Thursday, 5 May 2011

New Forms of Media Publishing


It is undeniable that media publishing industry in the 21st centuries has evolved from the traditional media to the new media. Therefore, youths these days are lucky to have internet where they can search everything on the web browser. The type of new media these days are such as weblog, mobile blogging, vlogs, micro-blogs, mobisodes and etc. According to Naughton (2006) the combination of digital meeting, personal computing and global networking seems to have catches up the pace of development and is rising in radical shifts in the environment. So, audiences have more variety to choose from these new medium accordingly to their interest.
Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Blogs are some of the new media publishing which changes the roles of journalism to writing online. The new form of media publishing that I have chosen is Facebook, it is a social networking site that has been growing rapidly since these few years. Every youth in today’s societies get addicted to it and its applications. As a result, everyone nowadays has a Facebook account.
Facebook has more than 500 million users, and people spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook based on facebook.com (n.d). In fact with Facebook you can get the latest and up-to-date information on time where users post their status on their profile and it will appear on your homepage newsfeed from the latest to the oldest ones. As Facebook has become a hub for most people’s social activity; most of them are using Facebook to scan for new notifications and interesting stories at the top of the news feed, and they can get instant access to the relevant content as stated by Josh Constine (2011). Teenage nowadays mostly get their information from the social network and it has become their primary source of news. Apart from that, even the government, and those prominent people such as the President Obama have a fan page on Facebook. This is for the viewer to keep track on his latest events, photos, videos, and for them to voice out their opinions and thought. Besides that, he also uses this page (shown below) to communicate with his viewers and fans (people who join the page).
Examples:
The President Obama’s Fan Page on Facebook.
Source: (http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/barackobama)

Few posts that he posted on Japan’s Earthquake & Tsunami followed by a blog link.
Source: (http://www.facebook.com/arnoldmok#!/barackobama)

A blog that the President linked to his post on Japan’s Earthquake & Tsunami.
Source: (http://blog.fema.gov/2011/03/japan-earthquake-tsunami-update-1.html)

Above are some updates that I have found on the President Obama’s Facebook fan page showing that he has a few posts on the Japan’s Earthquake followed by a blog link. This proved that he is concerned on the issue and showing his support to the Japan’s citizens.
According to Naughton (2006) mentioned that the new ecosystem will be broader and immeasurably more complex and there will be density of interactions between the content producers, and the pace of development made possible by constant networking.
According to Kress & van Leeuwen (1998), messages were delivered not only by words but with speech-sound, rhythm, intonation, facial expression, gesture and posture. Therefore, Facebook has all the functions, it enables viewers to watch videos and view pictures.
But there are different types of audiences hence, it is better to cater them with both traditional media and new media so they have more choices.

References:

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Blogging Communities

What is a blogging community? Owyang (2007) defines blogging community as an online community, it is a group of people with similar goals or interests connect and exchange information using web tools. The aim is to socialize, making friends, and sharing ideas through internet. It is just a community where they have a sense of identity and belonging, and having peers who always follows their blog and agrees to the blogger’s opinions. This community has people from all around the world where they communicate through online.
NikkiS (n.d) said a blogging community is created by reading other blogs where you might get ideas when you have run out of ideas of what to post, and by leaving comments on others blogs are same as leaving your blog URL (Uniform Resource Locater) with your comments this enables people to find you easily. Next step stated by NikkiS (n.d) which is replying your comments, readers feel happy when they get feedback from the bloggers this shows that their comments have been heard, and by listing your blog in directories this will be effective when readers are searching in Google by just typing the blog’s URL. She also said that writing often is a way to keep your readers at your blog by writing more than one post a day and making your posts entertaining by giving fresh contents with a different view than other bloggers do so that your readers would not get bored. Lastly, NikkiS (n.d) said marketing your blog is a way by having a signature link to your blog on message boards and forums, and also placing a signature link in your email signature as well.
Blogging community can be divided into three types as mentioned by White (2006).
Below is a picture showing the three types of blogging community. 
Figure 1 - Three types of Blogging Communities
Source: (http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community)

The Single Blog or Blogger Centric Community is owned by one owner or multiples authors writing in a blog. White (2006) stated that the power in this community is in the central blogger’s control which is the blog owners and they controls the topics and comments from the community to which can be seen or unseen from the site.
Next, is the Central Connecting Topic Community.

Figure 2 - Topic Centric Community
Source: (http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community)
This form of community can be found with the link in common interest or topic. It is not secured where powers and identity is distributed across the community. Hyperlinks are applied in the form of blog rolls and it linked to other blogs within blog posts, tagging, aggregated feeds by using RSS, trackbacks and comments mentioned by White (2006). Blog rings are used to link blogs that are discussing on the same topic.
The third type is Boundaried Communities.


Figure 3 - Boundaried Communities
White (2006) a collection of blogs and blog readers hosted on a single site or platform, bloggers can see and easily access other blogs, and readers can also create their own blogs. As a result, this may build a stronger community group where bloggers controls the message rather than on the discussion board. Boundaried communities is held by the ‘owner’ of the platform who can impose rules on the community, but is exercised by bloggers in three ways which is frequency of posting, popularity measured by how many comments a blogger gets, and social networking tools associated with the blog that help visualize relationship mentioned by White (2006).
A good example of blogging community which is Global Voices. Global Voices were set up to provide report of blogs and citizen media internationally emphasizing voices that are not commonly heard in mainstream media stated by Global Voices (2010). Within this community blog enables citizen to voice up their opinions which they can’t do it in their area. The advantages of building up a blog community are we are able to see different opinions from different angles.

References:




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    Classification of Blogs


    In Asia Pacific, number of blogs has been increasing. The variety of blogs has been widening too many different kinds of blogs example different interest or hobbies. Based on WordPress.com (n.d), there are varieties of blogs example; personal, business, schools, reviews and many more. These blogs are very detailed but it can be grouped into more general ones. As Talwar (2010) classify four types of blogs which is company blogs, personal blogs, general blogs, and niche blogs.
    Here are some examples of it:





    Overall, the most common types of blogs are weblog. Perrone (2004) said weblog is a log of the web, a diary-style site in which the blogger links other web pages that they find interesting using entries posted in a reverse chronological order.
    According to Simons (2008) differentiate nine types of blogs which included pamphleteering blogs or political blogs, digest blogs, advocacy blogs, popular mechanics blogs, exhibition blogs but some people name it as vanity publishing, gatewatcher blogs, diary blogs, advertisement blogs, and lastly news blogs.
    To compare the classification from Simons (2008) and Talwar (2010) shows that each of them has different classification on the types of blogs. As Simons (2008) has classified the types of blogs more detail whereas, Talwar (2010) differentiates them into wider groups. Simons (2008) mostly defines the types of blog into advertising product or services rather than the general groups.
    In my opinion, as there are so many types of blogs out there in the web so it is hard for us to specifically divide them into particular groups. A good example has shown in personal blog tziaaa.com (n.d), there are two types of blogs which is dairy blogs and advertisement blogs as the blogger also advertised some product and services that they are interested. Hence, each blogger has not only one type of hobby; they can have several so it is hard for us to classify them into specific types.

    References:
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    Blogging as current Phenomenon & Benefits to the Community


    Sifry (2006) mentioned that there are 50 million of blogs out there. A research based on Technorati (2006) a blog search company, stated that there are 1.6 million postings per day.

    Below is a pie chart showing the percentages of bloggers in worldwide.

    Figure 1 - Statistic of bloggers in worldwide
    Source: (http://technorati.com/blogging/article/who-bloggers-brands-and-consumers-day/)

    As everyone noticed most of the bloggers are from North America 38%, which followed by United States 33%. According to Sobel (2010) California has taken 15%, New York 8%, Texas 6%, Florida 4%, Illinois 4%, Massachusetts 4%, Virginia 4%, Washington 4%, Georgia 3%, and New Jersey 3%.

    Apart from that, Sobel (2010) stated that the growth of mobile blogging is a key trend currently, 25% of bloggers are engaged in mobile blogging. While for the 40% of bloggers says blogging from their smart phone has changed the way of blogging, it encourages shorter and more spontaneous posts. He said 48% of bloggers believed more people will be getting their news and entertainment from blogs in the next five years rather than from the traditional media.

    Here is another pie chart on the four different types of bloggers in worldwide.




    Figure 2 - The four types of bloggers in worldwide
    Source: (http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2010-introduction/page-2/)
     
    Sorbel (2010) said bloggers can be divided into hobbyist blogger, part timer, corporate, and self employed bloggers. Hobbyist blogger are those who blog for fun, mostly blogging on their daily lifestyles and do not earn any income from it. Whereas part timer bloggers are those who blog to earn extra income, and corporate bloggers are those who blogs for the company to get published in the traditional media and they get income. Self employed are they blog full time or sometimes and most of them have a blog related to their business or company.

    As Marlow (2009) believes that the numbers of blogs have grown in the past 10 years by creating the blogging trend. Blogging is to improve the communication skills in each one of us. While, blogs may create more opportunities for the nonprofit organizations by creating awareness, voicing out personal opinions, sharing experiences and information, educating, and employing staff and volunteers. Marlow (2009) blogs are the alternative information and blogging encourages word-of-mouth buzz, meaning others post links of your blog to their websites.

    Nowadays, blogging has become a phenomenon in today’s activities. Youths today’s regardless of ages do has a blog, most of them blogged on their daily lifestyles, some discussing on the social issue, creating awareness, discussing the current fashion trends, and blogs for businesses. The benefits of blogging are to share their experiences, knowledge, to voice out and share their opinions, and it also enables the nation to communicate with each other across the country. However they are some restriction while blogging, bloggers must not touch issue on politics as it is a sensitive issue in worldwide.

    References:
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    Good PowerPoint Presentation

    According to Reep (2006) written text and presentation work together to provide readers with the information they need, during the planning stage it is vital to consider on the design of presentation slides before selecting the appropriate information and organize.

    At this new era, writers nowadays are not just merely producing documents; therefore they are also proficient in integrating prose with document designs. However, it is important to provide readers with the information they need in a form that they can interpret easily.
    Bernhardt (1986) mentioned the differences of visually-informative text and non-visually informative text, whereas visual-informative text may be identified through headings and identifying symbols. He also uses law of visual identity, law of equilibrium, law of closure, law of good continuation, and law of similarity to identify visual-informative text.
    As Reep (2006) principles of design are the important qualities to any visual presentation regardless of topic or audience, and the general principles most designers consider are balance, proportion, sequence and consistency. 
    Here is an example of some bad and good presentation slides:
    Figure A - With Spacing (Bad presentation slides)


    Figure B - No Spacing (Good presentation slides)
    In figure A pointed with black arrow shows that there are spacing between each point, whereas figure B did not have any spacing.
    It is really important to have the same typeface and margins throughout the presentation. As readers would not get confuse and it has a flow that allows readers to read easily.
    Although Bernhardt (1986) said the law of good continuation suggests that visual perception works to pull figures out of the background to differentiate them from the field which they are located. Besides that, he also says that good continuation is achieved through a clear background, headings, and through the groupings of related information which are set off by blank space.
    But for Reep (2006), consistency refers to presenting similar features in a similar style and by having consistency in each element is important throughout a presentation or documents.
    Figure 2 - Pictures are pixilated (Bad presentation slides)
    The picture above shows that the photograph that has been used is pixilated.
    Photos that to be use in the presentation must always are clear and not pixilated. This shows that messages are sent effectively to the readers.
    Reep (2006) a photograph provides a surface view of an object or event, and to be effective photographs must be clear and focus on the pertinent item. She also stated that it is important by eliminating distracting backgrounds or other objects from the photograph.

    Figure 3 - Couldn’t differentiate main points and sub-points as the color of bullets are similar. (Bad presentation slides)
    The box in black illustrates that it is difficult for audience to differentiate the main point and the sub-point. As the color of the bullets for the main point and sub-point are somehow almost similar.
    While preparing presentation slides, it is important that colors that are being used must not only specific to all bright colors or soft colors. The selection of colors are vital, to ensure that messages are being sent to our audience effectively. Below is an example of an improved version and it is clearer.

    Figure 4 - A better presentation slides compare to figure 3. (Good presentation slides)

    As Reep (2006) mentioned color in a document or Websites is eye-catching and appealing to readers. She also says that color can distinguished among levels of information by coding information to purpose or importance, and consider how color creates style and supports usability while using it in printed documents or Websites.


    References:
    • Bernhardt, Stephen A. 1986, ‘Seeing the Text,’ College Composition and Communication, vol. 37, no.1, pp.66-78. 
    • Reep, Diana C. 2006, ‘Chapter 4: Principles of Document Design,’ in Technical Writing, 6th edition, Pearson Education, Inc., New York, p. 173-190.
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    Prelude

    Hi, welcome to my blog. (;

    I will start with a brief introduction on the role of designs.

    Design does play an important role to those who are in the publication field, communication take place effectively as teenage these days are more visualize; they prefer more pictures than text.

    The aim is to communicate and analyze the issue pertaining to publication design by applying the relevant theories.

    My targeted audience will be mainly the undergraduates, employees and employers, the media and production industry who are concerned on publication and design issues.

    Enjoy reading! (;
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