Viewing Uprising Through The Matrix
https://medium.com/matter-archive/the-environmental-scandal-thats-happening-right-beneath-your-feet-406a9f0d4166
"Uprising; The Environmental Scandal That's Happening Right Beneath Your Feet", by Phil McKenna is a digitally produced piece published on the platform Matter. As a platform, Matter was developed for journalists to be able to publish their piece without the need for large media companies to support their projects. "Uprising" is one such piece that can be classified under the label, digitally produced journalistic narrative. Viewed through the reader's matrix, the strengths and weaknesses of this piece become clear.
Aesthetic:
The very structure of the platform Matter has a "blog" appearance and so the story too appears to be in a blog format. The multimodal elements in the story are limited to imagery which is more than often placed alongside the text that describes the images. This does not move far away from traditional journalistic story-telling and does not harness the potential of the digital platform. The general layout of the text and images creates an essay type atmosphere for the reader which is a challenge for a digital reader. While this does not detract from the overall story, as Marie-Laure Ryan wrote, "Narrative may be transposed from one to another without losing its essential properties." Some imagery including the charts and graphics help in telling the narrative which is of a scientific nature. By adding imagery to the statistical areas of the story, the narrative is kept fresh in the reader's mind. The amount of control the reader has over the elements of the story is minimal. The layout of the text, imagery, font, and spacing are all set by both the platform and the creator. The digital elements of the story do not function as part of the narrative but rather appear as separate, extra information that the reader has no incentive to investigate.
Content:
The narrative reads much the same as any other investigative piece, with a hook and a lead at the beginning of the story. In the case of this story, the hook is a person who acts as the main interpreter for the scientific data being displayed. For a scientifically rich story, the addition of a human voice conveys the human impacts that will affect them directly. The balance between the scientific information and the humane elements create an informative and engaging story. The story is paralleled with imagery, which is the extent to which the author used digital medias. Whether it was the platform or the author's abilities to control how the content is laid out, the combination of elements does not contribute on any great level to the story. While the story may not take full advantage of the tools offered, the written text on it's own does stand out as an excellent example of how traditional journalistic writing styles are still applicable on the digital platform.
Technological Capabilities:
Matter is a platform that was created by people in the industry of journalism for other journalists to publish their stories without the necessary corporation and financial support. For stories to be published, the author's must pitch them to publishers, who then allow their stories to be on their platform for free. Likewise, the stories are free for reader's after a failed attempt at creating a pay-wall per story. As the platform is built for journalist's, it focuses heavily on the text and less so on other media elements. For this reason this piece, and others published on the site, do not utilize the wide range of possibilities that a digital platform offers. Based on what this story demonstrates, Matter is perhaps not a suitable platform for digitally published pieces that aim to tell their stories through less traditional means.
Senses and Stimuli:
The amount of stimuli within the story is minimal. As such, the atmosphere that is created when the reader views the story is very traditional, print media focused. It has a scholarly appearance, that while delivers information effectively, does not appear to make an attempt at creating a stylistically appealing narrative.
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