Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Reflection

It never came across my mind that I would someday start my own blog. Throughout the journey of creating the blog, I certainly have learned a lot regarding issues in publications and design. It’s very challenging doing the research about the new digital media and the high technology does not stop evolving each day. It is also interesting to learn and find out about how media bring impact to people, especially in terms of blogging.

I’ve learned that the process of creating a good document design isn’t an easy task as there are many elements and factors to put into considerations. Besides that, in terms of new media such as blogging, I think that a blogger should be careful with his or her words while writing an entry; to avoid defamation and copyright infringement as well as being aware to not offend the others.

We must always remember to cite and create a reference list when using other author’s materials from books, online journals, articles or any other website materials. By doing so, it shows that we respect and appreciate their works as well as showing other our responsibilities while using other author’s work.

New media is certainly emerging rapidly these days. To catch up or connect with the community, we need to keep ourselves updated with the new media. This is to avoid being left out of the community, as well as to keep ourselves updated with the latest trend in technology.

Obama Uses iPhone to Win Support


Back in 2008, Barack Obama’s team has developed a free to use application for the iPhone. It serves as a political tool aiming to get votes in conjunction with the election. Not only did Obama use the mainstream print and broadcast media for his campaign, he fully utilized the function and benefit of the new media.

The application allows people to research Obama’s position, campaign videos and news updates (Hansell 2008). According to Obama, this tool is designed to help and encourage the people to become more directly involved in the campaign in order to make a change to the country (Shiels 2008).

The features include:-

  1. Call Friends: An option to help organize contacts by battleground states. The
  2. Call Stats: This allows the user to check on the total number of Obama ’08 Call Friends nationwide and also compare the number of calls with other users.
  3. Get involved: By participating and show support to the candidate.
  4. Receive Updates: Users will get the latest updates and announcements through text messages as well as email.
  5. News: National and local campaign news on full coverage for the users to access.
  6. Media: Users are able to browse and view the photos and videos of the election campaign.
  7. Issues: Get to know more facts about Barack Obama plans for issues that America is facing (Turner 2008).

Obama announced his choice for Joe Biden to run for vice-president post via text message. This act of his has made headlines thus proved that he’s a fan of advanced technology in campaign (Shiels 2008). No doubt that this application has actually helped Obama to boost his election campaign. At the end of the day he won the election and became the President of America.

The candidates have slowly adapting new media to promote and encourage the people to participate and make a change. From web to Youtube to social networking sites like Facebook, these candidates have certainly raised their profiles using the new media.



References

Hansell, S 2008, ‘It’s Obama on the iPhone’, The New York Times, viewed 18 November 2009, < http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/02/its-obama-on-the-iphone/>

Shiels, M 2008, ‘Obama Uses iPhone to Win Support’, British Broadcasting Corporation, viewed 18 November 2009, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7649753.stm>

Turner, J 2008, ‘Obama Launches iPhone App, Makes Everyone A Campaign Worker’, Jack & Jill Politics, viewed 18 November 2009, <http://www.jackandjillpolitics.com/2008/10/obama-launches-iphone-app-makes-everyone-a-campaign-worker/>

The Power of Twitter




Twitter is a micro-blogging service which is very popular among people nowadays, specifically bloggers. According to Technorati (2009), a survey conducted shows that 73% of the general population uses Twitter these days. Twitter is able to connect people in a different and new way just by asking the question “what are you doing?” (commoncraft 2009).

What makes Twitter differ from the other sites is its unique 140 characters limitation. Though with such limitation of words, Twitter managed to gain the public’s popularity and became the most popular micro-blogging site. People use Twitter for many different reasons. Some of them include interacting with celebrities, politicians, readers of their blog, keep up with the latest updates or news events, for research, to promote their blogs or even to market businesses.

The effect of Twitter

Source: http://1websurfer.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/twitter-comic-2.jpg

The power of Twitter is shown one of the twitter post that Mashable’s Pete Cashmore made. A single tweet he made has caused the traffic from Twitter crashed a blog. That’s how popular Twitter is among its users (Shankland 2009).

With the emergence of new media such as Twitter, the effect has shown in many areas; for instance in an organization culture. In the US, Comcast National Customer Service’s Senior Director, Frank Eliason uses Twitter as a tool of communication between the customer service parts of an organization and its customers (Hobson 2009). The CEO of Comcast, Brian Roberts said the company has been using Twitter to engage with its customers and scan for any complaints (2009).

The micro-blogging platform has brought effects to its users. Now, the police are testing the Twitter strategy as they believe that it is important to engage with social media (Bunz 2009). In an article from The Guardian (2009), the police will soon use Twitter to broadcast and engage with the community. The first batch of police officers to start using this micro-blogging service is the West Midlands police. The reason why this approach is done was because they had a hard time trying to connect with young people.

18 months ago, these police officers saw a mobile video of a murder and managed to catch the criminal with the help of social networking site – Facebook. This has proven that not only does Twitter have an effect to the community; now the new media is playing an important role to parties such as the police force. Police officers now use social media such as Youtube or Facebook to connect with the community, to tell the public what or why they are approaching or taking certain actions (Bunz 2009). Social media is also a way for them to engage with the local journalists and turning into a more powerful force.

This is one of the many examples of the Twitter effect. Through this article, we are able to prove that the new media has left a huge impact to the people, no matter what age group or status.



References

2009, ‘Twitter in Plain English’, commoncraft, viwed 18 November 2009, <http://commoncraft.com/twitter>

Bunz, M 2009, ‘Police test Twitter Strategy’, guardian.co.uk, viewed 18 November 2009, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/nov/17/digital-media-twitter-police-social-media-west-midlands>

Hobson, N 2009, ‘The Twitter effect on organization culture’, NevilleHobson.com, viewed 18 November 2009, <http://www.nevillehobson.com/2009/10/21/the-twitter-effect-on-organization-culture/>

Shankland, S 2009, ‘The ‘Twitter Effect’: Possibilities and limits’, cnet news, viewed 18 November 2009, <http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10156481-2.html>

Sussman 2009, ‘Twitter, Global Impact and the Future of Blogging – SOTB 2009’, Technorati, viewed 18 November 2009, < http://technorati.com/blogging/article/day-5-twitter-global-impact-and/>

Facebook's Face-lift Leaves Some Devotees Fuming


Source: Life in the NHS, 2009

Facebook is a global social networking website that was founded in February 2004 by Mark Zucherberg of Harvard University. The co-founders of the website are Zuckerberg’s college roommates – Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes (Facebook 2004).

According a research made back in January 2009, Facebook was ranked first place for most monthly visits from its users thus making it the most used social networking site (Kazeniac 2009). 40.8% of its users range from 18-24 years old (Corbett 2009).

Back in May 2008, Facebook made a change in its design interface and this decision had left millions of its users fuming. The new layout back then was all about using tabs to give priority to fresh pictures, messages and applications. The changes was said to be motivated by feedback from its users and by following the trend of sharing videos and pictures instantly (Sydney Morning Herald 2008).

There are many factors that determine a good document design. A good document design’s background should not interrupt with its text. Facebook is known as a site with plain background. The background is white and it does not interrupt the texts. Thus the texts are easy to see and do not annoys the users’ eyes.

According to Martinec and van Leeuwen (2006), hierarchy of information must be clear. The nucleus is the highest in the hierarchy and is the centre of information. Us, the main user in our profile serves as the nucleus whereas our friends are the satellites that are connected to us.

A good document design should have navigations bars that are easy to understand and use (Affiliate Seeking 2004). The navigation should be consistent throughout the site and applications and the pages should be downloaded quickly. A good design interface should have a more user-friendly function, with personalization and customization.

Although Facebook has always been an easy to navigate site with user friendly functions and organized page, there are still room for improvements in order to make the site better. One of the ways is by giving a clearer hierarchy among friends (Agrawal 2009), by putting priorities to those who has more interaction with the users, or by dividing groups to acquaintances and friends. Another way is to include more personalization in terms of visual without interrupting the texts. A better weight distribution of the page can also make the page looks more balance and organized instead of having too much wide spaces.

Every time Facebook changes its interface, a lot of users will end up creating and joining groups and forums to discuss about the changes of its interface. However, it is just a matter of time for the users to get used to it. At the end of the day, Facebook will always take its users feedback in order to make a better redesign.



References

2004, 'Facebook', Information, viewed 5 November 2009, <http://www.facebook.com/facebook?ref=pf#/facebook?v=info&ref=pf>


2009, 'Facebook makeover leaves some devotees fuming', The Sydney Morning Herald, viewed 18 November 2009, <http://www.smh.com.au/technology/biz-tech/facebook-makeover-leaves-some-devotees-fuming-20090616-ce6o.html>


2009, 'Web Page Design with Graphic Button', Affiliate Seeking.com, viewed 5 November 2009, <http://www.affiliateseeking.com/ashow/151.html>


Agrawal, R 2009, '9 ways to improve the Facebook news feed', reDesign, viewed 5 November 2009, <http://blog.agrawals.org/2009/04/15/9-ways-to-improve-the-facebook-news-feed/>


Corbett, P 2009, 'Facebook Demographics and Statistics Report: 276% Growth in 35-54 Year Old Users', istrategylabs, viewed 5 November 2009, <http://www.istrategylabs.com/2009/01/2009-facebook-demographics-and->


Kazeniac, A 2009, 'Social Networks: Facebook Takes Over Top Spot, Twitter Climbs', Compete, viewed 5 November 2009, <http://blog.compete.com/2009/02/09/facebook-myspace-twitter-social-network/>


Martinec, R & van Leeuwen T 2008, The Language of the New Media Design, Routledge, USA




Survival of Media Platforms for Journalism

With more and more advanced technology emerging each day, the current media platforms that we have such as television, radio, newspapers can all be converge into a single screen and can be operate from anywhere in the world. This modern form of media platform is known as the Internet. New form of media such as blogs and Twitter are known as the powerful tools for journalists to interact and connect with the people. Therefore, it is true to say that journalists nowadays no longer write for the print media only.

The Guardian’s blogger, Greenslade (2009) stated that with the emergence of new media from time to time, the internet will be the single platform for people to receive audio, radio and television in the future. Plus, regarding to the future of journalism, he thinks that the newspapers are dead.

The Modern World

For centuries, newspapers have been a tool to spread information and news to the public (World Association of Newspapers 2004). With the changing forms of media, newspaper too had changed. Back in the olden days, newspapers were only full of printed texts with minimal pictures. However nowadays, the situation had changed. Layout, the arrangement of words, pictures and other graphics play important roles in conveying meanings as written text is no longer structured by linguistic means (Kress & van Leeuwen 1998).

Later on, new media such as radio, television and the Internet exploded the media scene. Newspapers were forced to re-evaluate their role as the primary information provider (World Association of Newspapers 2004). According to Greenslade (2009), young people nowadays do not see newspapers as a unifying element of the home. They no longer buy newspapers. Young people nowadays are so attached to the advanced technology and other new forms of media that even though with the emergence of online newspapers, young people still don’t even read them even if they go on the net. They no longer need the newspapers to keep them inform about the latest updates.

New challenges and opportunities are being created for the traditional media each day due to the technological revolution. Greenslade (2009) thinks that the newspapers are considered dead as there will be far fewer of them in the future. With its immediacy and amount of information available on the Internet, there’s no doubt that challenges will keep coming towards newspapers industry. However, I still think that the newspapers will remain an important tool for analyzing and reporting news and events to the public. As Murdoch (2006) said, “newspapers will change, not die.”




References

Greenslade, R 2009, ‘Survival of Media Platforms for Journalism’, The Media Report, viewed 18 November 2009, <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2009/2436717.htm>

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 1998, "Front pages: The Critical analysis of newspaper layout," Approaches to Media Discourse, p.186-187

Murdoch, R 2006, 'Rupert Murdoch - Newspapers will change, not die', The Independent Media, viewed 18 November 2009, <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/rupert-murdoch-newspapers-will-change-not-die-470581.html>

New Forms of Media Publishing

With the advanced technology available these days, it is true to say that our communication environment is slowly changing. According to Naughton (2006), all “old” media” were “new” media once. New forms of media emerge every now and then. From social networking sites such as Myspace, Friendster, Facebook and Bebo, to photoblogs such as Flickr, vlogs like Youtube, to newer forms of media such as Twitter and Tumblr.

Twitter

Source: http://shiftingcareers.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/technology/

Tumblr

Source: www.tumblr.com

Question like this were always asked – Does the new media alter the role of communication? There is no doubt that the emergence of new media does affect the role in one way or another. However at the end of the day, it brings benefits to both new and old media.

Most online publishing does not need to go through gatekeepers. Thus people are free to post whatever that is in their mind to the public. An example of video blogging gone wrong in Malaysia is the issue involving Namewee, a Malaysian student who studied in Taiwan.

Source: http://sean-the-man.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html

Namewee created a highly controversial remix video depicting the national anthem of Malaysia and posted it on Youtube (Lee 2007). The video contains some seditious lyrics making fun on some of the issues involving Malaysian civil servants, Malay prayers and corrupt policemen.

When Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi became the Prime Minister, he invited fellow Malaysians to speak up and tell the truth, no matter how unpleasant it is (Lim 2007). However, as we can see, the video has got Namewee into trouble. By speaking the truth, he was criticized and criminalize by the Malaysian government. Although he did not have any bad intention, the video has caused him trouble.

Without gatekeepers, problem like this would happen in the new media. No doubt the new media has given a lot of benefit to the users, but if it is being misuse, it will definitely bring trouble to the users.



References

Lee, MK 2007, ‘Artistic Expression and Negaraku’, Infernal Ramblings: A Malaysian Perspective on Politics, Society and Economics, viewed on 18 November 2009,

<http://www.infernalramblings.com/articles/Malaysian_Society/601/>

Lim, KS 2007, ‘Negarakuku rap – end the persecution mania and listen attentively to the legitimate grievances sung by Wee’, Lim Kit Siang for Malaysia, viewed 18 November 2009, < http://blog.limkitsiang.com/2007/08/20/negarakuku-rap-end-the-persecution-mania-and-listen-attentively-to-the-legitimate-grievances-sung-by-wee/>

Naughton, J 2006, ‘Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem’, Reuters Institute, viewed on 18 November 2009,

Online vs. Print Publishing

Online and print publishing are significantly different. No doubt with the advanced technology available these days, the future of online publishing will sure to change and it may also change our world (Colorado State University 2009). The process of reading from a printed page and online publication are different and is slowly changing.

According to Kress & van Leeuwan (2006, p. 204), reading is linear and strictly coded in compactly printed pages of text. They are designed to read line by line from left to right or top to bottom. On the other hand, non linear compositions like a webpage has less strictly coded reading path. Thus it shows the difference in the readings paths between online and print publishing.

Figure 1

Source: ancestry.com

Figure 1 is an example of a online publishing (linear). It is designed to be read line by line and it clearly shows the compact words and information on the page.

Web content is designed to read in an F-pattern. Users will usually read in a horizontal movement, starts from the upper part of the content. Then they will move the page down a little and read in a second horizontal movement. Lastly the users will scan through the content on the left side in a vertical movement. Through this reading path, it clearly shows that this is designed in a rough and general shape as readers of the online sites would want to read the content fast (Nielson 2006).

According to Nielson (1997), users reading rate from computer screens is 25% slower than reading from papers and they would feel unpleasant if there are too many words compact in the site. Therefore, web designers must be aware that the content of the web should not be flooded with too much words and information.

Figure 2

Source: The Star Online

Figure 2 is an example of a web version newspaper. The words are less compared to the print version and it contains other navigation bars and more pictures in it.

Through these two examples, it clearly shows the differences of online and print publishing. Content of the web should not include too much words and information, and it is designed in a less strictly coded reading path. On the other hand, print publishing has more information and words in it, and it designed to a strictly coded reading path.



References

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, Reading Images: Grammar of Visual Design, Routledge, London.

Nielsen, J 1997, 'Be Succinct! (Writing for the Web)', Useit.com, viewed 17 November 2009, <http://useit.com/alertbox/9703b.html>

Nielsen, J 2006, 'F-Shaped Pattern for Reading Web Content', Useit.com, viewed 17 November 2009, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html>