Mirror Time!

As the last post for this blog, I will write on about the values and knowledge that I've received during the process of this blogging progression moment.

Source: artofmanliness.com

In IPD, I’ve learned the important of having a meaningful content and virtuous layout because it balances out each other to be able to deliver effective message. When blogging, I usually put reader’s perspective in mind so that I can relates audience’s situational and cultural behavior to produce a better manuscript. With this in mind, I will use the interplay of information value to present different meaning, saliency to create importance and aesthetics, and framing to connect or disconnect elements in my future documents (Kress & van Leuween 1998).

Ethical issues are main concern during the process of an article. King (2010) said that it is important to have ethical concerns while writing a manuscript include fraudulent publication, plagiarism and also duplicate publication authorship. Lannon (2006) added that credibility and accuracy of information is essential in a useful website. So in order to achieve that, I ensure all information and images are obtained from creditable sites and cited back to the original idea to respect their copyrights.

Thank You for viewing this blog.

References:

King, C, R, 2010, 'Ethical Issues in writing and publishing', Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing, Vol.5, No.3, pp. 19-23, viewed on 5th June 2010.

Lannon, JM 2006, ‘Technical Communication‘, ed.10, Pearson Education, USA

What is yesterday’s and what will be tomorrow’s?

As said, the political battleground is changing. From public speeches to blogs and now, politicians are giving away to Twitter as their form of communication with the publics. In an article by Asiaviews, Blogging is so yesterday, politicians turn to Twitter, Zahiid wrote that this phenomenon is brought by about by opposition icon Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s Sodomy II trial.

Politicians think that blogs are not quick enough to dispense the latest news or updates to followers. Unlike blogs, Twitter’s emphasis on short status updates over often personal journals has made it more attractive. The keywords are mobility and speed. Users can instantly update their twitter status using Short Messaging Service with their mobile phone and within seconds, any other users who are following will be updated with latest news. Even Barack Obama has a twitter account with over 4 millions of followers. He also makes the service appealing to ever politician by naming Twitter as a great way to establish Grassroot Campaign (Reisinger 2010).

Microblogging has become the right thing ever since blogs because in blogs, messages are received when users view their blog but twitter will send the message to users. Twitter as seems as the perfect speedy communication medium, it could arise problems too because short messages sometimes creates confusion because of the not specific and detailed information available. As said by PKR communications director Jonson Chong, ‘they are two different things.’

Twittings can only reach certain audiences and still, traditional communication should not be overlooked. I think that politicians have found their new and effective way of “selling” themselves rather than spending much money over their campaigns. Shouldn’t we forget that the 44th President of United State, Barack Obama won the communication with voters using online platform such as blogs and twitter.

References:

Reisinger, D 2010, "Politicians who get Twitter... and some who don't", http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10232667-2.html. Last accessed 14th June 2010

Zahiid S J 2010, "Blogging is so Yesterday, politician turn into Twitter", The Malaysian Insider.

Bias at Photojournalism.

A photograph can explain an event in much greater depth than text. Most of the time, news media uses photographs to add insight to a story and news photograph become one of the most important tools that the media uses.

However, just as photograph can help to describe a story, it can also mislead readers and alter the truth behind the story. Usually, it is done on purpose rather than most of the time being blamed as sloppy editorial jobs. Regardless, photo bias is a very dangerous phenomenon especially in the Middle East and yet, it is widely acted by irresponsible journalist.

Since young, I know that a picture tells a thousand words but what bothers me is whose word they are telling?

Several manipulations of news photographs have brought the world to attention. For example,

“Charles Johnson of the Little Green Footballs blog exposed this Reuters photo which shows blatant evidence of manipulation. Notice the repeating patterns in the smoke; this is almost certainly caused by using the Photoshop “clone” tool to add more smoke to the image.”Reuters subsequently admitted that the photo had been doctored and fired photographer Adnan Hajj, whose other photos became subject to investigation”

Source: Honestreporting.com

The explanation that given by Reuters senior editor, Paul Holmes is that the pictures was handled by a junior level employee on a very busy day and it is totally a human error and not with malicious intention.

So, if a picture tells a thousand words, how much does an edited picture tells? It is time for publications to realise and wake up from their awfully deceitful act to manipulate reader’s mind. They should know that they should stop the manipulation before the readers lose trust in photojournalism. Lester (1999) once said that, “the threat to credibility is irreversible if the public starts to mistrust the integrity of the news photograph”, it will “diminish the journalistic impact and self-respect, and the importance of photograph as communication”.

If they want to be respected, they should start treating their job with ethics.

References:

Honest Reporting UK n.d., Bias and Photojournalism, http://www.honestreporting.co.uk/photoBias.asp. Last accessed 12th June 2010.

Lester, PL 1999, Chapter six: Photo manipulation, Photojournalism an Ethical Approach, http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/lester/writings/chapter6.html. Last accessed 13th June 2010.

Platform for future Journalism.

In the article, Survival of media platforms for journalism, it was discussed that traditional mode of media is slowly losing out in the modern world. 15 years ago, newspaper were the central form of platform for journalism and today, Internet has taken over it. Greenslade, a former newspaper editor in the UK said that newspaper is dead during the forum discussion held by ABC.

Source: Catalogs.com

The key factor that induced this to happen is the diversity of media platform that is blooming. The contents are delivered faster, more frequent and most importantly, the variety-ness. The target audiences are much higher and newspaper will be dominated. On the web, news is more ‘lively’ as they can be presented with videos and audios.

Source: Mobileread.com

But will Internet kill off newspaper?

No. Without doubt that the web offers far better things that newspaper can’t, but according to Rogers (2010), when radio and television came out, people predicted that it will kill off newspaper too but they’re still here today. That is because online ad revenues are not enough to support most news companies as like the print advertising does.

Source: Practicumpioneers.com

Martin Langeveld, a columnist for Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab, found out that 96% of newspaper readers are still reading from print media and online share of the newspaper audience only amount to 3%.

References:

ABC Radio National. 2009. Survival of media platforms for journalism. Available: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2009/2436717.htm. Last accessed 10 June 2010

Roger, T. 2010, Are Newspapers Dying? Yes Or No?, Journalism.about.com, Available: http://journalism.about.com/od/trends/a/papersdying.htm. Last accessed 11th June 2010.

Is Internet Privacy still Important?

In social networking sites like Facebook and Twitters, we can see status updates like ‘I am going to (*place name*) for dinner’ or ‘I had lamb shanks for dinner with (*someone’s name*). The rising of internet spams, scams and phishing sites did not worries the online community about the importance of privacy. How do Internet users draw the line between private information and public online information?

In the article, Is Internet privacy dead? No, just more complicated: researchers, Kang (2010) wrote that online users are beginning to get worried after gaining awareness about how some social networking sites publicly allows the display of that their personal information. Multi National Corporations tends to search for their employee’s name on Google and Facebook to verify their behaviours on the Internet.

The Federal Trade Commission has been pressurized by private advocates concerning consumer’s complaints about Google and Facebook’s alleged violation of user privacy (Kang 2010).

Protecting your own Information.

In the era of social networking sites blooming like mushrooms after rains, sharing information has turned into a social norm and ‘Facebook adopted the default public settings to reflect these social norms’ (Kirkpatrick 2010). In my opinion, Internet Privacy is not dead but users are not aware or smart enough to protect it from being abused.

Facebook.com

Following customer complaints in December 2009, Facebook underwent a high-profile privacy setting change that allowed users to control the availability of their information (Kang 2010). Facebook users can easily amend the privacy settings to allow friends only or everyone to view their personal information (Ostrow 2010). Even before an application is installed, they had user’s attention that particular application will reveal their personal information to public. Users can reject the application if they are not happy with their information being viewed.

Like what CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt said, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.’ (Kirkpatrick 2010)



References:

Kang, C 2009, Is Internet privacy dead? No, just more complicated: researchers, The Washington Post, viewed 10th June 2010, .

Kirkpatrick, M 2010a, Facebook’s Zuckerberg says the age of privacy is over, ReadWriteWeb, viewed 10th June 2010, .

Ostrow, A 2010, Facebook announces new privacy features, Mashable, viewed 10th June 2010

Good Design

Diana Reep (2006) mentioned that a good design must have 4 criteria’s which is balance, proportions, consistency and sequence. Below is the 3 screenshots of the slides which I am going to comment on.

All three slides use the same design and come with a heading. This fulfills the criteria of consistent. Size of the headings and text are same in all slides which is proportion. Lastly, the texts are arranged in a sequential order for a better reading. The color of the background matches the color of the texts which does not interfered with each other. Reep (2006) states that the color in the document creates an image and assists the reader to transition through the document to find important information. That is why the headings for each slides are in red. Overall, the slides are simple yet informative.

In conclusion, the arrangement of text and the use of colour are very important for readers to fluently read and efficiently receive the information delivered.

References:

Reep, DC. 2006, ‘Chp 6: Document Design,’ in Technical Writing, 6th ed., Pearson Edu, Inc., New York, p.133-172.

New forms of media publishing

New forms of media have been arising to replace the traditional media. People read newspaper, books and magazines online, watch the 8pm news that we missed using Vlog, and even view friend’s vacation picture using social media such as Facebook.

When Twitter and Plurk was introduced, it influenced people from the blogging community to blog less and jump wagon to this microblogging community as alternative media.

The most widely used and famous media publisher is Youtube. Founded in February 2005, YouTube is the world's most popular online video community, allowing millions of people to discover, watch and share originally-created videos (Youtube 2010)

Vlogs can be very useful at times. We get to see and listen to the subject that wanted to be expressed. For example, a vlogger posted a video of the Myanmar riots which clearly expressed the situation more than what a pen can.

(Source: Vlogblog.com)

New trend as it is but it did not accepted by various countries such as China where citizen journalism are not allowed. Googles, Twitter, Facebook and blogging are strictly banned by the local internet censorship board. (BBC News)


References:

BBC News 2002: China Blocking Google . viewed 5 th April 2010. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2231101.stm

Youtube 2010: About Youtube viewed 5th April 2010. http://www.youtube.com/t/about

The community

‘Blog’ is only a recently developed word in the scheme of languages, but it feels like it’s been around a long time. During the last few years, with the explosion of platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, blogs have taken on a new dimension and many have formed their own ‘online communities’.

To expand the community, White (2006) states that “bloggers are connected to one another through hyperlinks in the form of blogrolls, links to other blogs within blog posts, tagging, aggregated feeds, trackbacks and comments”

She proposed that there are 3 kinds of blogging community that exist.

Single Blog Centric Community

First is Single Blog Centric Community. There is a blogger that is the hub of attention and others will focus on him. Example of this genre of blogger is Kennysia.com or Xiaxue.blogspot.com.

(Source: White 2006)

Central Connecting Topic Community

Second type is Central Connecting Topic Community. It is in a form of network and linking bloggers by common passion or topic. White explained that “This form is exemplified by groups such as food bloggers, mummy bloggers, travel bloggers and political bloggers with a particular party or issue identification”. Example of Central connecting blogs is Limkitsiang.com or kampungboycitygal.com.

(Source: White 2006)

Boundaried Communities

Lastly is the Boundaried Communities which typically members register and 'join' the community and are offered the chance to create a blog. This boundary makes them the closest form to traditional forum based communities. Forms of boundaried communities is Starblog.com which authored by few bloggers.

(Source: White 2006)


References:

White, N. 2006, Blogs and community launching a new paradigm for online community?, The Knowledge Tree, viewed 4 th April 2010,

Taxonomy of Blogs

Google search taxonomy of blogs and few millions of results is achieved within few seconds. There are many different views on how many types of blogs out there by many experts and also unofficial. One of them is Simons who classified blogs into 9 categories which is,

Pamphleteering Blogs

Digest blog

Advocacy blog

The popular mechanics blog

The exhibition blog

The gatewatcher blog

The diary

The advertisement

Her system of taxonomy is based on the contents and functions whereas Tom Haskins categorized blogs into 4 kinds which take consideration of author’s motive to blogs and their value to other bloggers. He mentioned that different motives for blogging yield different impacts on the rest of us. Some blogs reflect a consistent motive while others change character often .

(Source: Technorati.com)

And lastly, Narayanan Madhavan divided blogs into 8 types based on media’s perspective and appearance of blogs.

• Sanity blog

  Identity blog

  Vanity blog

  Humanity blog

  Theme blog

  Professional blog

  Corporate blog

  Project blog
  

Blogs available on the internet now is hardly able to classify into any category because of the combinations of many contents and according to Sussman, each blog contains at least 5 genres of topics.

(Source: Technorati.com)

There are many more category like vlog (video blog), linklog, sketchlog, tumblelog and moblog used by various bloggers. Each taxonomy focuses on different specifications to be categorised and as time evolves, it will not be strange if there is more categories of blogs introduced in future.

References:

Simons, M. 2008, Towards a taxonomy of blogs, Australian Policy Online, viewed 2th April 2010, http://www.apo.org.au/commentary/towards-taxonomy-blogs-0

Haskins, T. 2007, Different motivations for blogging, Growing, Changing, Learning, Creating, viewed 3th April 2010, http://growchangelearn.blogspot.com/2007/03/different-motivations-for-blogging.html

Madhavan, N. 2008, Taxonomy of blogs- a media perspective, Authorstream, viewed 3th April 2010, http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/madhavan-73965-taxonomy-blogs-media-perspective-journalism-digital-publishing-nanopublishing-citizen-portals-june-7-news-reports-ppt-powerpoint/

Sussman, M. 2009, Day 4: Blogging revenues, brands, and blogs :SOTB 2009, Technorati, viewed 9th April 2010, http://www.technorati.com/blogging/article/day-4-blogging-revenues-brands-and/

The Blogging Phenomenon.

In today’s internet world, blogging is not a fresh trend anymore. In Technorati’s state of blogosphere report, there is about 112 million blogs in June 2008 and is increasing daily. The Star Online reported that there is about 500,000 active bloggers in Malaysia, ranked among the highest in the world after Indonesia and European Union.

The trend that is emerging is multiple author blogs and mostly is monetized (Problogger 2008). Bloggers are receiving extra income from blogging and the below graph shows how blogger generate revenue from blogging.

(Source: Technorati.com)


On average, professional and corporate bloggers are more likely to include search ads, display ads, and affiliate marketing on their blogs. There were some global differences. Music is more popular and politics is less popular in Asia, while personal, lifestyle, and religious topics are less popular in Europe. (White)

(Source: Technorati.com)


According to Ramadass which uses the statistics from Research Conducted by MSN Live Spaces across Asia, bloggers in Korea and India favours business blogs while in Malaysia, 20% of Malaysians voted for Blogs focusing on politics, compared to 14% on average across Asia.

Because freedom of speech is limited and controlled, blogging on politics has become an important platform for people to voice out their opinions. For example, the recent election held in Iran, 46% of the people agree that the Iranian election made a significant impact globally and blogosphere was a source for reliable, accurate information about the protest of the Iranian election.


(Source: Technorati.com)


Similar trends were found in the US presidential election too.

(Source: Technorati.com)

References:

Rowse, D. 2008. 5 Emerging Trends in Blogging Viewed 31 March 2010. http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/05/16/5-emerging-trends-in-blogging/

White, D. 2009, Day 2: The What and Why of Blogging :SOTB 2009, Technorati, viewed 31 April 2010, http://technorati.com/blogging/article/day-2-the-what-and-why/page-2/

Ramadass, V. 2006, Blogging phenomenon sweeps Asia, Lowyat.NET: Malaysia’s Tech Enthusiast Resource Community, viewed 9th April 2010, http://www.lowyat.net/v2/latest/blogging-phenomenon-sweeps-asia.html

Sussman, M. 2009, Day 4: Blogging revenues, brands, and blogs :SOTB 2009, Technorati, viewed 9th April 2010, http://www.technorati.com/blogging/article/day-4-blogging-revenues-brands-and/.

The Star Online (2008). Blogging in Malaysia ranks among highest in the world. viewed 31 March 2010 . http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/4/3/nation/20827588&sec=nation

The Purpose of this Blog.

Read, Think and Learn is created for academic purposes specifically Issues in Publication & Design(IPD) (COMM 1043).

No, IPD does not teach design but much rather on topics and issues in Publications. You will be most likely be reading this blog alot if you are interested with issues which arise in publishing as design changes in complex ways in reaction to technological and audience developments. Anyone is welcomed to read but current students, future IPD students and those interested with publications are the targeted readers for this blog.

Constructive comments or questions are welcomed and will be gracefully accepted for discussion.