Bournemouth University students worked through the night to provide live coverage of the results of the UK General Election as it happened.
From 10pm on 7 May as polls closed, students ran live coverage of the results online, on television and on FM radio, as well as through their social media accounts.
Radio coverage was provided live on Hope FM's Dorset frequency, as well as online. Students used their website www.yourelection15.co.uk to provide up to date news stories and comment pieces, as well as using it as a platform for their live, round-the-clock television coverage.
A number of students were also on-location across Dorset to provide outside broadcast coverage of vote counts and result declarations as they happened.
Editor-in-Chief of the General Election coverage and journalism student, Joe Nerssessian, said, "For the last 50 days we have been running a website, providing stories and getting ready for tonight. From the beginning I've loved the build up but its all been about one night and it is great that it is finally here. We had some great guests lined up, like Annette Brooke, the former Mid Dorset and North Poole MP, as well as Conor Burns.
"It was all down to the staff and the students. For me a big highlight was when we broke Jim Murphy losing his seat live on air, it was seamless, and we had a panel on hand ready to react to the breaking news. It looked really professional, it was really impressive. Everyone knew what they were doing throughout the night and their professionalism showed. There was a big buzz tonight."
Laura McKenna, a multimedia journalism student and editor of the students' radio coverage, said, "We brought 12 hours of live coverage tonight, bringing election updates throughout the night. Hopefully people like our coverage because it is more unique, it is not like the BBC's coverage or Channel 4, it has a different edge to it, it is going to be student focussed and give a younger edge to it. We are trying to get ourselves up there, give people something different to tune in to and provide an alternative and entertaining view to the elections."
Earlier in the day, students were also joined by members of the University's Board and leadership team as they toured the studios and newsrooms to get a flavour for the coverage the students were providing.
Karen Fowler-Watt is Strategic Lead for the project and Head of the Journalism and Communication Department at BU; she said, “This is an incredible statement of what this Faculty and this University is about. We’ve got over 300 students here from right across the faculty from all disciplines involved in this project.
"I think it says a huge amount about how incredibly impressive young people are in terms of working with each other, how naturally collaborative they are and actually how very creative and innovative they are. And we’ve managed to capture that in this event and we will do these sorts of things again but as Joe Nerssessian [the Chief Editor] said tonight, this is on their home turf and this is the sort of thing they’ll be doing when they go out into the real world. So tonight this was a real world experience for them within their University environment and I’m hugely proud of them all.”
As well as working on their own broadcast, a number of students were also assisting the Bournemouth Echo's reporting team at the counts, providing coverage for the paper.
For more information, or to see the students' work, visit www.yourelection15.co.uk.
