Reflection

Like what did i mentioned in previous post, i do think that taking cultural-context into the consideration set when designing a document or advertisement is very important. The particular culture has influences on how the audiences convey the messages. Sometimes, the way the document designers perceive an advertisement may not equivalent to how the target audiences interpret it. Therefore, cultural context may serve as a foundation on how designers should produce a document.

Besides, it is obvious that the internet users are increasing day by day. The audiences are more into visual style of media such as On-line video news. In order for the advertiser to reach more audiences effectively, it is important for them to understand the current trend in the world. For example, generation X and Y are prefer to view information on line over other media vehicle is because the ability to be interactive, the immediacy of information and also the integration of motion, sound and image that attract them.

Nevertheless, being ethical in designing document is the most important element in designing a document. The content that could possibly affect one reputation and status should not be included. One mistake may hurt the particular advertiser deeply. Thus, by understanding these elements in designing document, it helps to reach the audiences more effectively.

TV Commercial in Multi-Racial country

Advertising, a way to promote brands and also disseminate information on a particular issue is a common media tool used by the advertiser. It can be in printed form, television or radio. Producing television commercial is often harder than producing other form of advertisements as it is needed to take consideration into different aspects such as language and story line.

During the Ramadhan period in 2011, TV8 had published a television commercial that teaches the non-muslim on what should not do and what are the correct way of doing it. However, the content of the commercial was being perceived as offensive by the netizen. In the commercial video, the Chinese girl appeared to be behaved inappropriately during the Ramadhan period and this triggered criticism from the public because it was perceived as racist by other races especially, Chinese.

                                      TV 8 Ramadhan TV Commercial 2011

                                      (source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdSIcRTtjMI)

From the negative outcome of the television commercial, it can be said that the director of this commercial did not take cultural context into the account. In this multiracial country, it is always a sensitive issue when it relates to racial. Without taking this element into the consideration set, the outcome may turn negative. Malaysia in a high cultural context country, words selecting and dialog in the television commercial are very crucial to the expression and outcome of television commercial and also advertising (Ahmed and Mouratidis 2009). It seems that in the Ramadhan TV commercial was alluding majority of the Malaysian Chinese were behaving inappropriately previously. Perhaps, the way the commercial convey messages was incorrectly.

In my opinion, television commercial that relates to racial does not work in Malaysia. Because by doing so is considered as breaching the advertising ethics in Malaysia culture. No matter which races a commercial was targeted on, the perception from the public is very important, the tendency to trigger criticism is very high. In a nutshell, a small mistake in the process of designing commercial advertisement does give a huge negative impact to the publisher especially with the assistant of Facebook and Twitter, the impact will be spread to the whole country rapidly.

Reference list

Ahmed, T & Mouratidis, H 2009, Website Design Guidelines: High Power Distance and High-Context Culture, International Journal of Cyber Society and Education, Vol.2, No.1, p.47-60,

http://www.academic-journals.org/ojs2/index.php/IJCSE/article/viewFile/531/16

The emergence of on-line screen news

Before the emerging of digital era, people may think of newspaper as the only source to obtain current news of world. But people have changed their way to obtain news after the emerging of digital world. Since then, the way of viewing latest news has evolved from print media to web-based media. Up to date, there are many online news portals that are well-known by the Malaysian, such as Malaysiakini, The Star Online and so on. However, from reading news on print media to web-based media, now people are prefer to obtain latest news by watching news video instead of reading written text on the web or print media. A financial and economic news company “Reuters” is one of the example that do publish video news online and also using Youtube as the platform for video upload.

According to the survey by Simon (O’Neill 2011), 85 percent of online media websites are now using online video content to cover the news and the numbers are still increasing year by year. The increment is basically due to internet users are getting more and more. Mostly, the internet users are derived from Generation X and Y who are more adapt to digital media. The increased ubiquity of sound, image, film, through TV, the computer and the internet is undoubtedly behind this new emphasis on and interest in the multi-semiotic complexity of the representations we produce and see around u (Ladema 2003). The audiences are now preferred more interactive communication rather than one sided communication like print media. Usually, the internet users are allowed to make comments to the video news online and also some discussion with other internet users.

Besides, publish news video online are usually faster than traditional television news. With the influence from social network such as Facebook and Twitter, people are demanding the latest news to be delivered immediately after the particular event had happened. To certain extent, if one internet user gets to know news one day later, it will be considered as “slow”. By referring to the data obtained from the survey of Simon, it can be estimated that the number of people view news online will still increase. The traditional news media that have not yet using video to cover news should consider about it now.

Reference list

Ledema R 2003, Multomodality, resemiotization: extending the analysis of discourse as multi-semiotic practice, Visual Communication, Vol.2, No.1, p.29-57,

http://vcj.sagepub.com.ezlibproxy.unisa.edu.au/content/2/1/29.full.pdf+html

O'Neill, M 2011, 85% of Media Websites Now Use Online Video to Cover News, Social Times 3rd May 2011, viewed 15 November 2011,

http://socialtimes.com/85-of-media-websites-now-use-online-video-to-cover-news_b60505

Copyrighted Material: Fair and Unfair Use

                                                (source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeblogs/3020966500/)

The book or journal authors are scratching their head to figure out how to deal with online plagiarism!

In the era of internet, every kind of information is available online. As an undergraduate student, indeed it is very convenient for me to get plenty of information to assist me in doing academic research. As I am doing the academic works in order to graduate from university, we are required to cite every idea that we obtained from the internet. But how about others people that does not have any obligations with academic purpose? They might just share the content of journals and books over the internet without the permission from the authors and worst come to the worst they might use the information like it is their own work, there is where plagiarism always happen.  Plagiarism can be defined as the inappropriate, unauthorized, unacknowledged use of someone else’s ideas as if they were original or common knowledge (Gotterbarn et al. 2006).

Ironically, the scholarly publishing industry has been greatly affected by the digital era, because ‘the very content of the publishing business is, at the end of the day, a digitizable asset (Oppenheim 2008). Plagiarism issue may indirectly give negative impact on the future academic paper output as sharing the works openly by third party will greatly reduce the revenue generated to the author. Undeniable, the authors are more concern on the ability to generate revenue from their works. If their works are freely being shared all over the internet and causing the authors to make less in generate revenue, this will affect the future output of academic papers as the revenue serve as a motivation for them to move on.

The most common way to protect their works to being illegally used by the public is to have copyright for their works. Copyright is not only benefit the authors but also the publisher as most of the journals and books are published under an agreement with the publishers. According to Oppenheim (2008), protecting rights is in the interest of both parties; publishers want to prevent their digital content from being used, duplicated and distributed without permission or compensation, whilst authors of scholarly works want to ensure their moral right to be identified as the creator is upheld.

In my opinion, the internet users should appreciate the hard work created by the authors. It is not easy to produce a book or even a journal paper. It takes days and months for them to be completed. Buying original copy and citing the authors in our work are the ways to appreciate the works by the authors and also motivate them to produce more quality works in the future.

Reference list

Oppenheim, C 2008, Electronic scholarly publishing and open access, Journal of Information Science, Vol 34, No 5, p.557-590,

http://jis.sagepub.com.ezlibproxy.unisa.edu.au/content/34/4/577.full.pdf+html

Gotternbarn, D, Miller, K and Impagliazzo J 2006, Plagiarism and Scholarly Publications: An Ethical Analysis, Session M1H, viewed 15 Nov 2011,

http://fie-conference.org/fie2006/papers/1139.pdf

Discrimination Issues in Publication Design

Today, I will post about one issue that had happened few months back. To be emphasize, it is about gender discrimination especially women discrimination in this case.

Here comes the story. During May, an Orthodox Jewish newspaper in Booklyn, United States called “Di Tzeitung”, had removed two women public figure from a photo that was taken when Mr Barack Obama, the president of United States and his staff were monitoring the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. The public figures involved are Hillary Clinton, the secretary of United States and Audrey Tomason, the counterterrosim director of United States.

                                          *Edited version
                                          (source:http://www.guardian.co.uk)

The images attached above illustrated the actual position of where Hillary Clinton and Audrey Tomason were supposed to be. Although the particular newspaper had sent its apologies to the White House, the photo removal action had triggered heavy criticism from the public that do not agree on what had done by the photo editor of Di Tzeitung. Di Tzeitung issued a statement to clarify that the photo editor did not read the rules and regulation mentioned photo editors are not allowed to make any changes on the photo taken that related to White House (The Guardian 2011).

                                         *Original version

                                         (source:http://www.guardian.co.uk)

Things would not happen without a reason. According to a managing editor that has covered Jewish issues since 1980, the action to remove women from the photo was mainly because some ultra-Orthodox Jews beliefs that showing images of the female form is “immodest” (Lil Swanson cited in TheGuardian 2011). Besides, Di Tzeitung also explained that the Jewish law of modesty is an expression of respect for women, not the opposite. In fact, it does not work like this, Lobo and Cabecinhas (2011) argue that by being absent from the news or portrayed in secondary and passive roles, women's voices are devalued and their right to access communication within the public sphere is denied.

In my opinion, women discrimination is happening across the world, but not to the extent to stop women from public appearance. In the modern era where people are starting to accept women as their leaders (eg, Thailand), such incident should not have happened now. Ethically, no people or objects may be added, rearranged, reversed, distorted or removed from a scene (Irby 2003). However, the rules and regulation of news content that aiming at stopping women discrimination is necessary to eliminates women's disadvantages in their access to the public sphere.

Reference list

Irby K, New York Times Guidelines on Our Integrity, Poynter.Org 05 September 2011, viewed 15th November 2011,

<http://www.poynter.org/uncategorized/15454/new-york-times-guidelines-on-our-integrity/>.

The Guardian 2011, ‘Orthodox Jewish Paper Apologises for Hillary Clinton Deletion’, Associated Press, 10 May, viewed 5 November 2011,
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/10/jewish-paper-apologises-hillary-clinton>.

Lobo, P & Cabecinhas, R 2010, ‘The Negotiation of Meanings in the Evening News: Towards an Understanding of Gender Disadvantages in the Access to the Public Debate’, International Communication Gazette, vol. 72, no. 4-5, pp. 339-358, viewed 5 November 2011, <http://gaz.sagepub.com.ezlibproxy.unisa.edu.au/content/72/4-5/339.full.pdf+html>.

Document Design

In this post, I will discuss about the three main considerations of designing for the screen versus the print documents. With the proliferation use of internet, the amount of webpage has increase significantly and this also lead more competition between webpage. For example, one blog versus another blog and both also have discussion on the same field. In order to get attention from the internet users to look at the particular webpage, the web design plays an important role in getting attention. 

In the study of Nielson (1997) suggested that scannable, concise and objective writing styles can increase the usability of the webpage as opposed to promotional writing skills that had much lower scores on all usability measures. It is because each of the suggested writing styles offers a positive difference in Web users’ performance and subjective satisfaction. With the combining of the three suggested writing styles, it recorded a 124% improvement in usability measures (Nielson 1997). This shows that it is important to apply the appropriate writing styles in order to attract more internet users.

For better understanding on how the three writing styles work, I will briefly explain them. Basically, the webpage is needed to be scannable is because people do not often read a blog/webpage from top to bottom. Scannable is basically to encourage scanning, skimming of the text for information of interest. It can be bulleted lists, highlighted keywords and also shorter sections of text. Concise basically means writing the information in a shorter form and cut off the less-important information. The information has to be shortening appropriately to prevent from over-concise. The last writing styles is to write in an objective form. It means the presented information must not exaggerate subjective claims and boasting (Nielson 1997).

Besides the three main consideration of writing styles, designing screen layout is important for the readers to see the important information in the first eye. Normally people will have a specific reading stage in a webpage. Below is an example of conventions of western language readers.

1. Text will read from top left to bottom right
2. Larger items are more significant than smaller items
3. Items higher on the page have more priority than those lower down
4. Signals of continuation (“more to come”) appear at bottom center or bottom right

(Kristof and Satran 90 cited in Hilligoss 2002)

By fulfilling these elements, your blog might be able to catch the attention of internet users more effectively. Try it out.

Reference list

Nielsen, J 1997, How Users Read on the Web, viewed 24th August 2011, 

<www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html>

Hilligoss, S 2002, Visual Communication, A Writer’s Guide, 2nd edn, viewed 24th August 2011,

< www.ablongman.com/mycomplab_content/pdf/long_hilligoss.pdf>

New forms of media publishing

In the previous posts we have discussed about how the technologies changes the way people look for information and knowledge. The technology changes the traditional media such as newspaper and television to new media such as social networking websites, blogging and vlogging. The new media allow the internet user to obtain instant, breaking news from worldwide. The Facebook and Twitter has broken barriers for the worldwide internet users to communicate with their favourite celebrities or even politicians of their country. 

 (source: facebook.com)

(source: http://technmarketing.com/)

Before the invention of these new media, the people were relied on the print media and television to obtain the news from all over the world and it was a one way communication and the people did not get to make any comment or response directly to the issue itself. With the new media, it allows the internet user to make direct responses to the particular issue and most importantly the reader now manage to get instant news from the target that they are following.

The collapsed of the King of Pop Michael Jackson shows the impact of new media to the world. The news rapidly breaking of Facebook and Twitter statuses before it was confirmed by mainstream news media (Munk 2009). In another case, the sacking and arrest of the deputy Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim, in 1998 had led to many Malaysians to start suspect the reliability, honesty and fairness of the mainstream Malaysia media, both print and electronic (Nadarajah 2000). Because of that, people start to obtain news information from an alternative media and Malaysiakini is one of the alternatives besides mainstream media. 

Reference list 

Munk, S 2009, Michael Jackson death covered first by Twitter, crashes server,Electricpig.co.uk, viewed 24th August 2011, <http://www.electricpig.co.uk/2009/06/26/michael-jackson-death-covered-first-by-twitter-crashes-servers//>.

Nadarajah, M 2000, Malaysiakini: Malaysian Daily on the Dotcom Path to Democracy, Media Forum, viewed 24th August 2011, <http://www.cameco.org/mediaforum_pdf/mf3_4006.pdf>.

Types of blogging communities & methods to build blogging communities.

As what I had shared in the previous posts, the main purpose of blogs were to shared thoughts and views on certain issues, and this will led other people to comment on the issue discussed. The people who commented on certain topic of a blog were the blog communities. To be clear, blog community is the one who has relationship with the blogger either as a reader or blogger and they must be sharing the same interest.

There are various ways to build blog community. The basic requirement that need to be fulfilled is to be active and update the blog with new topic frequently instead of publishing once in awhile. Secondly, try to ask some question to increase the interaction between you as a blogger with others (readers/bloggers). Thirdly, try to answer the question by the other bloggers or readers that commented on your post. By asking question and answering them, it gives the feeling to the community that they are having a 2 way communication instead of just read through and comment with no hope for responses.

Fourthly, visit the reader’s blogs and link to them to increase the exposure. And lastly, think of some projects that allow readers to take part. There will be more people to follow your blog if you have more projects for them. These are basically what a blogger must do to increase the readers, but for sure there are other methods like Facebook and Twitter to act as a tool to get readers, so it is all depend on the bloggers on which methods to use.

              (source: http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community)

As proposed by White (2006), there are three types of blogging communities, named the Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community, the Central Connecting Topic Community and the Boundaried Community. The single blog community can be owned by one owner or organization. This form of blog based community is to emerge readers to begin return to bloggers sites and getting to know the community of commenter. Second, Central Connecting Topic Community arises between blogs linked by a common passion or topic such as food bloggers, automobile bloggers and political bloggers. Lastly, the Boundaried communities are collections of blogs and blog readers hosted on a single site or platform.

One of my favourite blog is the Hemmy.net. It is considered as Single blog centric community because he is the only author for the blog and if he takes down the blog, the community would just disband. Now you get the idea on how to build the blogs community, try it out.


Reference list

White, N, 2007, Blogs and Communities Part1-5, viewed 23 August 2011,

http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community>

Classification of blogs & opinion about the most appropriate classification approach.

The weblog is known as one of the alternative media besides the mainstream media such as newspaper, television and so on. Basically, the bloggers can blog about everything based on the personal interest or public interest. Meanwhile, categorizing of blogs can be very subjective.

Chettri (2011) divide blog into five categories, personal, corporate, genre, media types and devise. However, I am not agreeing with part of the ideas in categorizing blogs into genre, media types and devise. The reason is simple, why would a blogger just blog about one specific type of media such as photo without posting any other thought on other issues? It just does not make sense because this type of blogs normally would not attract a good traffic.

In my own opinion, blogs are supposed to be categorized based on the main interest of the blogger. For example, it can be personal blog, political blog, automobile blog, entertainment blog, food blog, technology blog and so on. A personal blog, in detail, it is where the blogger share the thoughts and comments on a current issue that he/she is blogging and the remaining are the non-personal blogs. An example of political blogs as shown below:

(Source: http://anwaribrahimblog.com/)

In my further research on the internet, I had found a better way of categorizing the blog. Margaret Simons (Funnell 2008) suggests that the blog is supposed to be categorized into 9 parts, pamphleteering blogs (a blog that published by different authors on current political issues or broader event), digest blog (summarize of materials from mainstream media and also other blogs), advocacy blog (similar to pamphleteering but it is in a group, either an advocacy group or commercial organization), popular mechanics blog (a How-To-Do blog), exhibition blog (vanity publishing), gatewatcher blog (media observer), diary blog (an online diary), advertisement blog and news blog.

Personally, I would think Simons’ way of categorizing is the most appropriate to categorize the blogs because it is more reasonable. What do you think as internet user?

Reference list,

Chettri, S 2011, ‘What is Blogging? What Are The Different Types of Blogs?’ NetChunks, 5 March, viewed 22^nd August 2011, <http://www.netchunks.com/different-types-of-blogs/>.

Funnel, A 2008, A taxonomy of blogs, The Media Report, ABC Radio National, viewed 22^nd August 2011,

<http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript)>.

Blogs as current phenomenon & benefits to the community.

“Blog” is an abbreviated version of “weblog”. Basically the word “weblog” is a combination of “web” and “log”. It was first used by Jorn Barger in 1997 (Branum 2011). The blog users are increasing year by year with a large amount of increment with an amount of approximately 169millions blogs (Blogpulse 2011). This is mainly because of the technological changes in the last few years with the introduction of smartphones, tablets and netbooks.

The introduction of these new devices allows the bloggers to update their blog instantaneously to the worldwide audiences especially when there is crisis is happening and people are trawl the internet for the latest news and information. According to Technorati (2010), 25% of all bloggers are already engage in mobile blogging and 40% of bloggers who report blogging from their smartphone or tablet say that it has changed the way they blog, encouraging shorter and more spontaneous posts.

Besides, a research by Technorati (2010) shows that 40% of the consumers are agree with the bloggers’ view that said more people will be getting their news and entertainment from blogs in the next five years than from the traditional media and the consumers also think that the news from the mainstream media is losing its trustworthiness. In other words, people are starting to believe in the news or information from the blogs than the mainstream media such as newspaper, television news and so on.

There are four different types of bloggers which are Hobbyists, Part-Timers, Corporates and Self-Employeds (Technorati 2010). The Hobbyists remain the biggest group follow by Self-Employed, Part-Timer and Corporate bloggers based on a research that carried out by Technorati in 2010.

      (Source: http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2010-introduction/page-2/

In Malaysia, there are few different categories of blogs such as personal, technology, humor, entertainment, automobile, food and so on and the top ranked blog in Malaysia is kennysia.com (Sabahan 2007).

Blogs that under the politic category are increasing and it is resulted from the restrictions to freedom of speech. The freedom of speech in Malaysia is being restricted because of the laws such as Sedition Law, Defamation Law, Freedom of Assembly and Law for Licensing of Newspaper were being imposed (Wu 2005). Among the few famous political bloggers are JeffOoi.com, Rocky’s Bru, Lim Kit Siang and Anwar Ibrahim (Sabahan 2007). 

(Source: http://www.sabahan.com/2007/02/06/50-most-influential-blogs-in-malaysia/)

Reference List

Blogpulse Stats 2011, Blogpulse, viewed 22^nd August 2011,

http://blogpulse.com/

Branum 2011, The Blogging Phenomenon: An Overview and Theoretical Consideration, The Blogging phenomenon. An Overview and Theoritical Consideration, viewed 22^nd August 2011,

http://www.ajy.net/jmb/blogphenomenon.htm

Gaman, 2007, 50 Most Influential Blogs in Malaysia, viewed 22^nd August 2011,

http://www.sabahan.com/2007/02/06/50-most-influential-blogs-in-malaysia/

Sobel J, 2010, State of the Blogosphere 2010, Technorati, viewed 22^nd August 2011,

http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2010-introduction/

Wu T,H 2005, Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom: A Malaysian Case Study on Blogging Towards a Democratic Culture, Viewed 22^nd August 2011,

http://www.bileta.ac.uk/Document%20Library/1/Let%20a%20Hundred%20Flowers%20Bloom%20-%20A%20Malaysian%20Case%20Study%20on%20Blogging%20Towards%20a%20Democractic%20Culture.pdf

Purpose of blog

In the 21st century, communication, business, education and so on can be done via internet. There is a huge changes since the world has evolved into a digital age where the people are doing almost anything online via different type of media.

The blog is the best platform to do all the things that mentioned earlier.

(source: http://tutorialnewbie.com/blog/tag/tutorialnewbie-com/)
The purpose of this blog is to educate the readers about the issues that is happening in the media world today. Besides, it also acts as a place to share knowledge and information of the relationship between publication and design with the target audiences which is the mass internet users.