Source: Image by Hannah Soong on The Conversation.
Story Topic & Angle
As the largest group of international students in Australia, Chinese students are faced with psychological pressure brought by culture, habits, study and life pressure, which even affects their personal mental health. During their stay in Australia, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, Chinese students not only face psychological pressure caused by personal loneliness, poverty, homesickness, lack of belonging and language barrier, but also have psychological issues caused by social discrimination, instability and tension between China and Australia.
Therefore, this feature takes the mental health problems of international students in Australia as the research topic, mainly focuses on the causes of the problems and the existing and feasible solutions, and calls on individuals and society to pay more attention to this problem.
Newsworthiness
- Value & Impact
Mental health is just as important as physical health. Compared with the mental health problems of local students, the reasons for the mental health problems of Chinese international students may be different. In addition to personal reasons, this may also be related to changes in the living environment and differences in the social environment. Additionally, mental health issues are often overlooked, especially among Chinese students. There have been some horrific suicides. Therefore, this deserves more widespread attention. The media is a good medium to call the audience’s attention to this issue and examine themselves and those around them.
- Timeliness
This topic has always existed. With the increasing number of Chinese students studying in Australia, this issue is also a hot topic of concern.
Publication
News.com.au would be the publisher I would consider publishing. I chose it not only because it is the number one and most visited news and media publisher website in Australia, but also because it has a rich category of news and the proper article length.
Target User Groups
The target user groups for this feature are mainly Chinese students in Australia, their parents, Australian university staff and psychologists.
Source Information
- Human (Interviewees)
- Students from the USYD, as well as students from other universities in Australia (e.g., the University of Melbourne and Monash University), mentioned in the interview questions about their parents’ concern and awareness of their mental health problems.
- The Counsellor at the USYD who provides mental health assistance to students.
- Interviewing professional mental health therapist Ash Rehn in Sydney for his thoughts.
- Documentary & Online Source
- An academic article published by the University of Western Australia reporting on this issue.
- A longitudinal study of this issue reported by the NLM.
- The mental health problems and cases of overseas students including Chinese students reported by ABC News.
- The video “How to create a mental health safety plan” from the USYD.
Source: Screenshot from Sydney Health on YouTube.
Multimedia
Representative and engaging relevant videos and images as well as data statistics on Chinese students who have psychological problems.
Hypertext
Written reports, literature and evidence related to this issue, as well as school and society assistance. It will also consider the inadequacies and limitations of existing measures.
Interactivity
Summarising the content and ideas of the interviewees, and consider using the “affinity diagram” and “user insights” for classification comparisons to find clearer root problems and feasible solutions. Users may also consider posting their views via relevant hashtags on Twitter or Instagram.
Word Count: 547
Hello Bohan, I think this is an excellent proposal. Also, as an international student from China, your chosen topic is very newsworthy. Students’ mental health is often neglected in China due to the cultural differences between East and West. Your target media, audience, and interview objectives are apparent, and you are creating a very good story. However, I think the choice of images could use a little tweaking for online writing. The first image on the front page needs a higher resolution, while the second image doesn’t look perfect for the size of the page and could be considered for replacement. But your writing and the use of hyperlinks are very smooth. Anyway, I am looking forward to your final work!