Context

Analysis Of Presentation Techniques

Practice Makes Perfect

Here I looked at Daz Games and some of his reaction videos, to begin with his videos were of a poorer quality. An example of this is his audio, to begin with his audio quality was infrequent and sometimes crackly etc. This made it slightly unpleasant to watch at times but this was not something that he could rectify as it was to do with the amount of money available due to him starting out.

The main purpose of this technique is showing that although something may not be great to begin with, if you keep building your audience base etc you will be able to progress and get better.

Daz is a very good example to use because now that he has been doing it for a while, he has built an audience base and reputation for himself as someone who does reaction videos to a good quality. I intend on taking some of the mistakes made by Daz and turning them into lessons so that when I come to present myself I'll have a better chance at success.

Death By Boredom

Video - https://youtu.be/MthXezVvUOo

A common failure point of reaction video youtubers is that they immediately lose credibility for themselves by making the video boring to watch. The main reason people watch these channels is to see what the person has to add to the video, sometimes it is easy to forget when you are the youtuber that you are supposed to be doing this.

People don't want to watch you watching the video if you have nothing to add, successful youtubers in this area such as AngryGinge are successful because they create humour and add laughs to the video. A common video topic on his channel is reacting to funny Tik Toks. He adds to this by adding comments and being overly energetic. Therefore he is using the background videos as a base layer to fuel ideas for his content which he is then layering on top.

The purpose of this technique is to make you think and reflect on the fact that you have to ensure you are keeping the audience interested and engaged so that you can build that audience base. Otherwise you are not going to be successful.

I will learn from the mistakes of some of these youtubers and ensure that what i'm saying remains interesting to watch and that i am always adding something new to keep engagement high.

Visual Data

Video - https://youtu.be/O1hF25Cowv8

For this presentation technique, I looked at ChrisFix, he is a car mechanic enthusiast who teaches people how to fix and add things to their cars through youtube. In this video he is explaining and demonstrating how to change the oil on your car, he does this by breaking down the different steps and equipment necessary to complete the task.

This therefore makes the information in the video easy to understand and follow along. There is a heavy emphasis on the use of visual elements to help the viewer understand what it is that he is talking about, if i was to do a similar sort of video style i will utilise this technique so that it is easier to understand what i am saying and referring to.

Not only do images etc help with someone understanding what you're saying but it also means that you don't have to do as much talking etc, this technique is used a lot when giving presentations. There may be a graph etc showing some data which would save you having to write and talk about it.

Tailor Your Language

Video - https://youtu.be/Dx3RpXdJw2k

This technique for me is interpreted as how you need to change the way you explain things and the language you use depending on your audience. This could be because of many factors but the first one which jumps out at me is age, the video i watched is a video explaining electricity to children. Here they use a lot of basic ideas and words so that the younger audience watching will be able to understand easily. If i was to explain this same concept to teenagers i would be able to use some more sophisticated language and equally i can look into some more complicated areas of the concept.

The best way you can ensure that your language and presentation style is suitable for your audience is by identifying your audience and lining it up with your intended outcome. Once you have found this then you can begin looking at how you will present your information etc and therefore what language you will use.

I will use this technique to help me make decisions when it comes to me presenting my information. It is important to remember that there are many factors which can result in you needing to change your presentation styles or language. Age is one of them however it can be for reasons such as educational level or main spoken language etc, it is important to take information from all of these factors to ensure that you are making the best decision.

Analysis Of Game Reviews

GRAND THEFT AUTO - IGN

Structure

A Lot of the text seems very clunky and hard to digest. There aren't many breaks in the text and some of the information is split over two paragraphs. I would have preferred to have seen all relevant information being grouped together rather than spread out.

Entertaining

The actual content of the review is good, the information is interesting and entertaining to hear. There were a lot of facts which I learnt about the game which I was unaware about before. However it can become difficult to remain attentive to what you are reading as most of the information on the page is composed of the same presentation method. This can get boring after a while of seeing it.

Opinionated

A lot of the content in this review could be perceived as opinionated. It is obvious that it was written by a gamer and someone who has an idea and interest in gaming itself. This could make some of the information in the review difficult to understand for someone who is new to this kind of game or even gaming in general. It uses certain terminology that may also be hard to understand if someone is unaware or unfamiliar with what it means.

Coverage

IGN is a large gaming company which is known for their detailed reviews on games. I enjoy seeing the coverage that they give to all games in the gaming industry. The reviews are usually fair and allow for a good decision to be made by the person watching the review as to whether they want to play the game or not. I say this because most people who check out the reviews on IGN are interested in purchasing the game and use them to influence their decisions.

Company Review

IGN are not an individual person, they are a large company with teams of people who come together from different departments in order to form and create an informative review. I believe the fact that the review is written by so many people benefits it rather than affecting it negatively. This is because I feel it is easy to accidentally become biassed in a review that someone publishes on their own. Reputation has to come into it as well as being one of the most important things when it comes to someone looking for a credible review to influence a decision that they need to make.

Do I Agree?

Yes I agree with the information stated in the review. An expectation has been created by people as to what they should expect from an IGN review and that is that the information is all equal/fair and unbiased. The things stated in the review were all true and I know this as I have played the game myself.

READY OR NOT - METACRITIC

Structure

The structure to this review on ready or not is very different to the text heavy ones that we have come to expect when looking at places such as IGN. The information such as player ratings is much easier to access and understand which makes it a simpler task for someone to make a decision on whether or not to buy the game. They often outsource the text part of the review to another individual such as GameStar.

Entertaining

The information and layout of this review is entertaining and pleasing to view however sometimes it can become annoying to keep flicking between tabs to try and find the location of the information you need. This is because they rely on reviews from other people in order to influence their own decisions. This can be effective however a small detail such as it all opening in the same tab would make it a more enjoyable experience in my opinion.

Opinionated

Most if not all of the information available in a MetaCritic comes from other people where they then collate it all together to build a bigger picture and make an informed display of information such as a player rating. This works well as it allows the person viewing the information to be sure that what is being said is true. However this does present issues in the sense that MetaCritic are unable to control whether the information being collected in these reviews is biassed etc. This means that some of what you are reading may differ from person to person making it a risky decision to make as to whether you will buy the game or not.

Coverage

MetaCritic displays their reviews differently from a lot of other review companies. There is never a lack of reviews to be read as even some of the brand new released games and smaller (less known) games have a review written on them. This is because they often use MetaCritic as an almost search engine to try and allow people to locate a trusted and informative review. This is sometimes not the case however as it is hard to control and police the information being shared by other people. For the majority of the time however this information coverage technique is effective and does work/allow people to make a good decision on whether or not to buy the game etc.

Company Review

The situation with MetaCritic is different depending on the game that is being reviewed. What I mean by this is if a large game such as Call Of Duty is written by them to allow the correct precautions to be taken when it comes to controlling bias etc. However a lot of the smaller reviews are collected from the public and are outsourced to other game review companies. This then becomes an individual based review which is controlled by the company rather than created by them. Overall I would say that the reviews on Metacritic have either been created by or controlled by them personally so I would go as far to say that it is a company based review page.

Do I Agree?

I agree with the information stated by the people who reviewed this game. However I don't agree with how difficult it was to find some of the information. The content itself was informative and accurate and I know this being someone who has personally played the game. This allowed me to pick up on even some of the smaller details within the review and confirm that they were indeed correct and accurate.

Exploring Bias In The Media

Chris Kaba Shooting 2022 (Slant)

Souce: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66712456

In this article it talks about a police involved shooting which occurred in September 2022 involving an individual previously known to police for drugs offences. The BBC here have used some of the most blatant examples of Slant I have ever seen in mainstream British media.

The article portrays Mr Kaba as a family man and soon to be dad who was targeted by the police after he had done nothing wrong and then randomly shot dead by a Firearms Officer. Upon further research and talks with real officers involved I have come across information which strongly disapproves of a lot of the information stated in the article.

The truth of the leadup to the incident is that Mr Kaba was known to police and in a stolen vehicle which he attempted to use as a weapon against firearms officers who were trying to stop him. The BBC said “He was blocked by a marked police car, the two vehicles collided and a marksman fired one shot through the windscreen, hitting Mr Kaba in the head”. The reality of the situation is that Mr Kaba was accelerating at speed down the road towards the Marked Police vehicle with Armed Officers standing next to it where he was then shot as he was trying to use his vehicle to ram officers and cause harm.

The impact that this bias has on the audience is massive, the BBC are required to remain impartial and ONLY report the facts. In this instance they have followed the most popular narrative held by the general public in order to boost their success. In this current climate it is a popular opinion that all police are bad and all this story has done is fuel this agenda which is dangerous for all involved as it is fueled by lies and half stories.

This bias could be resolved by telling the story from a 3rd party perspective which tells all of the facts from both sides as well as the events which led up to the situation which is being spoken about. This would prevent any one sided decisions being made by people viewing what standpoint they have on a situation.

Public Trust In The Police (Mind Reading)

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26730705

In this article it talks about how the great majority of the public have no faith or trust in the police. This poll has been targeted towards people affiliated with things such as the black lives matter protest which has a common opinion of distaste towards the police. If this same question was asked to most people in the older generations they would probably answer completely differently.

Today's media are constantly trying to paint a bad picture of the police whenever they can and they do this by influencing bias in their articles and stories. This seems to be to boost the one sided agenda that they are trying to push out on people. They use a small number of cases to portray a “force wide issue”. In any other situation that would be seen as prejudice etc, if i for example said that because someone with blonde hair slapped me in the face that they are all awful for that reason.

The truth of this situation is that there are of course bad apples within the metropolitan police however with over 33,000 active police officers it would not be fair to say that all of them are bad just because of the actions of a few. In an emergency the first person you think to call is the police or other emergency services.

The impact of this is that it over portrays an incident and makes the viewers feel that the situation is worse than it actually is, it also boosts the negative view that some people have of the police. Overall it is also just poor journalism, you would expect from one of the largest news outlets on the planet that the information is fair, true and isn't leaving important arguments out completely. What I mean by this is that not only are they over negatively portraying certain small incidents but they are also not showing any of the majority of good things that the police do.

I feel that the BBC should be held to a higher standard and should be forced to not take a one sided view at a complex argument between society's expectations of the police and the ever complex job that is policing in today's climate.

Met Police Dog Shooting 2023 (Flawed Logic)

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-65523821

Here is yet again another example of where the mainstream media have tried to villainise the police for simply doing the job that they are there to do. In this article specifically they focus on how the shooting of the two dogs was a “choice” and that the officers involved didn't have to take the action that they did. In reality yet again the BBC have failed to report any of the incident which led up to this altercation and used the sympathy felt by people due to the death of the dogs and turned it into fuel to boost their ideas.

The claims made by people in this article are simply not true, such as “the dogs didn't hurt anyone” and “the dogs aren't aggressive”. The reality and truth of the incident which led up to this situation is that the dogs had previously attacked someone in an unprovoked and violent manner, it is believed by police professionals that this is due to the breeding and upbringing of these dogs by their owner (who was previously known to police for similar offences).

Even in the video that you can see if you search it up online, you can see that the dogs are barking and charging aggressively towards the team of officers, the man was evidently intending on using them to prevent his arrest. This then warranted an escalation in force by the officers. You can see throughout the beginning of the video that the officers had less than lethal options out such as a taser and were trying to catch the dog with a wire pole. This was however unsuccessful and the constant ramping up in anti by the suspects resulted in what happened.

It is obviously unfortunate that this incident occurred as dogs only behave like this due to poor ownership. However not holding the main suspect accountable for the fate of his dogs and instead blaming the officers is something which I do not agree with. Not only that but the BBC have also failed to report the full incident which gives people only a partial or one sided idea of what happened.

More standards should be in place to prevent major news articles from only partially covering a story as a lot of people use the mainstream media as their primary source of information which means that they are not fully understanding what went on and are instead forming opinions which are not true or accurate.

Article Breakdown

Source: https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/bbc-under-scrutiny-heres-what-research-tells-about-its-role-uk

Statements To Evidence Using This Source

Intense scrutiny for its coverage of Brexit, domestic politics, and more, with frequent allegations of bias.

The guardian covered a variety of points made by people in relation to the coverage of Brexit by the BBC. One of the points made to support this statement is that “The BBC is struggling to convince its audience that it is not subject to sinister influences”. The main takeaway that I have from this statement is that the BBC are unable to fulfil their obligations to remain impartial and fully/fairly cover each of its stories.

Statements supporting the idea that there is a general lack of support in the BBCs coverage of Brexit and other similar areas were made by a variety of reliable sources. Ofcom recently released a statement mentioning in it that there is a “dissatisfaction with the BBCs coverage of brexit”. This supports the statement made and shows that the BBC should have action taken on them to prevent this from occurring any more in the future.

Internal issues over gender pay gaps, coverage of controversial issues like climate change and racism, and disagreements over where the lines of due impartiality should be drawn.

During a freedom of information request made by an ex BBC employee “At least 84 women were given pay rises through formal processes between July 2017 and March 2020”. This is indicating that there are issues revolving around a large scale pay gap between genders. In its most high profile case “Newswatch presenter Samira Ahmed successfully took the BBC to an employment tribunal to seek more than £700,000 in back pay” where in this case “internal emails about pay negotiations were made public”.

This shows that incidents are internally covered in an attempt to try and prevent them from going public. This tells us that some of the other issues raised which maybe haven't been proven yet are much more likely to actually be happening. Similarly related incidents should be investigated as a result to ensure that nothing untoward is occuring.