Even though by nature Coventry Conversations are more or less focussed on journalism topics, it is inevitable that they explore the issue of media in its many forms and contexts. That is what Pete Clifton touched upon, when giving a talk for Coventry Uni students on ‘the future of multimedia journalism at the BBC’, offering insights into the direction media is evolving.

The overall conversation was on the subject of changes and evolution of the BBC websites, which included a fair amount of technical information. Nevertheless, I found the technical bits relevant to social aspects, as the two concepts are virtually inseparable from one another.

The BBC websites seem to be an interconnecting web that puts together an immense amount of information in the most various ways. 1997 was a first step for BBC with the introduction of videos on the website but it seems like a very long time ago as the low-quality videos and the endless buffering times have been taken over by innumerable applications, videos and podcasts that load in just seconds, interactive media, mobile applications and so on.

Judging by what Pete Clifton says, journalism, as much as every use of media, is heading towards interactivity and a stronger focus on the user rather than the content. The mobile phone applications and the mobile content, as well as the portals BBC is intending to launch are strong evidence that media is going to be tailored more and more according to the wants and needs of the public, even giving them a certain amount of autonomy.

Another issue that was also covered was the attitude and behaviour of the public towards the BBC website and its content. A thing that I found particularly interesting was how, even though pictures are almost as popular as the news, word-based content is still the most viewed on the website. It is actually surprising to find out that people will take their time to read news instead of looking at self-explanatory pictures.  The average number of stories read by viewers is, however, allusive to the fact that we are really in a hurry as an audience, reading around 4 stories a visit, out of a network of websites that store huge amounts of information.