Online Articles evaluation

 The Telegraph - Refugee crisis: Many migrants falsely claim to be Syrians, Germany says as EU tries to ease tensions

The Independent - Refugee crisis: Where are all these people coming from and why?

Subject - Refugee crisis

Firstly, both articles use a strapline to engage the audience right away. Although this is a similarity, the independent uses a sufficiently longer strapline, "Refugees have been seeking safe haven in the West for years. Recently, however, something has changed. Thousands have become millions, as nation after nation succumbs to anarchy and fanaticism. Introducing a unique week-long series examining the causes of the current crisis, Patrick Cockburn focuses on the increasingly uninhabitable region of fear and hatred which is driving this alarming exodus"; the reader may think this is a good thing as it is more informative from the start, whereas some viewers may not like the long length of it, preferring the short strapline that the telegraph offers as it is straight to the point and more condensed "A market in fake Syrian passports proliferates in Turkey as EU tries to improve relations between Serbia and Croatia". This direct approach instantly gives the reader the information they want, and subsequently answers the independents headline!
The telegraph also uses more multi modal texts, using more videos and pictures to furtherly engage the audience, compared to the independent just using a minority of pictures, with their main focus of the broadsheet is the text that is contained.

This links in with the amount of text the independent uses compared to the telegraph, which the majority of their content is short facts and quotes from people with views on the crisis. The telegraph may think that people will want to read their content as it is short, snappy and to the point, giving straight up facts about the crisis in an organised manner, compared to the style the independent uses, which is to give their reader a well documented and literate read with much more information, with a staggering amount of paragraphs compared to the telegraph. Facts given by the telegraph are in the form of pie charts, bar charts and fancy maps, whereas the independent has a more formal approach by implementing their given facts and points of view in standard paragraph form, with just the one image of facts to show. Some would argue that the independent is a better newspaper due to the fact that it purely has more content in the form of standard paragraphs; this may differ from the general person looking for news as the telegraph is straight to the point.

The independent give a more relaxed view on the refugees fleeing, as it frequently uses emotive language in context to the wars and why the refugees are fleeing, "The very length of these wars means immense and irreversible destruction of all means". The phrase 'irreversible destruction' implies that the war is having a huge effect on the land the refugees are fleeing from, giving no option for them to leave and never return. In comparison to this, the telegraph just present the facts and where the Syrians and others (who have claimed a fake Syrian passport) are heading, not using any features such as emotive language to captivate the reader.