Audiences and Religion

Recently there has been a video going around the internet, particularly on Facebook, that has a motive of educating the youth about religion. The video titled ''Racist White Girl Gets Owned'' is set in a university lecture room, hence educating youth or young people on religion in contemporary society. In the video there are 5 people mainly involved. A teacher who is a Pro-Islamist as well as a student who is a muslim and Three white americans who become engaged in a discussion about war, tragedy and religion.

In their discussion they talk about the 9/11 attacks, bombings in afghanistan, and the proposed hidden American motives in the middle east.

Channel 4 and Islam

Channel 4 decided to broadcast the Muslim call to prayer live every morning during Ramadan as a deliberate act of provacation to viewers who associate Islam with Terrorism and extremeism. Channel 4 tried to reinforce the message that the UK is a diverse country with an increasing amout of muslims. This was a programme aimed at a younger audience (Under 25).

Channel 4 to ''provoke'' viewers who associate Islam with Terrorism with live call to prayer during Ramadan

Channel 4 is a programme where we would like our documentary to air. This is because Channel 4 shows a wider range of faiths and this can help us educate more youth about the different faiths present in the UK.

The Sun, a british local newspaper, got a response from readers. Prompting the usual succession of Islamophobic comments from readers, starting with “i will never watch channel 4 again, this is a christian country”, followed by “It seems with every Islamic atrocity that takes place, instead of Islam being exposed for what it actually is… and we all know exactly what it actually is, despite what we are constantly told… it is pushed further into our faces by those who have the power to do so, the grovelling Islamophiles…”

 

 

 

Research

We have done some research on the students who board at our college and we just about covered 2 houses. In our research one of us did the survey in one house while the other did a survey in the other house. I used a more direct method to getting a response for our survey. I decided to go to each and every boarders room in my house and ask the questions myself. It was interesting because some people who were part of a religion saw it as a negative influence in the world and stated that it was not important to them. Some people who were not part of a religion saw it as a positive influence in the world today.

My colleague did his survey by handing out a questionnaire that consisted of the 3 questions to the other house. He found that most people thought that religion acts as a positive influence in the world today. However most of the people who live in both houses are international students which could agree with the daily mail article that religion may become extinct in the UK soon.

We will cover research in the 3 remaining houses as well as day students within the next few days and the after collecting all the data we will convert all our information into a chart to demonstrate the figures.

 

 

Young Peoples Attitudes towards Religion

We are going to do a documentary on young people and their attitudes towards their religious beliefs or faiths. Our idea is based on the recent article on the Daily Mail about the Church in England and how it nears extinction because their is a lack of young people, particularly teens, who are losing religious influence in contemporary society.

   

Church is on the brink of extinction 

Using students in our college as a sample group we have made a questionnaire asking them to identify their faiths and whether they see it as a positive influence. This may help us to identify why there is a trend in none religious faith in young people today.

After we have done this we will then proceed to start filming our documentary. The documentaries are part of a mini-series, where we introduce different faiths and religious that we will be looking at in the first episode. We will also be taking two faiths in each episode and bring them together. By this we mean bringing two people (one from each faith) and ask them questions and to share their views on religious affects on contemporary society. This presentation idea was influenced by 4thought which is a series of highly personal short films reflecting on a broad range of religious and ethical issues, and aspects of our spiritual lives. The way it is presented is quite similar to the way we would like to present our documentaries ecept they take one person to talk about their faith and the affect it has had on their lives in their programme ''God behind the bars?''.

4thought Website

 

 

here's an example of somebody who discusses their faith on 4thought: http://www.4thought.tv/themes/can-you-find-god-behind-bars/michael-dorian?autoplay=true

Audience Research

For our Religous documentary idea we have decided to do a survey asking people in our college a couple of question so we can identify the different types of faiths present in our college and we based the question around the UK census done in 2011. This is what we have come up with:

1.       What is your religion?  (Even if you are not currently practicing)

Christian

Islamic

Hindu

Sikh

Buddhist

Judaic

Other

               None

 

2.       How important is your religion to you?

               Very

              Quite

              Not very

 

3.       Do you think that Religion is a positive or negative force in the word?

 

Positive

 

Negative

South African television

I have researched South Africa as a possible site for my documentary idea. Local South African television is made up of 3 channels; SABC 1, SABC 2, SABC 3. I have looked at the differences between each of the 3 networks.

SABC 1: More Family based, documentaries on children, family life, educational. Films, mostly drama and action, also plays music. Made up mostly of two languages, Zulu and English.

SABC 2: Drama, Soaps, Shows that may have played on television 20-30 years ago. most of what is played is either in Afrikaans, Setswana, Venda.

SABC 3: More Women based, women talk shows, cooking and baking, foreign programmes, documentaries from around the world eg American, British etc.

South Africa would be a difficult site for a documentary on technology. There are not many documentaries shown on any of the 3 Channels that show anything on technology so it would be a tough audience to target.

VICE and The New York Times

A documentary about the New York Times and the decline to print journalism. A debate between an old-school New York Times jounalist, David Karr, and the VICE people. Karr questions them why they would want to work with CNN. An encounter between a news provider who has a younger audience and an old school what works in the news world today and what storeies should be published, mainly arguments abpout why they would choose to work with CNN answered that CNN liked their audience and their work. There is a problem with mainstream news today, there is not a lot of interesting stories being published for example ''Surfing''. Journalism printing is declining because of the lack of interesting stories that are being shared through news platfroms in contemporary society. Karr's argument is why VICE is going to work with CNN when New York Times do something similar with posting a wide range of interesting stories.

VICE New York Times