New forms of media publishing

Nowadays, many turn towards Facebook or Twitter or Youtube for not only entertainment source, but also for news updates. People do not read newspaper like before, instead they turn to websites like 'The Star Online' or 'MalaysiaKini' for news update. Even Facebook status can be a news update! These statement are targeted on teenagers and also young adults. There are, however, adults who are 'converting' their source of entertainment and also news update to new media.

Not to mention that communication between people are so much more easier in comparison to the last century. Once you are online, you can chat via MSN, Facebook, emails and so on. Phones are getting more and more improved to the sense that there are phones who can replace a mini laptop because of it's high tech functions.

Walsh (2006) stated that 'affordances' of the words on the text is a form of communicating with the reader. What is 'affordance'? The definition of 'affordance' in the print-based texts is the narration or the 'telling' of the text to the reader. The difference of 'affordance' between old media and new media is as follows.

Figure 1.1: Table explains the differences between old media and new media in the angle of 'affordance'

The examples of 'multimodal' texts in non-print version are film, video, on-screen texts like emails and so on. The rising popularity of watching a video instead of reading a novel is proven to be true. It is terrifying to see that nowadays, kids turn to visual instead of print-based text. However, words are still needed to explain the idea to the reader/audience. As stated by Schriver (1997), 'Words and pictures that complement one another employ different visual and verbal content, and both modes are designed to work together in order to help the reader understand the same main idea.'

Reference:

1) Walsh, M. 2006,” ‘Textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts,” Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol.29, no.1, p.24-37. (UNISA electronic library)

2) Schriver, K.A. 1997, Chapter 6 in Dynamics in document design.