Website Analysis

The website I have chosen is www.thesun.co.uk according to Marshall McLuhan in Lister p.g.39/40 the idea of remediation is to effectively tie new media to old media as a structural condition of all media. They propose and argue at some length that the “new” in new media is the manner in which digital technologies that they employ “refashion older media” and then these older media “refashion themselves to answer to the challenges of new media” this in the case of the sun newspaper shows that it has gone from being a conventional traditional printed newspaper which people buy, to a convention traditional newspaper which is available online and on your mobile. The paper being available online means that it is constantly being updated where as a printed newspaper is limited to the stories the paper has received the day before printing.

Structure:

The Sun online is a well structured website. The websites front page has links to various different articles or different sections of the website, there are six main tabs across the top of the website which are Home, My Sun, Sun Lite, Site Map, News Alerts and Contact Us.

When clicking on Home it takes you to the first page on The Sun website, My Sun allows you to set up your own Sun page where it is “your new, your views, your life” http://www.thesun.co.uk/portal/site/mysun/ I think the strap line on the page speaks for itself in the terms that it is where Sun readers can blog and comment on different areas of the news.  However if readers do want to blog and comment their comments are blogs are moderated before being posted this doesn’t show much produsage.

Sun Lite is the part of the site which lists every story on the website, under four headings, New, Sport, Showbiz and Women it also allows you to search past papers for other stories. There is also a box which tells you the newly posted stories, the most read stories and the most discussed stories. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/?sunlite=today

The Site Map tab allows you to view the different sections of the paper and click on what you would like to see. This is similar to Sun Lite. News alerts is a page set up so you can join their email services. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/hygiene/site_map/

By having all these different sections it helps the reader by enabling them to select again using hyperlinks the stories they want to read.

Hyperlinks and not only use of this site to give users access to different articles but they also link to external adverts too. I think that the website makes good use of hypertext which Lister describes as a “network of links to other texts that are outside, above and beyond” P.g.26 there are hyperlinks also embedded in certain stories for example this article on Jade Goody, there  is a hyperlink where you can sign a petition. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2288027.ece

Overall I think the website is well structured, as it is an extension of the printed newspaper, with extra features such as video clips, it also allows you to read articles from past newspapers which maybe still important but do not make today’s front page or top stories.

Cultural Level

The Sun is a right wing tabloid daily newspaper published in the United Kingdom and Ireland with the highest circulation of any daily English-language newspaper in the world and the biggest circulation within the UK, standing at an average of 3,121,000 copies a day between January and June 2008 and with a daily readership of approximately 7,900,000, of which 56 percent are male and 44 percent female. It reaches 2.9 million readers in the ABC1 demographic and 5.0 million in the C2DE demographic, which means the paper is aimed at all classes, creating a mass audience. http://www.nmauk.co.uk/nma/do/live/factsAndFigures?newspaperID=17   

There are not many serious issues talked about in the sun but politics is mentioned which has a labour party slant on it. While researching the sun newspaper I found this article which shows a decrease in the sun’s readership over the last year. This could so that the current readership is changing their views or choice of paper. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/feb/19/nrs-figures-newspapers-readership

I agree that the Sun is often childish and is dumbed down, and again this is shown by the number of pictures and adverts which can be distracting, many of the articles do seem to have spelling and grammar issues.

 

Appeal as a user:

The appeal to me as a user is that the website is well set out even if it is a bit cluttered by adverts and pictures, it does however use hypertext in a useful way which makes navigation for the user easy and hassle free. However the language used which is mainly slang and chatty for example http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/article2291022.ece  this makes the paper easy and quick to read.

I think the main appeal to reading newspapers online for me is the fact they are free and easy accessible 24 hours a day 7 days a week and also that fact that they are updated throughout the day.