The headline
for this article informs the reader of how the Xbox One update adds old video
game support to the new console. The visual codes in this article such as the
layout and design is not exaggerated and over the top while keeping it to a
professional standard as this online newspaper, BBC News, is targeted towards
an audience that is generally interested in keeping up with entertainment news
and stories of war and politics to human interest stories. The target audiences
for this newspaper are adults, however for this specific topic; the target
audience can also be aimed at younger adults, teenagers at most. Thereafter we
come to recognize the values of this newspaper, we the audience recognize this
due to the high quality, structure and the content that the newspaper includes.
The layout and values of this article are intelligent and educated as these factors
need to appeal to the target audience.
The main
image of this article Is unrelated to the topic of what new features Microsoft
are bringing to their home console, in fact this image of a protagonist from
the newly released video game ‘Halo 5: Guardians’ is vaguely disguised as an
advertisement for the game which is denoted from the image that the writer has
used and the caption which states “The Xbox One update comes soon after the
release of Halo 5: Guardians”. This could be so due to Microsoft being the
publisher for the video game and leads to them paying BBC for their game to be
featured in the article as an advert. Within the body text, the writer goes on
to inform the reader of what time the update is rolling out to consoles and
what Microsoft has done to improve the software. Towards the end of the
article, the writer writes about its rival competitor, Sony, to provide
information as to how they are going about releasing these features on their
home console, the PlayStation 4. However when writing about Sony, the writer
who is not named uses specific lexis to address the company such as “Sony has set its face against providing
backwards compatibility on its PlayStation 4 console. “
This
use of lexis makes the company seem more dominant compared to Microsoft and the
writer additionally makes it seem like Sony is an individual who has something
against it’s rival competitor Microsoft due to the mode of address the writer
uses in the quote.
Alongside the left of the article, there is a strip of advertisements to other articles which are linked to other websites. The newspaper makes money off of this due to the reader getting bored after reading the article or mid-way through seeing something of interest and then clicking that, which is a form of 'click bait' to draw in the attention of the reader.
The second image used is of a tattooed individual bearing the
PlayStation logo holding the PlayStation 4 controller. I feel that this image
is here to provoke the audience as many people coming to read this article are
dedicated to the Xbox One fan base. The motive that the newspaper wants is
surely to cause some controversy amongst the readers to decide which one is
better, thus leading to more sales of either console. This is derived from the
construction of the article which shows the way in which the audience will
respond to it. As they use an image of a
dedicated PlayStation individual to represent most of the aspects of the
article, to conclude this definitely would have an impact on the audience that
chose to read this.