Media Texte Comparaison

Audience:

The audience for these two media texts is the general audience, and more precisely parents, carers or teachers who are concerned about children’s well-being. However, The childnet International leaflet targets a smaller range of audience, as it is for adults that wish to educate themselves in the matter to better help their children. Furthermore, the article is present on a news site, people can therefore come across it even without being particularly interested in the subject. Whereas if you pick up a leaflet, it means you are interested by its content.

Aim:

However, the aim of these two media texts are different. The aim of the Mailonline article is to scare parents with shocking facts that touch their emotions. The purpose of this alarm is that these adults take action towards their children’s internet use. They also aim to criticize social networking. Furthermore, the newspaper also has a commercial purpose, to earn money by selling the article, it therefore also has to be leisurely, appealing and attract the readers’ attention. Whereas, Childnet international aim to inform and help adults understand the social networking phenomenon and raise their awareness towards it’s dangers. The parents can then decide what actions they want to take towards their children. They also aim to reassure the adults, who might have already read some articles such as the mailonline.

Tone:

The tone of the article is clearly aiming to raise concern or even fear in the mind of those reading it. It is aiming to present facebook and other on-line social networks as a major hindrance to students performing their homework. This is a very alarmist approach which is aiming to grab the readers attention. Whereas, the tone of the leaflet is a very clever blend of formality and friendliness. It gives the impression that the subject matter – social networks – is being treated in an objective way. It focuses on transferring information without the need for emotion or even expressing an opinion.

Language:

The language used in the article reinforces the tone as it is also aiming to raise fear in the minds of parents. Those who had concerns over facebook – which probably covers a majority of parents - will find their “fears” confirmed by the “study”. This is aiming to immediately get the supportive attention of parents who will read the whole article under the influence of confirmation bias. They will finish reading the article feeling even more convinced of their fears and will also feel a close bond towards the Mail Online which offers them articles which seem so accurate. The “rituals” and “empire building” are going to raise images in the readers mind which are unhealthy and manipulative. This is confirmed by “poking” and the personification of facebook as some sort of monster “swallowing” up study time. These techniques of manipulation are exaggerated and aiming to touch the emotions of the reading audience.

As in the article the language and the tone work together. Here however they convey a strong , reasonable and complete view of social networks. The article focuses on the balance between the “great opportunities” and the “risks”. In this way it convinces the reader that social networks can be very useful as long as certain rules are respected. It does not hesitate to use strong language like “bullying” or “sexual interest” or “illegal” but not as a way of condemning simply to raise the awareness of the reader. This information should lead to an environment which is “incredibly creative” and a place where people can “express themselves” and “keep in touch” without risking private matters getting out into the public domain and people being harmed. The balanced language leads to a very convincing and objective message.

Structure:

Another way these two texts differ is their structure. Mailonline is a series’ of short facts, which creates a dramatic effect. Each paragraph is very short, most of the time only including one sentence. The list way in which the article is written makes the number of points stand out which will also affect the reader on the number of dangers of social networking. However, the leaflet is set out in paragraphs, all of about the same length. Mix of simple and complex sentences. The paragraphs are linked up by connectives which show some organisation in the article.

Presentation:

The layout of these two pieces are very dissimilar. The Mailonline article is simple and there was clearly not much research put in it. The background is kept to a bleak white. The writing is simply black. The only other colour on the article is blue, it is the colour of the newspaper in general as the logo of Mailonline. On the other hand, the

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