Longform and Shortform Text Critical Analysis

Longform — Article Published on the I News Newspaper Online on the 11th October 2018

On the face of it this article may not seem like story, or narrative but it is and does and uses the Inverted Pyramid structure to narrate this story. It could have used the Freytags Pyramid or a Martini Glass structure, however I think, that would require this story to have more of a resolution than it does.

You have the Abstract (see below) which sets out the who, John Major and the what, Universal Credit. We now know what this article is about, and would not have to read the rest of it to know there is going to be conflict and that John Major doesn’t agree with Theresa May on Universal Credit, so the reader has the option to not read the rest of the article at this point.

Next in keeping with the Inverted Pyramid structure we are given context, if you didn’t know who John Major, we find out who he is, that he is a former Prime minister, that he someone who has been vocal of Theresa May on other issue.

Then the bulk of the article is a lot of complication and reaction again in relation to the Inverted Pyramid such as “Sir John told the BBC that the Universal credit was “impeccable” and “entirely logical” in theory, but called for it’s implementation to be reconsidered.” Although I would argue it is done the opposite way round to what you might expect, such as with that quote, the reaction is what John Major told the BBC, however the complication is after, John calling “for it’s implementation to be reconsidered.”

Again later on in the article (see below) you have a reaction about what Mrs May promised and then a complication, about “problems have been reported.”

I think by putting the reaction and complication in this order cleverly puts forward the author’s opinion, while on the surface it looks like the article is presenting to us the facts of what has been said.

There is another character, Gordon Brown, who is brought in to back up the authors’ stance which is being narrated through what Gordon Brown has said, although, the narrator is still essentially an Effaced Narrator but it is a clever way of putting their opinion into the article.

At the end of the article (see below) there is more reaction, from Theresa May, and although it doesn’t end on a quote as you might expect in the Inverted Pyramid, it does bring us to where we are at now.

Although this is a newspaper reporting what has been said so far about Universal Credit and by whom, it is a story. The story started with the narrative that Universal Credit roll out needs to be rethought and it has its critics to being at the end where Theresa May, is quoted as saying “of course we look at the impact of those assessments. But I think it is important we are undertaking those assessment.” The story has progressed, to this is what’s happening moved along to we are going ahead with Universal Credit, and leaving the article with saying what Labour would do brings the story to the present tense and where the what the situation is.

Although the Temporality of the piece is in the past, as everything has already happened, it does bring us up to what the latest with the situation is, what Labour have done with their policy, which although is in the past, means that we are updated to the where the situation is presently. It is hard to sum up this story as it is an ongoing issue hence why there is not a full conclusion.

I think it is a shame that the page, like many online site has so many adverts that clutter the page at the side and distract the reader from the story slightly, however it is not such a hard hitting story that it perhaps warranted having no adverts. I think that it would have been good to have less as it is a political story and in that sense important and the distractions are unneccesary.

Elsewhere there is not much else to the article, there is not any interactivity, there are no videos to listen to, no pictures other than in the standfirst. However I would say it does not need any interactivity as it does what I think the piece sets out to do with the text. You get nudged, perhaps, to form the opinion the author of the piece wants you to, albeit subtedly and the story summaries where the situation is with Universal Credit and where we are at now which I do not believe any audio or visual elemnts would have added to.

Short Form Critical Analysis

Although it is only a short tweet, it carries a lot and uses a common Intro and Twist than can work well on twitter. The intro being that “Police bodycam footage shows the moment officers stormed a bedroom” If we just had that part on its own, then as an audience we may wonder what was significant about this footage? Is the footage worth watching? The twist is “as an abusive husband stood over his wife and threatened to kill her”

I think if you hard more information in this tweet in a chronological order, you may be less tempted to click on the link as you have more information. It seems to me that the goal of this tweet is to make you click on the link, where presumably there is a video, meaning this tweet is a Fan Dancer Tweet. It is a Fan Dancer because it ‘being specific’ there is this bodycam footage of police going into a room and we know the reason why, but that does not explain anything else to do with the story. To find out I will need to click on the link and watch the video footage and possibly read more of the story.

I think the tweet also plays on key aspect that on the Ted Radio Hour, Framing The Story, Andrew Stanton, has talked about what makes a good story, stories “confirming some truth that deepens an understanding of who we are as a human being.” Just looking at that emotive tweet, the audience might thing, I am glad I would never do such a horrible thing, just from reading the words, without the link. The desire to “confirm” that truth or ‘deepen that understanding’ may also make us want to click on that truth.

I perhaps should point out, there has has not been a lot of reaction to this tweet. Over a day later it has only had 8 likes, 5 retweets and 11 comments, (see below) so the impact it has had as a twitter may not have been great, although from that what we can not see, is how many people clicked on the link, perhaps that the audience may not have engaged with the tweet but done what they should have, clicked on the link to view the full article and video. I still think it is very powerful tweet.