My feature highlights the growing use of dating apps today and how it has affected the way people find love these days. It focuses on how it has an equal impact in various areas like mental health, social validation, objectification of people while changing trends of approaching love from the pre-existing traditional sense and experience.
The primary audience for the story remains in the age group of 18-30 year olds. This age group was decided as per various statistics of different age groups using the online dating platforms. About 43% of the population using these apps belong to the age group between 21 to 34 year olds in the UK.
The interviewees are coming from different perspectives. The narrative highlights the difference between their choice of approach to finding love and how the trend of online dating has made them compromise with their idea of looking for love in real time and space. The different factors that affect this major experience of life have taken many labels now and have been categorised into something ‘casual’ and much more.
Editorial approach
I tried approaching my narrative in a traditional creative and a little poetic sense highlighting the fading tradition of love in a traditional sense and how authenticity is too fading with the invention of reduced in person experience. I interviewed three people from three different perspectives of having used the app and narrating their experience, both negative and positive response and not having ever used the platforms and their reasons behind it. Many similar views also came up which helped me a little with the word limit and making text precise by highlighting the main and differing argument. I found difficulty in maintaining the word limit as there were so many areas to be covered in this single narrative.
Using AI
In my story I haven’t used any AI tools because of the authenticity of my narrative which in itself argues about the technology taking over real experience.
How the video completed the story
The video provided a real element of visual experience and direct conversational mode of experience where direct perspective of the person can be accessed.
Key learning of the assignment
I learned a lot about the journalistic process and how to approach people for interviews, how to ask better questions to seek out in depth answers. I learned about research and mainly about feature writing and much more about technical usage.
