The Daily Mirror News Task

1. Explain your role/responsibility within the team and the task. What were you required to do?
Riana and I were in charge of creating The Daily Mirror's social media pages within our team. We collaboratively researched our stories and chose images we agreed were appropriate for the Mirror's social media pages. We then created headlines and wrote posts for each page.

2. For one media form, describe the codes and conventions you chose to follow and explain their intended impact.
For Facebook, we chose to feature the story about terrorism in Iraq as this was the most serious and our research showed that Facebook is often used for more severe or impactive stories. The story was also featured on our Daily Mirror online webpage and so by promoting it on Facebook we connected the two platforms as well as increasing the likelihood of the story getting more views. We also used a 'breaking news' caption, commonly used on the Daily Mirror's Facebook for the most important stories. On our Twitter page we decided to feature the story about Donald Trump. We decided this was appropriate as the story was about his posts on twitter, linking the article to the news platform. We featured the story in a comical way which follows the conventions of tabloid news, in particular the Mirror. Similarly, in our Instagram post we featured a light-hearted style, up-keeping with the Mirror's style. We also used a more aesthetic picture for Instagram, matching its use as an artistic and photographic platform. For all our social media pages we incorporated the colour red, linking them all together as well as connecting them to the Daily Mirror's logo and presenting a brand.

3. Explain how your choices reflect the real newspaper's values and target audience.
Our repeated choice of red reflects on the Mirror's left-wing associations. On our Facebook page we chose a picture of Jeremy Corbyn wearing a Santa hat. This related to the labour party, Christmas and incorporated the humorous conventions of the Mirror, gripping the attention of the target audience who are likely to be young men and women who support the left-wing in politics. We also featured the Daily Mirror's slogan 'be part of it' to relate it to the tabloid newspaper and brand. This makes the audience feel included with the use of direct address. For Twitter we chose a photograph of Donald Trump which featured him in a negative light, reflecting on the Mirror's left wing stance and anti-Trump opinions.
In our Facebook and Twitter headlines and posts we used hyperbole, and humour in our Instagram post in order to captivate our audience. In our Twitter and Instagram we used hashtags to link the stories to other stories, either by the Mirror or with similar subject material, creating an engaging and inclusive atmosphere, also including a link to the Daily Mirror website and comments on Instagram to create an interactive page.

4. Explain how your team adapted the news across the three different media forms and the reasons behind your decisions.
We chose different pictures across all the platforms to make each unique, but still connecting them through same stories and content. As a group we aimed to balance comedy with information to successfully present conventions of a tabloid newspaper. We decided that the most important story was the terrorist attack, and so we featured it across all three media forms, however the more comical stories such as the frozen finger were featured individually.

5. In hindsight, is there anything about your team's outcomes that you would adapt or improve?
In hindsight, our team would've not had the bold text box outlines as they look slightly out-of-place and unlike the website. We also would've extended our Facebook header so that it filled the whole top bar. We could have also added a filter to our Instagram picture to show a typical convention of that platform. I think our team prepared very well for the task and worked well together.