Reflections

As a student of Issue in Publication and Design from UNISA, there is a few things I’ve learn as a Blogger or publisher. First and foremost is writing a topic that would attract the audience. Audience respond is so much of concern as I will tend to write something that there will be “people” reading what I wrote. From here, it directed me to write a post that is from credible source to convince my reader and this is the second thing I’ve learned. Thirdly is that, it enhances my interest to continue as a blogger because you just have the freedom to convey what your opinion is. At the same time, it triggers me to think more critically as to put my focus on what the reader want. In conclusion, writing a good blog might not be easy but writing a unique blog is what we going to do.

YouTube Video Can Save The World

A news article entitled “YouTube hit gives Nestle the finger”, written by Gemma Breen stated that “A gory YouTube video has prompted food giant Nestle to stop buying palm oil from companies that destroy Indonesian rainforests.” Breen mentioned that a campaign by Greenpeace was launched 2 months ago through YouTube advertisement. The video shows about deforestation cause by excessive palm oil production and which Nestle company are sourcing from them. Breen pointed out that Nestle company had some action by announcing that only source from those company who had their own plantation. Nestle company also ensure other supplier not buying the palm oil from Sinar Mas which is the company that admitted for deforestation. The author says that Greenpeace stand firm on the issue as it is confrontation issue to them. Nestle did try to withdrawn the Greenpeace video from YouTube but it will only speed up the number of online posts worldwide, said Mr Campbell.

From this news article, it is obvious that the power of media through YouTube is so strong that it had been a threat to even a big company like Nestle. If you notice, YouTube have more viewers comparing to TV broadcast. According to Mashable website, an article written by Pete Cashmore (2006), “YouTube and other online video sites are stealing viewers away from TV”. Referring to the survey done, 43% of online video viewers said that they watch less TV because of YouTube where 20% of them said watch “even lesser” (2006). Therefore, YouTube had gained more audiences than TV which indirectly causes online streaming would be more appealing to the society nowadays.

Publicity through YouTube had been a choice for the media as it attracts more people and would be able to convey their message to a wider range of people. Hence, precaution is needed for any uploaded video as it bring the effect either to save or to destroy the World.

References:

Breen, G 2010, YouTube hit gives Nestle the finger, ABC News, viewed 16 June 2010, <http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/05/18/2902503.htm>.

Cashmore, P 2006, YouTube vs TV, Mashable-Social Media, viewed 16 June 2010, <http://mashable.com/2006/11/27/youtube-vs-tv/>.

Newspaper Will Survive Although Online News & Broadcasting Are Monster

In this article entitled “How The Newspaper Business Killed Itself” written by John C. Dvorak (2010), stated that newspaper business are going to graveyard. The author emphasized on The New York Times as they charged the reader $360 a year which is consider unworthy for him. John said that “The decline of the big metro daily began with the advent of television. The Internet has sped up that deterioration by highlighting the curious redundancy of the news.” And due to this, most of the newspaper publishers are actually publishing the same news all over the world. So what happen is that some publisher will ask the reader to pay in order to read further, but John strongly said there is not a need to do so as you can find the same source of news at another publisher who gives free of charge. It can be done in the Google search.

John insisted this “What really killed the papers was their dependency on classified ads” as this is what John believe to have make them suicide. Apart from that, the author also mentioned that the paper quality is decreasing for they could just come out with anything on the newspaper and hope to gain attention from the reader. John said that “what staff was left on the paper all seemed politically motivated in a very singular, unbalanced, and preachy way. It had no appeal for readers”. Hence, John criticized The New York Times for trying to make money through publishing random fact and depending on classified ads.

In my opinions, I do not totally agree with what John had pointed out that Newspaper will no longer survive. According to a survey done by Rich Menga (2009), Local News, first place still the newspaper then only followed by Internet. Whereas World News, Internet is the first but newspaper gets the third place. From here, it can be determined that consideration of audience preference was important. What Times newspaper had done as they changed to broadcast local news referring to the article, I would say it is a wiser choice. No point focusing on the World News for people is more interested in the things that happened around them. The reason lies behind what the audience perception is. “Similar percentages of people in college (70%) and among senior citizens (68%) agreed that local television news “shows us the way the world really is.” Similarly, large numbers of college students (63%), middle/high school students (74% to 88%), and senior citizens (75%) agreed that television news “shows as much violent news as it does because that’s what’s really happening in the world.” (Roger D. Klein, 2003).

Hence, newspaper would not totally wipe out as they would be the first party to provide the latest news to the society.

References:

Dvorak, JC 2010, How The Newspaper Business Killed Itself, PCMagazine, viewed 15 June 2010, <http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2360209,00.asp>.

Menga, R 2009, Internet vs. TV vs. Radio vs. Newspaper, PCMech, viewed 15 June 2010, <http://www.pcmech.com/article/internet-vs-tv-vs-radio-vs-newspaper/>.

Roger, DK 2003, Audience Reactions to Local TV News University of Pittsburgh, viewed 15 June 2010, <http://academic.csuohio.edu/bracken_c/COM226/local%20news.pdf>.

Food Feeds Human As Well As Media

Based on the ABC news, The Media Report (2008), an interviewed made from Antony Funnellto ask about food and the media, few people were involved in the conversation whom are Elizabeth David, Philip Johnson, Trevor Eastman, Stephanie Wood and Maeve O’Maera. In this interview it can be seen that there are various different media popping up. The most recent media and quite new is the food media.

Food media is getting more and more popular as most of the channel will have one programme dedicated for food media which talks about foods such as Iron Chef. Therefore, the presentation of the food is much more concerned said Elizabeth. Antony says that “food is everywhere. It fills our newspaper supplements and our television screens and even the blogosphere.” Which mean that human can’t live without food; furthermore people crave for good and delicious food. Although it is a kind of activity or a lifestyle that cannot be lack of, the media uses that to attract more audiences. Food media not only gives people a new idea of preparing a meal but it does affect restaurant business. A very good example given was Philip Johnson who owns a restaurant called E’cco Bistro. Johnson stated that “it's been a huge bonus for us… it's all changed when there was obviously lots of other media were in on it, whether it be television, magazines, not just the paper, radio, whatever, and then obviously it became easier to have that spotlight shone on you if you were good at what you did”.

Apart from introducing different foods at particular restaurant, food media also comes out with programme showing the audience how to cook variety of dishes. I would think that is good because it is a kind of entertainment as well (Antony). However, there are also problems as the food media trying to broadcast across the world to different country. The main problem is that

languages are different, therefore they need translation but translation might differentiate from the original message. For example, Maeve O’Maera quoted this from the American version of Iron Chef,

“What is he cooking now? It's a carrot, yes, we've got confirmation, it's a carrot”.

It is a direct translation I would say.

Nowadays, people started to blog about food too. They are introducing their

friends where which food that they’ve tried and experienced so that their friend might grab a chance to try on. Stephanie Wood said this “who has the most passing interest in food can express themselves, talk about what they've eaten at restaurants, share their recipes, share their photographs, under family folklore I suppose, seems to be a fairly large part of it”. Agreed nowadays that food blogger are increasing.

In conclusion, the food media would apparently became a media people would like to expose more. Thus, food is what we need, food media is therefore lifestyle.

References:

Brown, A 2010, Iron Chef, Food Network, viewed 16 June 2010, <http://www.foodnetwork.com/iron-chef-america/index.html>.

Davies, A 2008, Food and the media, ABC News - The Media Report, viewed 15 June 2010, <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2009/2436729.htm>.

Tweet to Blog or Blog to Tweet?

An article entitled “Blogging is so yesterday, politicians turn to Twitter” written by Syed Jaymal Zahiid published by The Malaysian Insider. In this article, Zahiid was trying to bring the point that blogging are no longer catching up with Twitter, microblogging. Zahiid believed that it was brought up by Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s Sodomy II trial. He mentioned that it is used by most of the politicians and the number of viewer is increasing tremendously.

(Source: Technorati.com)

Zahiid gave the reason of Twitter is more attractive as blogger’s followers are updated to what is happening. It is also more convenient as Twitter could function through 3G mobile phone.

Hence, people can get updated where ever they are. Zahiid emphasized that the advantages of Tweeting which is that the blogger could post up their opinions, and point of view towards certain things and immediately their subscriber acknowledged whereas it is impossible for televisions and newspaper to perform likewise. Zahiid pointed out that Ibrahim Suffian, director of independent polling house of Merdeka Center agreed on using Twitter for it can connects with the voters instantly. However, Zahiid stated that blogging have an advantage in providing in depth information as it was what PKR communications director Jason Chong said. Hence, Jason supposed that Twitter could use to promote blogs.

In my opinions, I would agree that Twitter would be a good media to convey messages to the audience as it can be easily access at anywhere, “Twitter users also use social media more in such locations as cars, restaurants and restrooms” (Crowd Science, 2009) and get up to date or connected in a split second. Many times the politicians tend to be hideous of what they think because it would be troublesome to conduct a press conference just to pour out their thoughts. According to Apryl Duncan (2010), he said “Sending out your press release will help the media decide if your story is worthy enough of coverage”. This means that you might not be able conduct a successful press conference for the sake of giving opinions. With the help of Twitter, whatever comes to the mind, people will know it through the posts.

I would say that to have both Twitter and blogs keep updating as for one functioned as updating news and another for giving information. Although Twitter had seems of rapid growth, but still the benefits of blogging should not be neglected.

(Source: Technorati.com)

Thus, I will think that what Jason Chong stated quite true, we can use Twitter to encourage people to read our blog as this is what the statistic shown of most number of people do on Twitter.

References:

Duncan, A 2010, Organizing a Successful Media Event, About.com, viewed 15 June 2010, <http://advertising.about.com/od/publicrelationsresources/a/handlemedia.htm>.

Social Media Study: Twitter While Driving 2009, Crowd Science, viewed 15 June 2010,

<http://www.crowdscience.com/blog/article/social_media_study_twitter_while_driving/>.

Zahiid, SJ 2010, 'Blogging is so yesterday, politicians turn to Twitter', The Malaysian Insider.

Good design for screen genre

In the cyberspace world nowadays became more and more competitive as in people will not easily notice your post or presentation. Simply because there are too many people do likewise. Website document design therefore is a very important element to draw people’s attention to what you going to present. Theoretically by referring to Diane Reep (2006), the audience or readers do not only read your document’s content, but they also look into your visual presentation of the text, which is mostly how the text was arranged and presented to the audience. This is because “in an effective document… the words and visuals support each other.”(Reep, D 2006)

As comparing to the basic design principles stated by Diane Reep, in the Assignment 1 presentation there are a few slides which had a good visual presentation.

For example, slide 3 from our group presentation.

From this slides, it is not only text based but also visual element to attract audience to read. However, the arrangement of the visual perception might have a little messy. The audience might not interested in reading afterall.

Another example,

This is a good example with simple visual aids and easy to understand. According to a survey done by John Morkes and Jakob Nielsen (1997), relationship of humor and personality in a document keeps the readers interested and well entertained, thus it increased your audience attention.

Lastly, an example of a text based slide which the reader hardly dwell into. There might have visual presentation but it is kind of ‘boring’ for the reader.

References:

Bernhardt, A. S 1986, Seeing the Text, College Composition and Communication, Vol. 37, No.1 (Feb., 1986), pp. 66-78.

Morkes, J & Nielsen J 1997, Concise, SCANNABLE, and Objective: How to Write for the Web, useit.com: Jakob Nielsen's Website, viewed 18 April 2010, <http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/writing.html>

Reep, D n.d, Document Design, Technical Writing, New York : Pearson/Longman, c2006, Ch. 6, pp. 133-172.

New forms of media publishing

In the olden days, media could works through few medium, either newspaper or TV news. However, due to the technology in the cyberspace nowadays, media industry could seem to be expanded through online. Maybe it is for the convenience purposes, but no one expected the growth would be that rapid.

In the year 2010, the new media trends are no longer BBC news or CNN news, but guess what, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter hits to the top of the world. For example, Twitter alone grew 1,382% year-over-year in February 2009 from 2007 (Armano, D 2009). According to Digital Media Buzz website (Djavit, N & Newnes, P 2009), Facebook, YouTube and Twitter had been the newest trends. The issues pertaining to it is that they replaced personal email. This means that Google Mail, Hotmail, Hoover (In UK) and many other e-mails somehow are degrading. It can be foresees that in the future, they will be no longer exist.

Founded on Naughton, John (2006), an article entitled ‘Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem’, had stated that the emergence of new media ecosystem such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and etc had somehow affecting much of the business world nowadays. This include business models, newspaper and even politics (2006).

References:

Armano, D 2009, Six Social Media Trends for 2010, Harvard Business Review, viewed 18 April 2010, <http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2009/11/six_social_media_trends.html>.

Djavit, N, & Newnes, P 2009, Top Digital Trends For 2010, Digital Media Buzz, viewed 18 April 2010, <http://www.digitalmediabuzz.com/2009/12/top-digital-trends-for-2010/>.

Naughton, J 2006, Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem, viewed 18 April 2010, <http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/discussion/blogging.pdf>.

Types of blogging communities and methods of building blogging communities

Referring to Anthony, a writer of The Travel Tart website (2009), he defined blogging communities as a community with their own identity and belonging welcoming anyone to join in and find out more (2009). Basically, it means that an online communities who blog about their interest to allow other people to view and commenting one another.

A few ways of creating blogging community through software or reader community; In Webpodge, there is an software called Drupal will need to be installed first. Then activate the Blog Module. Followed by installing TinyMCE WYSISWYG Editor module to enable editor in blog posts. After that, installing Image Attach module to give an option on uploading pictures or images. Lastly, embracing your own creativity by creating community tags, give each user a Blogroll and install buddylist for the bloggers to update on their friends’ blog (Webpodge 2007).

Apart from that, blogging community can be created by building a reader community. This can be done through driving the traffic to your blog. Having a community of your peers who enjoy what your blog has to say and respect you as part of the blogosphere (Nikki S 2008).

According to Nancy White (2006), an e-community specialist, there are three types of blogging community;

a) Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community - Only one blogger (can be owned personally or an organization) with either commentary participants or readers. Usually the owner are someone who is well known, holds the most authority. The readers/ commentors are fully depending on the owner.

b) Topic Centric Community – A network formation and is topic based. Different bloggers may come together with the same common topic. For example, Global Voices community.

c) Boundaries Communities - Collections of blogs and blog readers hosted on a single site or platform. The blogs are part of the overall ecosystem. For example, Myspace.

References:

Anthony 2009, What is Blogging Communities?, The Travel Tart, viewed 17 April 2010,<http://www.thetraveltart.com/what-is-a-blogging-community/>.

How to Create a Blog Community Website with Drupal 2007, Webpodge, viewed 17 April 2010, <http://webpodge.com/2007/03/02/how-to-create-a-blog-community-website-with-drupal/>.

NikkiS 2008, How to Build a Blogging Community, eHow, viewed 17 April 2010, <http://www.ehow.com/how_2152382_build-blogging-community.html>.

White, N 2006, Blogs and Community – launching a new paradigm for online community?, The Knowledge Tree, viewed 17 April 2010, <http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community>.

Classification of blogs & opinion about the most appropriate classification approach

As we know there are a few classification of blog.

· Subject matter

o Politics

o Fashion

o Food

o Technology

o History

o Law

o Travel

o Sport

· Device

o Moblog is a mobile blogging application for Windows Mobile (WM) devices. Sending pictures from a cameraphone or mobile device. For example, Flickr. MoBlog currently supports Blogger, WordPress.com and Live Spaces. (WordPress 2009)

· Media type: (Different types of blogging 2008)

o Linkblog - Social bookmarking. For example del.icio.us.

o Podcast – Audio recording, MP3 format and served through RSS feed enclosure. For example, Utterz and Odeo

o Vlog or Video Blog - Video recording video formats like mp4, wmv formats. For example blip.tv, YouTube, and etc.

o Microblog - a short text message which may or may not contain a shortened URL. For instance Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce

o Miniblog / reBlog – Limited amount of content of blog. Usually it is shortened version of normal blog. For example Tumblr, reBlog

o Liveblog - covering some type of live event like a sports event, press conference, tv show, and etc. For example, Scribblelive blog.

· Status of publishers: (Blogging 2006)

o Business blog

o Corporate blog

o Personal blog

o Collaborative blog

o Spam blog

Based on Simmons (The Media Report, 2008), many bloggers nowadays evolved with different kind of blogs especially news blog. Simmons said that eventually they started news by email and few blogs but mostly local one with the intention of providing news for people. Later on, the population of broadcasting news through blogs had grown bigger and bigger in America and United Kingdom. The control of these blogs is needed as suggested by Simmons.

In my opinions, definitely we will look at all kinds of features of a blog, topic, style, format or audience. Topic could attract audience at the first place. People tend to look at the audiences respond or view which indicate how interesting that blog is. Besides that style and format were taking into consideration no matter it is personal life experience or facts. Blog were originally designed to promote your company or yourself to establish yourself as an authority (Wkriski 2005).

References:

Blogging The Phenomenon 2006, ThinkQuest, viewed 17 April 2010, <http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/01130/typesofblogs_textbased.html>.

Funnell, A & Simmons, M 2008, A taxonomy of blogs, The Media Report, viewed 19 April 2010, <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript>.

Sampath's Mindspace 2009, Word Press, viewed 17 April 2010, <http://sampath.wordpress.com/moblog/>.

The 8 different types of blogging in 2008 2008, HMM, viewed 17 April 2010, <http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20080124/5040>.

Wkriski 2005, The Real Purpose of a Blog, ToolBox for IT, viewed 17 April 2010, <http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/it-career/the-real-purpose-of-a-blog-4214>.

Blogs as current phenomenon & benefits to the community

According to BlogCritics (2009), current size of blogosphere is more than 2,900 writers, 94,000 articles and 725,000 comments. Comparing 2008 to 2009, there are 68% increases in the number of blogs (Lijit 2009). The latest trends of blog are politics, business and technology. For example, based on Open Europe Blog (2010), in Europe country, mostly the blogs are about politics and Europeans policy. In Malaysia, mostly people blog for their friends and family.

Referring to Word press website, there are several types of blogs, such as personal blogs, politic blog, private blogs, business blog and etc (2010). However, personal blogs, corporate blog and politic blog are usually prevalent in Europe and Asia.

In the Technorati website, an article written by Matt Sussman, states that among the bloggers population, 54% are Part-Timers, 32% are Self-Employeds and 14% are Corporates. According to the survey done, there are 17% of bloggers blogging for their source of income (2009).

Source: Technorati.com

This means that usually the professional blogger blog about interesting fact to attract people’s attention to ear some extra income. Either they work for their company or it could be personal as well. The benefits of blogging is that they could have extra income and also for prestige purposes. People could be famous once they produced good blog.

References:

BlogCritics 2009, Eric Olsen, viewed 17 April 2010, <http://blogcritics.org/>.

Jalichandra, R 2009, State Of Blogosphere 2009, Technorati, viewed 17 April 2010, <http://technorati.com/blogging/article/richard-jalichandra-keynote-blogworld-2009/>.

Open Europe Blog 2010, London, viewed 17 April 2010, <http://openeuropeblog.blogspot.com/>.

Types Of Blog 2010, Word Press, viewed 17 April 2010, <http://en.wordpress.com/types-of-blogs/>.