Reflection

In this 10 posting that i had done, i had learnt a lot about the issue of publication and design.

For example, the importance of having to know the difference on how a reader view a webpage and a book. Not to mention the difference of a print-based page and multimodal text is different in the sense that print-based relies on 'telling', for example the vocabulary used, the layout and design of text and so on; while multimodal text relies on 'showing', for example, the graphics used, the angle shot, the colour of the text and so on.

I also learnt that we have to be careful of what we published not only on print-based text like newspaper, but also online. Informations and rumors spread like wildfire. So, we have to take extra precaution on our postings. We would not want our future employers to dig out negative postings by us, do we?

Power of Social Media

In the article ‘How Social Media, Internet Changed Experience of Japan Disaster’, by Dorian Benkoil (2011), he talks about how effective technology and multimedia is today, in comparison to the a few years back. Benkoil took the example of the earthquake and tsunami which hit Japan in the year 1995. He stated that it was hard to get information during that era, unlike now, which is just a click of a mouse away. Not to mention that, now we can get information about other countries, too, even though we are very far apart. We can also get to watch an event that is occuring live at that moment. Benkoll felt that media has change the way on how people share the event or disaster that happened.

As the world advanced in years, so does the technology as people invent more and more advance technology. Who would have thought that people can call another person who is thousand miles away without having to use fire and smoke as signal?

Figure 1.1: Example of Facebook page

Source: http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/009189.html

Look at how advance we are now! We can surf the web without having to plug in the modern cable, we can still get to know the condition and living style of a person without having to see them face-to-face. We can communicate with other, group conference without having to meet up and a place. We can also read a book or search for information without having to go to library. However, people need to consider the multimodality of text when they published text on the Internet for readers to read. Despite the technology, there are certain type of multimodality text that is different between print-based text and also multimodal text. For example, print-based text rely on the way of ‘telling’ of the text based on the vocabulary, grammar, layout of text and chapter and so on; while multimodal text rely on ‘showing’ using graphics, layout, colour, angle of screen and so on.

Reference:

1. 1. Benkoil, D., 2011, How Social Media, Internet Changed Experience of Japan Disaster, Public Broadcasting Service, Available: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2011/03/how-social-media-internet-changed-experience-of-japan-disaster-074.html. Last accessed 11th June 2011.


2. 2. Walsh, M., 2006, The ‘Textual Shift’: Examining the Reading Process with Print, Visual and Multimodal Texts, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, Vol. 29, No.1, pg. 24-37

Kids' Magazine

Yes, apparently we have magazines for kids, too! Based on the article ‘Children’s Magazine Cater to True Early Adapters with Mobile Apps’ by Susan Sivek (2011), she stated that parents are having a hard time chasing after the children’s pace on media and technology while the kids are barely sweating with their growing phase. She also added that games are offered in the mobile devices for the kids, but parents have no trouble in catching up with games. But do not take it wrongly, kids magazine are not like teenagers and adults’ magazine. The aim for the kids’ magazine is to educate instead of informing about latest fashion trend, food and so on.

Now, instead of relying on print magazine, it moves to devices app. For example, Ladybug’s Bookshelf iPhone app has an interesting idea of providing stories with animation so that the kids will get to read the story on their own or have the device to read to them. Another key point for this device is to allow young readers to communicate globally through the kids’ magazine apps.

According to Reep (2006), one of the ways to boost usability is by using the colour elements. However, she warned that author shouldn't rely too much on colours because colour-blind people will not be able to understand the element; hence this usability will not work on them. Kids prefer colourful pages instead of mature colours. Hence, kids website are normally seen with colours in the site, then the website or apps will be able to attract kids attention and they will be interested in being ‘educated’ using the apps provided. For example, figure 1.1 shows a kids’ website while figure 1.2 is an adult website.

Figure 1.1: Example of Kids Website

Source: http://www.digitaltrends.com/how-to/ten-best-websites-for-kids/

Figure 1.2: Example of Adult's Magazine

Source: http://www.ntchosting.com/internet/website.html

According to Kress & van Leewen (1998), ‘all texts are multimodal’. They also state that verbal and non-verbal text should work together to get a better result. An example as shown in the article described above, the apps provided have not only text but also sound to blend in so that the kids can use the devices to read the text by themselves or have the device to read for them. Hence, the creator of the educational apps should be aware of this to ensure the kids will be attracted and be educated by the apps.

Reference:

1. Kress, G, van Leeuwen, T., 1998, Front Pages: (The Critical) Analysis of Newspaper Layout, in Approaches to Media Discourse, eds A Bell, P Garrett, Blackwell: Oxford, pg. 186-219.



2. 2. Reep, D.C., 2006, Technical Writing: Document Design, 6^th Edition, Pearson/Longman: New York, pg. 133-172



3. 3. Sivek, S.C., 2011, Children’s Magazines Cater to True Early Adopters with Mobile Apps, Public Broadcasting Service, http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2011/05/childrens-magazines-cater-to-true-early-adopters-with-mobile-apps137.html. Last accessed: 8th June 2011.

Faulty Image

Figure 1.1: Shot of Egyptian Newspaper Al-Ahram's alteration of image of President Murbarak

As you can see in Figure 1.1, Egyptian’s President Murbarak was shown walking in front of US’s President Obama, along with the heads of Isreali, Jodianian and the Palestinian on a red carpet. Al-Ahram is the newspaper that is responsible of publishing this faulty image. It was found that the original image was taken in the White House in US with President Obama leading the way while President Murbarak was seen at the side, instead of walking in front. The example of the original image can be seen in Figure 1.2. Although the image was later replaced with other picture, the damage was already done.

Figure 1.2: Original image of event in White House

As Schriver stated that to avoid the readers from having to guess and interpret the text wrongly, it is important to choose the right image. An excellent example as shown above has done damage not only to the newspaper itself, but also to the country’s reputation. This issue, in my opinion, will degrade the newspaper and also pull down the newspaper’s credibility.

The credibility of newspaper is important because it is one of the important value of a newspaper that attracts reader to not only read it, but be able to trust on whatever that is written on it for newspaper is one of the way that brings the world together by informing other people about what is going on globally.

Journalist of the article is to be blamed for this error of the article. It is against the journalist rules and ethnic to publish any untrue article. The gatekeepers of the newspaper weighted the heaviest blame and responsibility because it is their job to be the ones who keep track of the articles published. The role of a gatekeeper in the news industries is a person that selects the news to be published or broadcast Cassidy, (2007). This statement is also supported by a research done by Abdulla et al. (2002) on the credibility of the news media. They viewed that the deficiency of editorial and gatekeeping of the newspaper will cause problem on the credibility of the article and newspaper.

So, we have to be careful of what we publish, as a professional journalist or not, so that any problems can be avoided.

Reference:

1. Abdulla, R.A., Garrison, B., Salwen, M., Driscoll, P., Casey, D., 2002, The Credibility of Newspapars, Television News, and Online News. Available: http://com.miami.edu/car/miamibeach1.htm. Last accessed: 5th June 2011.

2. Cassidy, W.P. 2007, Online News Credibility: An Examination of the Perceptions of Newspaper Journalists. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 12(2), article 7. Available: http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue2/cassidy.html. Last accessed: 5th June 2011.

3. DailyMail.co.ul, 2010, Egyptian Newspaper ‘Photoshops’ Obama Picture to Show Their President Leading The Way at White House Peace Talks. Mail online. Available: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1312439/Egyptian-newspaper-Al-Ahram-photo-shops-Obama-picture.html. Last accessed 7th May 2011.

4. Schiver, K.A. (1997). Dynamics in Document Design: Creating Texts for Readers. New York: Wiley Computer Pub. Pg.: 361-441. Last accessed: 7^th June 2011.

Malaysia's Newspaper Brings Embarrassment

Recently, Japan was traumatized by the event where they watched tsunami and the earthquake destroyed Tōhoku. The death toll was devastating and while the nation were reaching out to assist Japan in recovering, one of the Malaysia’s newspaper’s cartoonist, Mohd Zohri Sukimi from Berita Harian decided to be a joker and published a cartoon of an Ultraman running away from the jaw of Tsunami. What an embarrassment! Many criticized the cartoon. Some Facebook users created a Facebook page petition to show their disappointment on the issue.

Figure 1.1: Cartoon found in Berita Harian shows Ultra-man running away from the jaws of Tsunami.

Source of image: http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/8471258-earthquake-and-tsunami-cartoons-malaysia-abusing-japan-tsunami

The article above brings out the ethical issues in publishing. According to a definition of ethical issue in writing and publishing by King (n.d.); there are a few ethical issues that are marked as important issues, for example, fraudulent publication, the ever-famous plagiarism, cloning of publication, authorship, protocol or manners and also potential of creating conflicts and so on. This proved that Berita Harian had violated the ethnics of publishing as stated above, which is the potential of creating conflicts and also protocol or manners.

Such image by Berita Harian will create dispute and tension among the nations and Malaysia is really lucky that nobody did anything worst than criticising Berita Harian and their idiocy. The matter could have been worst.

I am surprised that the editor of Berita Harian allowed such incident to happen and even more surprised that no action were taken other than Berita Harian issued an apology and the image being taken off Berita Harian. In my own point of view, I relate this issue to the ownership of media. Imagine if the private non-government owned Newspaper Company who is responsible of the Berita Harian incident, the license would have been stripped off that instant!

What is wrong with the world and power!

Reference:

1. King, C.R., n.d., Ethical Issues in Writing and Publishing, Available: http://www.ons.org/Publications/CJON/AuthorInfo/WritingSupp/Ethics/. Last accessed: 5^th June 2011.
2. Wong, P.M., 2011, Berita Harian Issues Public Apology Over Tsunami Cartoon, The Star Online Newspaper, Available: http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/3/14/nation/8262608&sec=nation. Last accessed: 4^th June 2011.

Classification of Blog

Classification system

Subject matter:

1) Politics

2) Fashion

3) Technology

4) Personal life

5) Law

6) History

Media type:

1) Vlog - Post made up entirely of video blog post.

2) Linklog - A website a blogger maintains a list of links and tagged for reference, in web log or blog format.

3) Sketchlog - Post made up of sketches.

4) Photo blogs - Most posts are photographs.

5) MP3 blog - Posts about music.

and so on.

Device:

Moblog - A combination of mobile and blog. Example: Twitter

The acceptance of readers for the blogger to blog about different topics blurred the circle of different types of blog communities. With that, readers have more variety of topics to read, and the circle of friends or acquaintance will widen via comments on the post.

Reference:

1) Ellis-Christensen, T., n.d., What is a Moblog? http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-moblog.htm, viewed 8th May 2011.

2) Thegeminigeek.com, n.d., What is a Blog? http://www.thegeminigeek.com/what-is-a-blog/, viewed 8th May 2011.

Blogging as Current Phenomenon & Benefits to The Community

It was found in a research paper by Erik Elgersma and Maarten de Rijke that in recent years, the amount of blogs is estimated to have doubled approximately every half a year. It was cited in their paper that Technorati report that about 11% of net users are blog readers and 70,000 new blogs are seen created daily! It was also reported that the blogosphere amount is between 20 and 24 million blogs at time of writing. In other words, the number of blogs have, indeed, increased.

Below shows the image of web trends.

Figure 1.1: Trends in web

The thin red line represents blog trends. As you can see, the web has become something so complicated that a single simple chart to represent web trend couldn't be found.

Figure 1.2: Top 15 blogs and the trend in Malaysia

It appear that blogging has become more of a 'guy' thing. I'm not being sexist here, you can observe that the top 3 trends of blogs in Malaysia is of a personal trend, by the blogger Kenny Sia, Technology by the blogger Bryan and Humour by the blogger name Hemmy. I still remember back then when I was still in high school, blogs are girls stuff. We either blog about our daily lives, we also blog about fashion trends, so on.

In Malaysia, blogs became one of the loophole for the citizen to voice out freely. Of course, that is just the bright side of it. It became apparent that people blog about political topics because Malaysians do not have much choices when it comes to voicing out their opinion on topics like this. Websites like 'MalaysiaKini' is the best example to explain my point. It is one of the website that many visits to know the current update of politic in Malaysia.

Reference:

1) Dawson, R., 2007, The Trend for Trend Maps, http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2007/02/the_trend_for_t.html, viewed 7th May 2011.

2) Elgersma, E., Rijke, M.D., n.d., Learning to Recognize Blogs: A Preliminary Exploration, http://www.sics.se/jussi/newtext/working_notes/05_elgersma_derijke.pdf, viewed 7th May 2011.

3) Gaman, 2007, 50 Most Influential Blogs in Malaysia, http://www.sabahan.com/2007/02/06/50-most-influential-blogs-in-malaysia/, viewed 7th May 2011.