Tv News In The Internet: Visuality Degradation

Abstract

TV news formats in the modern media environment, contain not only video and sound components in their interaction, but also include printed text, which competes traditional expressive means of television content. Format changes in the internet-adapted TV news bring to fundamentally different product distanced from the generic connection with the natural qualities of a television message. During the study of the regional and local TV channels on-line news in St. Petersburg variants of the broadcast news internet presentation and the elementary parts of news items were identified and described. TV news exists in three main variants: as an analog of a television program version, as its modification for the Internet user, as a special on-line version. Modification can vary from interactive navigation and full reportages to some changes of the TV video accompanied by the text and final fragmentation with the textual component dominance, while the video performs a complementary or illustrative function. The results of the content analysis demonstrate the simplification of the news content of the TV Internet channel “Piter TV”. Text accompanied by a still video became the main component of the news feed. A large number of amateur and borrowed video and a scanty number of full-fledged reportages testify to the degradation of the visual components value in the internet-adapted TV news. Decline of TV on-line news visual components indicates a radical transformation of the relevant formats in the Internet environment, which may bring broadcasting TV to enhance the aesthetic and personification of the visual content.

Keywords: Television newsnews formatsaudiovisual contentfragmentationInternet TV channel

Introduction

Modification of forms and practices in television journalism is determined by its functioning “between supply and demand”. The high level of competition in the media field and, as a result, consumer dictate force TV channels to search for optimal options for presenting information, taking into consideration all factors and conditions that may affect audience choice. It becomes necessary to take into account both the traditional habits of television viewing, and to adapt to a more pragmatic and focused approach of a viewer to the audiovisual information consumption. Digital space is a strong challenge to TV journalism, both in terms of content and in terms of the ways of its representation. (Korkonosenko & Berezhnaia, 2016). This brings changes in the traditional structure of audiovisual content, especially news, which is a popular and dynamically developing Internet information segment. (Lukina, 2013; Vartanova, 2014; Balmaeva & Lukina, 2016; Nielsen & Sambrook, 2016; Kolesnichenko, 2018).

The processes of information visualization in the Internet seem contradictory. Visuality becomes functionally relevant in different areas of knowledge, video provides rich material for analyzing social practices, its importance in communication is enhanced (Knoblauch, Baer, Laurier, Petschke, & Schnettler, 2008); there is a productive trend of data visualization (Shevchenko, 2014), the significant role of video in new media is determined (Kruglova, 2017). But video perception takes time, a viewer should have interpretation skills as well as technologies that ensure the availability of visual details. Anyway, the TV formats in the new media environment, contain not only video&sound in their interaction, but also include printed text, and such a competition changes functions and significance of the television “text” visual components. Such competition is reflected in the consumers’ preferences differentiation while they choose video or textual news format, as news companies have to take this into account. According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism Digital News Report 2018 (Newman, Fletcher, Kalogeropoulos, Levy, & Nielsen, 2018), consumers in European countries and the United States are more focused on textual news, while eastern Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and Hong Kong expect news videos increase. A common way for consumption news is watching video after the text has been read, in addition to the text. Urazova (2014) points out that the transition to a multimedia environment inevitably leads to the new principles for the media market subjects functioning, giving new properties to the distributed information product. Hypertextuality, interactivity and multimedia content of publications (Kachkayeva & Shomova, 2017) are among such specific and necessary properties for the Internet environment. They give the audience new opportunities of content choice and interaction with it and contribute to the development of new dynamic consumer information options. The screen size determines the role of the “picture” (its quality, dynamics, visual detailing, color rendition, word-to-image ratio). Accordingly, a large screen makes entertainment and the use of special effects possible, but a small one, usually used while consuming news, determines conciseness and the presence of additional, explanatory elements (voice commentary, text). A viewing situation affects its structure (linearity / fragmentation), consumer activity (presence / absence / intensity of feedback, interactivity; ability to content demand). A characteristic feature of journalism in the new environment is also the absence of a complete text, as it exists in constant development, updating, therefore has no permanent structure or composition.

Problem Statement

Visuality has been a television competitive advantage since its birth. TV researchers insist that the TV visual means of expression, personification and drama narrative determine its special impact on the audience. Combining cinema and radio, television returns the viewer to natural ways of obtaining information, including "sound concrete and the primary imagery of the world" (Vasilieva, Osinsky, & Petrov, 2004, p. 11). TV images create a language with which people can perceive life as a whole, as it breaks a linear-logical dimension of printed text.

Television information comes irreversibly, simultaneously through different sensory perception channels; video compresses the content, enriches it with additional meanings, interaction of message components determines the information saturation on TV. Wherein the image mostly meets the aesthetic function, and the word more often solves ideological tasks (Zaretskaya, 1985). Understanding TV visual impact and its ability to manipulate people's minds let McLuhan (1966) formulate the famous "medium is the message". The television images hypnotic effect was indicated by Sappak (1963), Harris (1994). Researchers noted that in audiovisual form any thought becomes real and seems very significant (Susskaya, 2018). Professionals in the field insist on the exceptional role of the "picture" for television journalism (Magront, 2015; Bogatov, 2017; Dedov, 2015; Carroll, 1997). The visual component reduction in TV message (poor-quality shooting, monotonous, formal footage, lack of dynamics, etc.) always caused criticism in the professional community, the so-called “talking heads” led to a comparison with the radio, which indicates loss of the most significant component of telecast. A television journalist professional minimum includes visual language training, the rules for the words and images correlation, the basics of screenwriting skills for building a solid material. Thus, the theory and practice of television journalism asserts for TV the primary value of the visual image and the need for its organic interaction with the word. However, in the new environment, the structure of visual content significantly changes, its fragmentation occurs, the expressive palette is narrowed, the quality level of the visual component is reduced. The Internet TV channels practice is characterized by a visible lack of professionalism, the lack of voice-over text, specially voiced materials, the predominance of commentary over the facts, the absence of rigid format frames, amateur or technologically imperfect filming, as well as an imitation of amateur style (Lukina, 2013). Changes in the television expressive means balance in the internet-adapted TV news makes one wonder whether their properties in the new environment really additional opportunities for TV are or we watch the formation of a fundamentally different product distanced from the generic connection with the natural qualities of a television message.

Research Questions

The questions facing this study are related both to the description of the current situation and to the forecasts of its development.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study is to identify current adaptive practices of transferring news content to the Internet environment, to trace the role of video components in television news as they adapt to the Internet environment and to determine the level of transformations taking place in relation to the natural qualities of television information.

Research Methods

The study has been held in two stages.

Findings

Regional and local TV channels show the variability of news presentation in the Web.

Conclusion

The current situation gives the possibility of a wide choice of news consumption for the audience. News broadcasting formats are still in use, they are adapting to the new environment and new formats are being developed in the Internet. As the communicative situation develops, there is a gradual loss of visuality as the basis of television journalism and the video narrative culture. There is an increasing fragmentation, simplification and visual components role reduction in the news items as they depart from their TV scenarios. The integral elements of news stories become visual appendices to the published off-screen text, the stand-up disappears, a correspondent distance himself from the event, personification is decreasing. Interactive content contributes to the involvement of the target audience in the process of its production, which is the communicative advantage of online media, but leads to a decrease in the level of professionalism and quality of video stories being evaluated according to traditional TV professional standards.

Degradation of visual components of news TV content indicates a radical transformation of the relevant formats in the Internet environment. This indicates the loss of the natural qualities of TV in this segment and demonstrate the new type of content with different ways of video & audio & text correlations which, accordingly, need also other ways of such content evaluation. However, the competitive advantage of television broadcasting is still its visual nature. It can be assumed that in a situation of growing competition, TV will enhance the aesthetic and personification of the visual content components.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to my student Julia Kolotushkina, who participated in empirical data calculation.

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