The story of my choice is Monster Ring System Circles Giant Alien Planet by Ian O’Neil from Discovery News. This article is about scientists discovering a planet similar to Saturn nearly 420 light years away from Earth, and nearly 200 times its size. The article consist of social media interactivity, text and video usage.
There are three components to this article, and that is the text, a video and interactivity. The text describes and includes how and when scientist came across a planet similar to Saturn nearly 420 light years away and 200 times its size. Because there is no actual photo obtainable of a planet that far from Earth, scientist used what they call a light curve- a tool that captures the brightness and dimness as a star passes (or rather rotates). This helped them come to the conclusion that what they were capturing are giant rings along with a giant planet; and because of the video, it helped me, as well as the viewers, better understand how this planet and its size were determined. The social activity on this article included sharing it to Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Google Plus and StumbleUpon. The strength of this would be to bring in more traffic and hope to gain more subscribers. The more shares this article gets, the better for the website and writer. There is also a comment section below, leaving individuals to post respectfully and freely whether that is to state their opinion or reply to someone else. Some of the comments showed users skeptical of their findings, saying “...they forgot to mention that they haven't actually seen images of this ring system.” Mike believes only what he can see. Silly Mike, doesn't he know a vast amount of discoveries in space have come from a light curve? I, as well as many others, disagreed. Some comments started off debate-worthy, but ended up being a colossal amount of arguing. Regardless of what many comments say, any news regarding space or the universe is usually opinionated due to the lack of evidence, which makes reading most comments worthy of viewing.
I find myself on Discovery News quite often, and that is mainly because it is the news that is most interesting to me. It is not eye candy or political, just very entertaining. They have articles regarding earth, human nature, space and history. The writers are great and are always enthusiastic about what they are writing and exploring. Each article is always up for opinions, as the comment sections are usually filled with individuals with the same interest as me, which makes it enjoyable to interact with them. It is always nice to talk to such individuals with different thoughts about the things I find most interesting.
If there is any type of media coverage I would change, it would be to do a follow up story sometime in the future if applicable. For example, I would love to know any more information on this Saturn-like planet 420 light years from Earth if more information arises.
Good job - see Blackboard for your score.
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