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