Angles: International students in Sydney.

Since this is the guide for international students in Sydney, the angles of our blog posts and videos will be centred on international student’s views and perceptions of how it is to live in Sydney. The blog will reflect the diversity of these students as much as possible through our investigative articles, videos and informative columns.

No two students are the same, so the bulk of our investigative work will focus on broad issues that affect all international students. Looking at the different segments of the target audience, there is array of different living, study and work situations. Some students are living away from home for the first time, either on exchange or taking their whole degree here.

 

 According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics China is the largest single nation making up the international student population in Australia. Therefore we can assume that a majority of international students are from a non English speaking background. Additionally, the students are more likely to be men (54%) than women (46%) but this varies across the different nationalities. Over one-third of all international student enrolments (and commencements) take place in NSW. Based on these statistics facts, we can work towards a more customized blog- and identify who are our target audience.

 

 

(Copyright: Tina Brodal, created here)

 

The informative angle will be important in our articles. Sydney is a large city, and with so many things to see and do, the choice can be overwhelming and hard to keep up to date with. Our articles will not only provide daily information on events and where to eat and party, but also important informative pieces on current visa regulations. The visa regulation pieces will constantly be updated so that international students can stay on top of which changes are carried out.

 

We recognize that blogs can offer so much more than traditional journalistic commentary. Aspects like immediacy, cross-blog connection and conversations are examples of aspects consecutively contributing to connectivity (Dean 2010:44). Therefore we will provide useful links to Australian governmental websites, university websites and other relevant student blogs across Australia. In addition to this our blog will feature on student magazine websites, e.g. Honi Soit.

 

 A valuable aspect of blogging is that it ‘enables production of content potentially accessible to anyone who happens to find it’ (Dean 2012:46).  We assume that our target audience have a need, and in their search they have stumbled upon a link to our blog either through one of the university websites, or through a social media platform. This assumption facilitates us as authors to tailor our articles to the need of our imagined target audience.

 

Another angle we will explore in the blog is that international students are sadly, often taken advantage of: particularly in housing. International students don’t have the same know how, or luxury of time to hunt for a good apartment and they need guidance on where to stay and how much to pay. Many students are being exploited for exorbitant prices for accommodation; Sydney Studymate will reveal the worst instances of this in order to create awareness about what to look out for and offer  advice to any students who find themselves in that situation.

 Discrimination is the darker side of the international experience, which we will tackle in our articles about limited work opportunities compared to nationals. Unfortunately there is a prevailing reputation in some countries that Australians are racist, so we will attempt to explore this notion in depth by gathering vast information through students own personal experiences.

Last but not least, it has been argued that ‘users are key producers of the technology, by adapting to their uses and values’ (Castells in Meikle and Young 2012:26). Sydney Studymate will enable our audience to share the information they have obtained with other students, this will be made possible by the RSS and ‘share on Facebook/Twitter’ function under our blog posts, and we will encourage sharing our articles across all platforms.

 

 

 

 Keen to know more? Check out these references;

 

Dean, J. 2010; ‘The Death of Blogging’ in Blog Theory: Feedback and Capture in the Circuits of Drive, Polity, London.

 

Meikle, G. and Young, S. 2012: ‘Content, Computing, Communications’, in Media and Convergence: Networked Digital Media in Everyday Life. Hampshire and NY, Palgrave MacMillian, 13-26.