Digital Journalism multimedia assignment

1. Group Presentation
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By Michael, Maggie and Kotryna

2. Event and why
We chose the Palestian boycott of Marks and
Spencers by the Revolutionary Communist
Group because its interesting and the conflict
between Israel and Palestine is current, with
the bombings of Gazza just months ago.

3. When
6-8pm on Oxford Street, on the first
Thursday of every month.
The boycott we reported on was the
November the 6th.

4. Beforehand
We looked at the RCG`s websites, and looked
at pictures and videos of other protests and
boycotts that the organisation had taken part
of. We also looked up the organisation on
Facebook and Twitter.
We researched why they were protesting as
well, and found out about the economic
relationship between Marks and Spencers
and Israel., described on the RCG’s website.
We downloaded multimedia apps like
audioboom and created accounts for them
and practiced them so we knew how to use
them to cover the event.

5. The plan
We planned to turn up early, and leave late. We
also planned who was going to use which social
media, and the tools we were going to use. Maggie
and Kotryna used their phones, and Michael used
an iPad borrowed from the university. Michael
used Audioboom, thiinglink and Flickr, Maggie
used Vine and Audioboom, and Kotryna used
Twitter and Instagram.
We planned to use weebly and created an account
before the day. We were inspired by Dame Dash,
a multimedia website prodced by previous
Kingston University Students, when we looked at
it
 For communication purposes, we created a
Facebook group and exchanged phone numbers.

6. What did you do first when
you got to the event?
When we first got to the event, we
struggled with finding the people
from the RCG, but we quickly
found members from the two other
teams. After that, members of the
RCG started showing up, and they
made a stand with a huge banner
outside their store

7. Organising the website
 Before the day of the event, we allocated
roles: Kotryna was the social media
editor, Michael was the web editor, and
Maggie was the research editor
 Michael and Maggie focused on
interviews when they used Audiobooms,
and by using Instagram, Vine and Flickr,
we could easily capture special moments.
Kotryna actively used Twitter throughout
the event. It worked alright, but we have
some problems by uploading the
material, and by tools easily losing
charge, which was frustrating.

8. Interviews
 The member of RCG were easy to identify, as they happily wanted to talk to
us, and sometimes took breaks to shout things such as “from the river to the
sea, Palestine will be free” and calling Israel terrorists. We tried to speak to
the manager at M&S, but we were quickly turned down in our attempt on
interviewing him.
 The two police officers at the event to keep the peace, said, like the staff at
M & S, they weren’t allowed to comment.
 We interviewed, Maggie using vine and audioboom and Michael using
audioboom, almost every member of the Revolutionary Communist Group,
those we didn’t interview said that they didn’t want to be. We made a few
attempts of interviewing employees at M&S, but neither of them wanted to
comment on the boycott. It felt unnatural to interview any of the people
passing by, since most of them looked like they were in a rush, and seemed
careless towards the boycott. We definitely got RCG`s perspective on the
case; they were pretty much the only ones that wanted to talk to us, and
they gave us their newspaper, and pins that they encouraged us to wear.
But with only the perspective of RCG, we recognise our webpage and
reporting of the event, may be biased.
 The two police officers at the event to keep the peace, said, like the staff at
M & S, they weren’t allowed to comment.

9. Interviews
 Michael and Maggie tried to interview different
people, for example, Michael interviewed Ben
Malomey using audioboom and Maggie
interviewed Gulam Chowdhu using
audioboom
 We took pictures of, and filmed videos of, the
RCG members talking to us and members of
the public and chanting, as well as Marks and
Spencers. We did this because this content was
relevant to the boycott.

10. Website design
 We created 5 pages on our website that are easy to navigate via links at
the top of each page. They include: Home, About the event, Background
info, Live blog and About us. We learnt what pages to include through
trial and error and thought that these display our content in the most
coherent way.
 Kotryna and Michael added photos to the gallery on the Home page
with Kotryma using instagrma and Michael using Flickr, and Michael
added the headline and intro and Kotrna embedded the twitter feed.
 The part of the About the event page completed by Michael was a short
article about the boycott, a map and a thinglink.
 Kotryna added a thinglink and information about how we covered the
event on the About the event page
 The background info age was completed by Maggie with info, a youtube
video and a timeline JS. Also, Kotryna added pictures to this page.
 Michael and Maggie both added an audioboom to the Live blog page
and Maggie also added two vines to that page.
 Our about us page features brief information about us and our roles,
along with a picture of each of us and links to our own personal twitter
accounts.

11. Reflection
 What we did well:
 Interviewing
 Links to our social media on our website:
twitter and instagram
 Uploading and editing content on weebly
 Thinking about what content should be on
what page
 Allocation of roles.
 Our social media didn’t get a lot of traffic
driven to our site but we did manage to get
27 followers, the last time Michael checked it.

12. Reflection
 Difficulties faced:
 Uploading some content, especially on the day, with wi-fi
trouble and battery trouble
 Organisation of the group
 Couldn’t download bamboozer, storywheel didn’t work
and Timeline JS wouldn’t embed.
 What/ how to improve:
 Meeting as a group more
 Communication
 We could’ve live blogged everything as part of a timeline
using Timeline JS.
 To produce a more successful multimedia website we
would focus on trying to make it look more professinoal

13. According to plan?
We think, overall, the assignment went
according to plan because we all
produced and uploaded multimedia
content and worked well together, and
individually in our allocated roles.