The Falling Times, the news translation machine, poses a new, innovative way of getting pertinent information. Using mere pictographs and headlines, it provides a simple and quick way of keeping up with current events without having to sit through an opinionated, sensationalized news show. When I first looked at the website and saw the falling icons, I was lost and had no idea what the symbols meant; it was like trying to decipher hieroglyphics. However, as I clicked on the icons to reveal the story behind them, I slowly began to associate certain symbols with certain events. A coffin meant death, a man with a star atop the globe meant something had happened in China, and a stick figure shooting another stick figure meant murder, etc.
As a journalism major, I found this method of receiving news effective and futuristic. It presents the news in three levels, one is the rudimentary level of a simple pictograph where the user knows that something of a certain nature, based on the symbol, happened. The second level is when they see the headline the symbol is representing. The user now has a brief synopsis of what occurred in the world and even only if it's just a mere headline, it is still one step aware from complete ignorance. The third level is when you actually click the hyperlink that goes to the news website.
Having only to look at icons is good enough to hold the attention span of younger viewers. The artists feel that news doesn't need paragraphs or sound bites, but does need to be communicated in the simplest way possible. The more complicated and detailed the news gets, the more room there is for bias. I do view this as scholarly multimedia because they are taking a common element everyone is familiar with, the news, and remediating it in order to cater to a society where many citizens are tuned out on current events.
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