Ancillary Task: Magazine Reviews on the Internet

When analysing magazine reviews, there was a problem in the sense that since there are different types, it was difficult to understand which was to be used for my ancillary task; one can get magazine reviews from an actual magazine itself, or online magazine websites. There is a major difference in a graphological aspect in the sense that compared to print magazines where the layout has clearly been designed for the context of the reviews production, with magazines online, the layout is less complex and layout is not so much an issue. Take for example the following three magazine reviews found online from websites http://www.empireonline.com/, http://www.totalfilm.com/, and http://www.bfi.org.uk/ respectively:

Another difference between magazine film reviews and internet film reviews is the style of writing in the discourse. Since these reviews are online, it means the audience would be much more vast compared to printed texts therefore the writer (whom may or may not) take this into account and therefore not uphold as much of a formal register as opposed to magazines which, although contain a high frequency of colloquial lexis, are in a way still formal through the tone conveyed. To further support the idea that internet reviews are more informal is the fact that as it is online, this medium is taken into account and so hyperlinks are, sometimes, integrated either in or around the text whereby the reader can click for further information. An example of this is in the Empire magazine reviewing the latest Harry Potter film where under the image in the review, there is a "view image gallery" which one would not find in a magazine review.