Dreamworld Text Structures

English Assignment- Yuina Akamatsu
Good morning/afternoon. Today I am going to be examining the text structures and language features of a web-based and an audio visual media article. Both produce representations that unfairly encourage readers to view a recent accident at a theme park in a negative light. The representations constructed in the article ultimately disempower Dreamworld and the staff. [ click ]
The web-based media text Emergency crews respond to incident at Dreamworld was found in the Courier Mail online site. The article focuses heavily on the incident at Dreamworld, a ride malfunction which lead to the death of four people. The audio visual media text, Dreamworld deaths is taken from the Sky News live from the television. Similarly,

The headline states that emergency crews responded to the incident at Dreamworld. It suggests that something tragic has happened as it says ‘emergency’ but does not say yet that 4 people have died. After having read the headline, the next thing that comes into sight are the images and captions. The written and visual information confirms that the Dreamworld incident was tragic and many visitors got involved in it.
In the captions, 3 out of the 4 images are titled with the word tragedy. The emotive language evokes feelings of shock and also makes the audience feel unsafe on visiting such theme parks. There are images of the disastrous scene, a map of where the ride is and some police officers. All images combine to help the readers process the information to process the final bits of information and enforce the idea of the staff not taking much precaution and checking the rides for problems. The images are taken from a high angle from a birds eye view to show the details more

For example, there is a small paragraph on the floral tributes and statements made by Dreamworld. This gives the audience more facts in detail and creates more negative opinions towards Dreamworld. There are share buttons along with it and hyperlinks. After examining the hyperlinks, it made me feel a stronger and more negative perspective towards the incident.
Next, I read the lead. Similar to the audio visual media, it states that four people had died at a Gold Coast theme park. My attention was drawn to the sentence where it says that the incident has been labelled one of the saddest days in the city’s history. This makes the incident seem more tragic than it already is. I skimmed the article and noticed that it had included detailed descriptions of the event.
When reading the rest of the article, I noted that it included many quotations, for example from the Gold Coast mayor and police. The frequent use of quotes helped make the article more authentic, and described the event in a negative manner. The web-based media text was had much more detail on the incident than the audio visual, as the online news had many different view points and perspectives of the