes to delivering a news story; tone of voice and language can have a huge effect on how the ‘news’ is received. To be able to understand the phenomenon young people should watch and read news articles from various newspapers and channels. Therefore, if they do not engage with the news from varied sources they may not realize or appreciate the variations of different biases, especially within the political sphere. Otherwise they could easily be persuaded to a certain preconception (Scheff, 2012) and have — without noticing it — the opinion of a certain biased news channel or newspaper.
“We have been campaigning for a long time to challenge the disproportionate negative stereo typing of young people by parts of the media. The lack of balance of reporting is shocking and we have no right of reply or protection against bias. The media give us the impression that the only way to get reported is to do something bad – but what does that say about our press. It’s not just a case of fairness, but about challenging old fashioned and cynical attitudes towards us.” Liam Preston, Chair, British Youth Council, 2012
For instance, the media is commonly portraying young people in an overwhelmingly negative light. Words like ‘thugs’ and ‘vandals’ are regularly associated with young people and this could be a barrier to why teenagers do not engage with news. If teenagers would watch different news sources they would understand the bias and they could differentiate a subjective and an objective news story (Wells, 2004).
Future Generation Religious Tensions Current Events Media Bias Global Events Sensationalism Education Conclusion
Global events are another fundamental reason for following the news and engaging with current affairs, the tracking of global issues and their effects will expand a teenager’s knowledge beyond their personal experience and expose them to things going on around the globe and provide them the opportunity to learn new things. It will encourage them to look beyond their community and culture, recognising the incredible opportunities that are created
by diversity and the richness of culture that there is across our planet. They need to be able to communicate with people from various cultures and traditions (Sutcliffe, 2012). Even if they would have trouble comprehending what is happening or why an occasion took place, they would at least know what is going on and they could ask for further clarification (Scheff, 2012).
Future Generation Religious Tensions Current Events Media Bias Global Events Sensationalism Education Conclusion
Often the media is responsible for reporting events and topics in news in an ‘overhyped’ tone. This is termed as sensationalism – which is a way of editorial bias in mass media to increase viewership or readership numbers. Being controversial and appealing to emotions are some of the tactics being used by newspapers and broadcasters (Wikipedia, 2015). This is again why teenagers should watch the news from multiple sources, that way, they would understand and better observe news topics and be able to recognise when media bias
has been used to sensationalise a particular viewpoint or agenda. Most teenagers are prone to care more about what Hollywood celebrities are doing rather than other important topics. Several news outlets get transfixed with reality shows or showbiz coverage. Watching different broadcasts and reading varied newspapers on a daily basis will teach the youth how to understand the contrast between genuine news and sensationalism — over-hyped and inferior news stories (Scheff, 2012).
Future Generation Religious Tensions Current Events Media Bias Global Events Sensationalism Education Conclusion
Finally, a teenager, who follows the news regularly, is potentially going to be far more effective at school or college in comparison to those who do not. He/she will most likely have an advantage when it comes to social and media studies, civics and history classes (Scheff, 2012).
Future Generation Religious Tensions Current Events Media Bias Global Events Sensationalism Education Conclusion
Teenage engagement with news and current affairs is very important. It has its many benefits when it comes to being educated well and understanding different biases. When teenagers follow the news on a daily basis, they will likely have a better understanding about what is happening in
the world, have less hyped preconception and have their own informed opinions, they will understand the contrast between genuine news and sensationalism — over-hyped and inferior news stories, be more effective at school and get more interested in other stories.
Barriers Figure 3 Magazine Macro (Alix Kreil 2014)
“As creators, we want to think it’s about us, our brilliant talent, our skills we’ve perfected over the years — all these magical things: color, space, shape, tension, harmony, typography, beauty, simplicity. Then why do certain brands become great brands? It’s because we tapped into our ability to see. Not as ourselves, but as others.” David Brier, 2015
To engage a certain audience companies need to — instead of only aiming to represent an image of their own characteristics — better understand the target audience, know what they like and what they prefer and translate that into visual and written solutions, which will engage them more. They will succeed if they can create strong visual communication systems, which include not only their own story but also more importantly the narrative, needs and desires of the target audience. This chapter is aiming to discuss various aesthetic barriers that are obstructing teenagers to engage with current affairs. The chapter is divided into sections concerning the various user experience barriers such as untargeted branding and identity systems, an inability to personalize or adapt content, perceived lack of targeted social media interaction (although all current news programming has linked social networks, the younger target audience still, perhaps misguidedly, deem these aimed and focused solely at adult content and delivery) and excessive amount of content related to politics. In addition to this, content not being presented in a magazine format, which according to my primary research is a major factor that disenfranchises the teenage audience, and too much textual formatting could also be a factor. Each point will discuss different studies and outcomes. To finalize the respective sections I will compare the studies with my own research and findings resulting into conclusions about whether I agree or not with their study outcomes.
Branding and Principle Content Delivery
To make teenagers interested in news, newspapers have to adapt their overall branding. Less formal design on the website and a minimalistic approach are decent points to start with (Newspaper Association of America Foundation and the Media Management Centre at Northwestern University, 2009). A 2009 study conducted by Newspaper Association of America Foundation and the Media Management Centre at Northwestern University suggested several points that could potentially make the youth more interested in a news website.
Firstly, reducing the volume of information on the page by offering fewer stories. The study found that teens were often satisfied with fewer than a dozen stories overall on a home page. Additionally, pages with fewer stories can include stronger visual elements resulting into the ability to dedicate more room to highlighting and offering explanations on content. By providing brief but informative summaries of each news story, users will not have to click on it. This way, they can at least know what they can expect when they explore the item. Therefore concise story summaries could possibly resolve younger audience’s first major problems with accessing a news website – getting the essence of a news article without clicking on it; quickly, simply and concisely. Vice, a website focused on arts, culture, and news topics for instance is a good example of this providing short summaries that ensure an organized overview by displaying the stories in a consistent format of block
text and imagery (see figure 4). Every news story consists of an image to give the reader an idea of the subject, a headline, and one sentence summary, which briefly introduces the story. The typographic choices Vice has made could also be considered as a positive factor. It consists of sans serif typefaces, which may make the teenage friendly design even more, teenage friendly. This could be related to the generally accepted moods and feelings the typeface evokes; modern, friendly, direct, clean and minimal (Cousins, 2013). The article published by Carrie Cousins in 2013 suggested that sans serif typefaces are digital friendly and should be only used on digital publications (Cousins, 2013). When considering the fact that teenagers have high levels of access to smartphones, tablets and computers and therefore prefer to read on screens (Coughlan, 2013) it can be stated that a sans serif typeface is likely the better choice when it comes to creating a teenage friendly user experience design.
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Figure 4 An overview of the VICE home page (VICE 2015a)
On the other hand, The New York Times is doing the opposite (see figure 5). It delivers its content in an inconsistent way by using images solely on its featured item and selective news stories, by dividing its articles in columns of news story lists, which does not look organized at all, and by using too much textual content such as the author, the date and quick links. The typographic choices The New York Times has made are serif typefaces. The name ‘serif’ comes from the small lines tailing from the edges of letters therefore serif typefaces are easier to read in printed works. Again, since teenagers prefer to read on screen (Coughlan, 2013) they may likely disengage with the print-style typography design The New York Times has used. Even though The New York Times website is digital, it still resembles a printed newspaper design.
Figure 5 An overview of The New York Times home page (The New York Times 2015)
Barriers Secondly, providing brief but understandable overviews of events, for instance, by creating a news homepage prototype with just lists headlines, the study examined how teens experience a common newspaper website. Reportedly, teenagers complained about an overwhelming amount of text, adding to this, they also found that many news headlines used an excessive amount of formal terms. Therefore they began to experience troubles comprehending the story. Thirdly, making the page dynamic and appealing to the visitor by using photos, graphics, concise and informative descriptions or headlines, in other words displaying the content in a print-style digital magazine format. The study claimed that teens appreciate photos as it helps to retain their interest in a story and encourage a more profound understanding of it. For instance, today’s teenagers are far more accustomed to visual communication, websites such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook enables the user to share bite size information, and that is popular among the youth. This could eventually be related to the outcomes of my primary research, which suggested that content not being presented in a magazine format is a major factor that disenfranchises the teenage audience from reading the news.
an accessible but feature-rich, print-style digital magazine (see figure 6). It takes the user’s social media feeds and presents them together within an algorithm-controlled page design (Leslie, 2013). The company released in 2013 a study, which demonstrated that more than one fourth of the users are aged between 18–35 and 50% of all the users are daily users (Zibreg, 2013). Perhaps this demonstrates how much impact the news platform has on young people when it is delivered in magazine format.
27% Table 1 The Flipboard app audience age groups statistics (Flipboard 2013)
Flipboard is a very good example of a magazine-style news platform, which could be considered successful among young people since it already has over 90 million users and 27% of them are teens and young adults (see table 1). The app — and recently the website — neatly combines articles, videos, podcasts, and social media into
Figure 6 The Flipboard app home screen (Flipboard 2015)
24% 23% 22%
18-34 years 35-44 years 45-54 years 55+ years 2% 17 or under
Furthermore, another prototype made by the Newspaper Association of America Foundation and the Media Management Centre at Northwestern University — aimed at young people — featured three stories with photos and included additional headlines underneath. According to the study, most teens complained that there ‘were only three stories’ on the page. They did not even notice the extra headlines. They saw three photos and assumed there were three stories. Therefore it is possible that we can assume teenagers are ‘visual learners’ and respond better when presented with the initial access into a news story with an image that either summaries the content quickly and effectively and/or spikes their interest and intrigue. First they look to photos and then, based on what they understand from the photos, perhaps to the textual content (Newspaper Association of America Foundation and the Media Management Centre at Northwestern University, 2009). Finally, to compare these findings with my own research, I am going to discuss the survey I carried out asking my teenage demographic whether they read the news or not. The survey results suggested that most of the teenagers read the news on the internet because it not only allows them to be selective and personalize their news feed items and individually elect what order to consume it in but it also appears they feel it is ‘easier’ to access. When the survey asked them how they think that news content could be designed to attract teenagers the majority stated they want a less formal design as well as shorter bulletins. The survey also suggested that teenagers are more likely to read a news page when it is presented in a magazine format. This could be related to the study conducted by the Newspaper Association of America Foundation and the Media Management Centre at Northwestern University when they suggested that a heavy usage of photos, good descriptions and headlines could be more interesting. To identify another similarity in both studies, my survey suggested that teenagers desire news content that is providing summaries, just like theirs did. Furthermore, according to my survey results, teens appear to disengage with news on television when it is presented by someone who is older then them and who are dressed formally, therefore the teenager may perceive the news as dull, they would likely be more interested when news is presented by someone from their own generation. Kevin Sutcliffe, head of programming, EU, Vice explains the method they have been using to engage the young audience. Their reporters are people who — just like young teenagers and young adults — like to go out and do fun stuff (Albeanu, 2014) and look like young people who are trying to make sense of the world around them rather than reporters and news readers who are dressed in formal clothing (see figure 10). However, Vice news makes a minimum use of reporters, Vice lets
the story speak by its self, global news stories are most likely been commentated in-situ by the people who are living and experiencing it first-hand (see figure 7). Another factor that is aiding their popularity is that they are uploading all their news reports on their YouTube channel, which has over 5,6 million subscribers and this is a smart way to engage young people when it is considered that YouTube is the most used ondemand video streaming service by the youth (Palermino, 2015).
“It feels raw, it feels real”, and different from the three minute news packages with a “person in a North Face jacket telling you what’s been going on”. Kevin Sutcliffe, 2014
Barriers Figure 7 Muhammad Abdul Qadir, a 16 years old worker at a ship yard in Bangladesh (VICE 2015b)
BBC News could be a good example of a non-youth-engaging brand. Even though it has been redesigned numerous times over the years, its branding is still resembling the formal corporation image. The logo, for instance, has kept its blocky character with capital letters BBC (see figure 8), and although accepted worldwide as neutral, authoritative, trust worthy and honest, it could be perceived by teens as too adult orientated, safe, straight and overly politically centric. Apart from the logo, the BBC website — especially after it has exchanged its red
coloured design with a greyscale heavy design (see figure 9), which was at least somewhat youth engaging – is presenting the opposite of the points discussed earlier. Even though it has a strong photographical presentation, it lacks brief summaries of news stories. Almost as if it is expecting the visitor to already know the background story. Also, there are limited subjects to choose from through the home page. The user has to click three times before they can actually access the whole subject list.
Figure 8 The BBC Logo (BBC 1997)
Figure 9 The redesigned BBC home page (BBC 2011)
To conclude this, it can be said that teenagers are clearly affected by the branding of a news source. They tend to leave news websites when they are not organized well and when the websites do not provide understandable summaries.
Personalisation of Content
Even though there are several factors obstructing teenagers to watch television in general, a major barrier for television news engagement with teenagers is the fact that television channels, do not provide the ability to choose what subject to watch (Stanley, 2009). Nowadays teenagers can easily watch their favorite content anywhere, on platforms such as Netflix and YouTube (Stelter, 2012). Furthermore, adverts come on every hour and last approximately 18 minutes and the youth do not watch these, resulting into switching to another channel, or doing something else during the advert (Stanley, 2009).
News programming on television is not covering the stories and content they want. The stories mostly consist of politics and global issues, which is going to be discussed later on in this chapter.
television, think that politics is important, and the people who do not watch television suggested that not only it is depressing and negative but it is also that they feel there is too much political content.
Furthermore, a survey conducted by Pew Research Centre suggested that young people lack knowledge about foreign affairs (Rogers, 2010b). Another study conducted by National Assessment Program demonstrated that more than 70% of the students they surveyed said that they were not interested in politics (Danks, 2012). This clearly demonstrates that the majority of teens do not want to watch or read global issues and politics, which are the two main subjects that are provided on a regular television news programme.
“When people come to Twitter and they want to express something in the world, the technology fades away. It’s them writing a simple message and them knowing that people are going to see it.�
When asked why they do or do not watch television news, my survey results suggested that a small amount of teenagers, who watch
Jack Dorsey, 2013 Therefore, it is unthinkable to disagree with the studies when you look at a recent article published by The Guardian demonstrating a study, which displayed that teenagers are increasingly consuming television content in short bursts via YouTube and social media (Sweney, 2014), which again provides the facilities to choose what to watch and what
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to read in short and bit-sized formats. Especially when you look at Twitter, it is widely popular among teens thanks to its simple concept of sharing quick- and bite sized information, which enables the users to be in touch with each other and with the world in a very simple and smart way. In addition to this, my survey suggested that the majority of teenagers do not watch news on TV because they do not have the ability to be selective in terms of choosing what to watch, and because the majority of the stories are about politics. There were also results demonstrating that, teens think most of the news delivered on TV is negative and depressing.
Figure 10 BBC At Ten reporter covering a political news story (BBC 2015)
To verify the results, I have watched BBC At Ten, a news programme on BBC News, which covers news stories for 25 minutes. I noticed that approximately 18 minutes were about politics and global issues — which felt negative and depressing — and 7 minutes about other subjects such as science and technology. This concludes that teenagers are, indeed obstructed by the lack of ability to choose interests as well as the overwhelmingly political and negative content they have to watch on television programs without having the ability to filter those stories.
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Politics
News programming on television has not been covering the stories and content they want. The stories mostly consist of politics and other negative and serious events, which is — as mentioned in the previous section — a reason why young people are declining the news and current affairs.
David Buckingham (2000) mentions in his book, The Making of Citizens, a study by Atkin and Gantz (1978) who claims that watching political news on a daily basis will affect teenagers in terms of significant contribution to their interest in and knowledge about political events (Buckingham, 2000). However, is it wise to expect young people to get interested in politics knowing that politicians are taking no interest in young people’s priorities? James Sweetland (2014), the winner of the New Statesman/ Intergenerational Foundation essay prize suggested in his winning essay that the 2010 general election results demonstrated that there is a contrast between young voters and their so-called representatives. Therefore he claims that politicians are not interested in young people’s preferences and in this manner are able to take up policy positions that actively harm their interests (Sweetland, 2014), which could be concluded as a reason why teens are not interested in politics. This could be related to when in 2012 the government decided to increase the tuition
fees of universities to £9,000, many students started to complain. As Labour’s university spokesman (2010) suggested, students will be forced to choose the cheapest courses, not the one that suits them best (Coughlan, 2010).
“High fees make me fear my subject choice isn’t vocational enough.” Thasmia Khan, student, 2015 As being suggested in the previous paragraph, students complained about the increased tuition fees set by political decisions. And this particular issue is a good example of how politicians are often perceived as ‘overlooking’ the interests and priorities of young people. On the other hand, according to recent studies, teenagers are in fact attentive to politics in a broad sense but are disengaged with electoral politics (Kyranakis, Nurvala, 2013), meaning that although they may show some interest in politics they are unlikely to actively engage in the electoral process.
James Sloam (2007) suggests that some of the reasons for youth disengagement with elections are the growing importance of individualism among teenagers (Sloam, 2007). There has been very little investigations conducted on young people and their association with television news. However, it is clear that — as demonstrated in the previous section — young people appear to watch very little news on television (Buckingham, 2000). As my study described in the previous section this could be related to the fact that news programming on TV has been delivering too much content concerning politics. Likewise, the majority of news on the Internet consists of politics as well, especially on social media. For instance, teens are not specifically looking for political news when they log on to Facebook, but they still come across between the posts shared by those in their feed (Pew Research Centre, 2014). A study conducted by Danah Boyd (2008) suggested that social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are not places for teens to find information but places to chat and hangout with friends as well as socializing and sharing peer to peer information (Boyd, 2008), which is on the same line with my survey results suggesting that young people would rather get their news from friends or people their age, which is an exception where they actually may get interested in an article including politics and
leading into debates among themselves on social media. All these reasons accumulatively lead to a potential disinterest in politics — while politics is being considered as key news — instinctively this disengages the teens with news and current affairs. To clarify why politic news is considered as key news, it is helpful to relate back to the previous section in which I have discussed my study on BBC At Ten where political news was the dominant content. Considering the fact that politicians are perceived as being disinterested in the priorities of young people, it is understandable that teens only readpolitical content when it is shared through social media from people their own age. As discussed the majority of news content consists of politics and therefore it can be concluded that news sources are providing too much political content than is desired by teens resulting in this becoming one of the most potent barriers to teenage engagement. Perhaps, reducing the amount of politics news and increasing other subjects could be a good possible solution to better engage young people. This way, the news will not have to completely avoid the important global issue of politics just for the sake of engaging young people.
Excessive Textual Content
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Throughout the research, it has been understood that too much textual content could be considered as a potential barrier for teenagers to engage with. As demonstrated before, teenagers are likely to be more interested in short information rather than long text-heavy stories.
This section strives to discuss how teens perceive pages that consist of excessive textual content as well as comment on findings of secondary research and compare it to the findings and results of my primary research.
A study conducted in 2013 by Nielsen Norman Group suggested that teens require simple and relatable sites. The study named ‘Teenage Usability: Designing Teen-Targeted Websites’ firstly investigated specific guidelines for how websites could be improved to match teenagers’ abilities and preferences. When the study looked at the reading habits of teens in websites, it concluded that teenagers are seeking entertainment-heavy content. It also concluded that teenagers are most likely inpatient when it comes to reading or investigating on a web page. Therefore, it suggested that websites should write for impatient users knowing that they do not like to read a lot on the web. The study also found out that sites that were simple to scan or that illustrated concepts visually were strongly preferred to sites with dense text (Nielsen Norman Group, 2013). When investigating my teenage demographic audience, I discovered that teens are avid
media and entertainment consumers(Handron, 2008) and that they prefer interaction with an article rather than just reading it. This is also concluded by the Nielsen Norman Group (2013) study in which it suggested that multimedia can engage teenagers and that the best reading experiences for teenagers are those that let them do things rather than just giving information. In addition to this, it experimented with various interactive features including online voting, features for sharing pictures and stories, online quizzes etc. which were successful solutions for making a page more dynamic and appealing for the teen user (Nielsen Norman Group, 2013). When considered the fact that teens are less likely to read a long section of text and prefer shorter stories in combination with dynamic design solutions similar to digital magazine format and interactive elements, it could be recommended that news websites should provide the respective features in their services and avoid excessive textual content to better engage young people and to fill the
knowledge gap that the youth has concerning current affairs by making the articles appealing. A good working example is a multimedia story launched in 2012 by The New York Times called ‘Snow Fall’ (see figure 11). It is a beautifully designed and stunningly effective example of multimedia online storytelling. Even though Derek Thompson (2012) does not believe this particular style of interactive storytelling is the future of journalism and may be just a redesign of The New York Times brand itself (Thompson, 2012), I believe that this is a good first step in engaging the youth by providing interactive and intuitive storytelling via innovative and
creative design that integrates text, video and images in a more inventive way. In addition to this, it works very well on smartphones, tablets as well as the desktop, which is rare with such multimedia efforts. Although it consists of an excessive amount of text, it is visually arresting with its embedded movie clips as background and dynamic approach and picture galleries.
“It’s about time we start using more multimedia to convey information. Good multimedia design is similar to film design. The goal is not to be flashy.” Jakob Nielsen, 1999
Figure 11 The New York Times ‘Snow Fall’ home page (The New York Times 2012)
“Strikingly, a quarter to a third of them were new visitors to nytimes.com. … Rarely have we been able to create a compelling destination outside the home page that was so engaging in such a short period of time on the Web.” Jill Abramson, New York Times executive editor, 2012
Barriers When the page was announced on Twitter it quickly received 2,9 million visits for more than 3,5 million page views (Romenesko, 2012), and the general visit time was an impressive 12 minutes, which is a considerable duration for a website. Almost 33% of the visits were from new visitors who had seen the announcement on Twitter. It is unknown whether those new visitors were young teenagers, however as discussed before, teens are heavy social media consumers and therefore the vast majority of the users would have most likely been teenagers, not to mention that those visitors were non-regular New York Times readers, and therefore even more extraordinary. As a conclusion, based on the survey I carried out and the findings discussed before, it can be said that teenagers are inactive when it comes to reading long amount of text and prefer bite sized information in which they can quickly and easily understand what
the story is and what is it about. Twitter is currently the only platform what does this very well, which reflects on the amount of daily teenage users it has. In addition to this, teens may prefer to interact with pages when the text is smartly combined with interactive aesthetics and functional elements in which they can be carried through the story and make the readers feel as they are a part of it. The New York Times’s ‘Snow Fall’ may be considered a powerful method and perhaps could be used as an example by other news services to attract and engage more teens.
Conclusion
As a conclusion it can be stated that the current branding decisions most news services take as well as television news coverage are acting as barriers for the youth to engage with them. Heavy usage of textual content without combining it in a intuitive and aesthetic way with multimedia elements, dominantly political content in comparison to other subjects, television news programming that lacks the functionality of being selective in terms of interests, and formally dressed reporters in conventional news broadcasts could be considered as barriers. However, a good combination of text, imagery, video and interactive elements in general — what Flipboard is doing so well — and balancing the amount political content shown with other subjects, using voiceovers or reporters with less formal clothing and younger looking could potentially make positive impact on teenagers when it comes to engaging with current affairs.
5
Conclusion Figure 12 Sand running through the bulbs of an hourglass (serggn 2014)
The first chapter, which was about the importance of teenagers engaging in not only current affairs and international news, but also major socio-economic, political and ethical events taking place domestically and globally — discussed that, since teenagers are the future generation, it is important to them to engage with current affairs because they will understand the world around them and therefore have their own opinions of certain issues as well as gain leadership skills and understand the important and pertinence of negotiation, compromise and empathy. Furthermore, it also suggested that watching multiple and multicultural news channels will help them less likely to have potentially dangerous preconceptions and views, and that they will likely be better educated, know how the leaders are dealing with tensions and be much less prone to join an extremist movement when it comes to watching religion related news. A major factor of the importance of engaging news is by watching it they will gain knowledge and be updated about global matters leading them into realising the importance of electoral politics and therefore encouraged to vote more, and vote from an informed and knowledgeable viewpoint. Also different channels and newspaper have different biases, the chapter suggested that watching multiple news channels and reading multiple newspapers will potentially prevent them from being persuaded to a certain preconception, which will help them to have an opinion of a certain biased news channel as well as differentiate a subjective and an objective news story. Furthermore, it demonstrated that watching different news channels could teach them how to understand
the contrast between genuine news and overhyped and inferior news stories. Finally, it demonstrated that following current affairs will gain teenagers significant advantage at school. Those teenagers will be far more effective when it comes to social and media studies, civics and history classes. Aesthetic barriers, the topic that was discussed in the second chapter, covered the following barriers followed by potential solutions; branding and concept delivery, personalisation of content, politics and excessive textual content. The chapter first began demonstrating a study, which investigated the behaviours of teenagers on websites with minimal information as well as excessive amount of information. It eventually concluded that teens were often satisfied with fewer stories overall on a home page and seemed to be more engaged when there was a heavy usage of imagery. It suggested that concise story summaries could possibly resolve younger audience’s first major problems with accessing a news website — getting the essence of a news article without clicking on it; quickly, simply and concisely. Furthermore, the chapter demonstrated a showcase, which compared two websites in terms of organizing of news summaries and image usage as well as typography usage and came to a conclusion that one of the websites, which was VICE, did a better job creating a teenage friendly environment in comparison to the other website, which was The New York Times, who — according to my research — failed in doing that.
Conclusion The chapter also demonstrated a showcase of a teenage friendly news platform, Flipboard, an app that combines articles, videos, podcasts, and social media into an accessible but feature-rich, print-style digital magazine, which — as demonstrated in the chapter — clearly is successful among the teenage audience since — as shown by the respective company — has over 90 million users and 27% of them are people between 18–34 years. This could be related to my primary research, which suggested that content not being presented in a magazine format is a major factor that disenfranchises the teenage audience from reading the news, so teenager are prone to be interested in news when it is delivered in magazine format, which Flipboard is doing so well. Furthermore, it demonstrated a study outcome, which suggested that teenagers are ‘visual learners’ and respond better when presented with the initial access into a news story with an image that either summaries the content quickly and effectively and/or spikes their interest and intrigue. Finally, to conclude branding, it can be stated that teenagers are clearly affected by the branding of a news source. They tend
to leave news websites when they are not organized well and when the websites do not provide understandable summaries. When it comes to personalisation of content, the chapter demonstrated my survey result carried out to young people, which concluded that teenagers do not want to watch television news due to the fact that they are obstructed by the lack of ability to choose interests as well as the overwhelmingly political and negative content they have to watch on television programs without having the ability to filter those stories. The third subject of the chapter, politics, demonstrated studies, which concluded that the majority of new content consists of too much political content than it is desired by teens. A potential solution would be reducing the amount of politics news and increasing other subjects, which would not have to completely avoid the important global issue of politics just for the sake of engaging young people.
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