WN

My Web Narrative (or something that looks like it could possibly be one)

Pdp

I’ve published my Public Domain Poem, you can find it here.

Woah

Kanskje det tøffeste jeg har sett noensinne:

Telekinetic Contest

Analysis of a Political Site

The page I’ve chosen to analyse is the page of “Unge Høyre”

I have to underline the fact that I’m not a supporter of this party, they just have a really fancy site, which should make it easier to analyse.

The discourse of this particular site is that it’s young and fresh, which is quite suitable since it is in fact the site of the younger part of the party. It’s meant to appeal to young people, and make politics seem “fun” and less intimidating and sincere than the “grown up” page of the same party.

The design is clean and simple, with light colours that are pleasing to the eye. The blue symbolises that this part of the political party is in fact on the right (not left, which is red) side of politics, which is also quite convenient when it comes to some studies of colour on web pages, which show that light blues give the readers of a web page a sense of calm and tranquillity.

The page uses several modes, including pictures, text, text-as-picture (the header), different fonts and letter sizes, header menu with flash and an actual blog where one can interact with some of the politicians. It is in fact multimodal because of all of these modes interacting with each other.

Denotatively this page shows us a lot of news and information, and a quite whimsical header with letters that aren’t too easy to read. Connotatively (is that even a word…?) this page shows us that it’s young and what some might call refreshing. It almost screams that it’s not boring and all about boring stuff, but maybe also about fun? This is the page of Høyre’s youngsters, and they are probably trying to recruit other youngsters like themselves, so that they will in turn be voting for them later on. I’m not going to speculate over whether it’ll work or not, though it might affect people who are into blogs and the like (who knows).

This page is framed in way that makes the eye linger on the header.

Navigation on the page is situated on the header, and animates when you move the cursor over the links there, which makes you pay attention to them as you read the page(should you move the cursor to the top of the page, that is). The fact that it actually does have this kind of animation/flash thingie, makes the page more interesting and also maybe interactive (in a way).

At a first glance the page is a bit overwhelming, because there is a bit too much of everything, but when you study it, you find that it’s thoroughly thought through, especially when it comes to usability.

When you go to the page called “Politikk“, you actually notice that the header is in fact made with some sort of flash animation, which turns into what I’m going to call a multicultural picture. The picture is of three youths from different ethnic backgrounds, who seem to get along with each other quite well. This picture is probably chosen to show that Unge Høyre approves of all religions and all kinds of ethnicities. The text on the same page is very easy to navigate through, it’s clean and simple, with the different points of view divided into pieces in the text. This makes it easy to read and doesn’t exhaust the reader. There is also not a lot of text on each page, which makes it easier to take in, as something political.

When it comes to provenance I have no idea what to write, for all I know I’ve already covered it.

When you go to the page named “Interaktiv” you can find a lot of stuff that’s meant to inspire you and make you feel like you’re contributing. Here you have different downloads for your mobile phone, like pictures and games. You also have different downloads for your computer, like screensavers and backgrounds. There is even a link to a page with videos of the politicians.

The leader of Unge Høyre has his own blog on the page, this is probably also connected to the fact that Unge Høyre wants to live up to its name and be young and modern. Blogging is the new soap box.

I’m pretty sure that I haven’t covered all that should be covered in a semiotic analysis of a web page, but I honestly can’t think of anything else to look at.