Blog Functions, Usability, & Audience Expectations, Newspaper Publishing...

indiana.bilerico.com/2009/09/top...logs.php

To getting more concern about the news around us and getting more knowledge about the world, newspaper is the best media for us to get more information by words and the authentic images.  Obviously, news are important for us by knowing the things that we do not know but follow the new trend, blogs are comes to helping or maybe replace the value of newspaper to transform the news with more attractiveness and effectiveness.

According to the article from Mediashift, 2010, Roland Legrand said that “Newsrooms Should Use Blogs to Battle Bloat, Complexity”.  Why blogs? Large newspapers are very complex organizations. Producing a newspaper involves a newsroom with reporters, editors, news managers, graphics editors, a picture desk, several layers of people and technology for the printing process, et, whereas in blogs, it is only use on maybe one or two journalist to write the articles and posting some images or video that are showing more reality. Running a blog is much simpler than producing a newspaper and website. Blogs started out as one-person projects and have developed into a formidable media form. If you want to get up-to-date news and analysis about technology, chances are that subscribing to the feeds of a number of tech blogs will help you more than reading mainstream newspapers (Roland Legrand, 2010).

Nowadays, readers are prefer to read a short article with full of images or video that can brings more effectiveness for them. As we all know, readers in new trend starting to become more and lazier on reading news with full of words, they will more interest in reading a page of article with colorful images and video with sounds. According to walsh( 2006, pp. 30) agreed that, Internet sites vary in the modes they use, but they have the potential to combine words and images in complex structures with logos, …video clips, graphics, music… Kress and Van Leeuwen(2006,pp. 17), also mentioned that “ Most text now involved a complex interplay of written text, images and other graphic or sound elements.

On the other hand, telling news with using video and soundtrack, it will be attract more interest and attention from audiences rather than reading words by words. Based on Gary P. Handman(2002, pp.5) said, video brings pictures, motion, sound, and timing to storytelling. Good video stories rely on more words, and use scenery and action to flesh out a story in ways that words may not do as well.

In fact, some of the newspaper already created their own blogs inside their web pages, for example, New Straits Time in Malaysia. It is useful for create a blogs which recover all the news around the world, because by follow the new trend and technology, I believe that blogs is the way that people more acceptable in future.

NST's blog

           

References List

1. MediaShift 2010, [online], Newsrooms should use blogs to battle bloat, complexity, viewed 8 Nov 2010, available at:

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/04/newsrooms-should-use-blogs-to-battle-bloat-complexity112.html

2. 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, pp. 30.
3. Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, 'Chapter 1: The semiotic landscape: language and visual communication' in Reading images, pp. 17: the grammar of visual design, 2nd edn, Routledge, London.
4. Gary P. Handman, 2010, [online], Video collection development in multi-type libraries, chp 1, pp.5, viewed 8 Nov 2010, available at:

http://books.google.com.my/books?id=kPHWCv0KSrsC&pg=PA5&dq=video+rather+than+words&hl=en&ei=fLDeTO6jHsHBcZmrkJcM&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=video%20rather%20than%20words&f=false

Facebook Privacy, Personal Data Protection Regulation

www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Hor...fter-all

Facebook is becoming a part of our life, what I always seen that, the people in the school or cyber café even me; myself will always “Facebook” must be came first when the line just connected. I love to share my life, photos, everything that related with me on the Facebook. Besides that, I like to stalk people’s facebook account to look around their updated information and life by everyday and month, but I didn’t notice that, facebook is irrupting our privacy although it had provided the function to lock your information as privacy, and I slowly becoming a stalker to stalk others information too.

Recently, an article reported on ABC News,2010 wrote that Facebook has admitted that some of its applications have been transmitting user information to advertising companies. For example, when you are playing some games or quiz on facebook, it will automatically pop out something that are asking you to choose whether you want to publish your information on facebook or not. If you pressing allow, which mean your information may automatically send it to the advertising companies.

According to King (2001, pg. 19) said that, internet is a world there have no specific people to take care of it, no specific control and people to take over the responsibility for it. So, as an internet user, we have to know how to use the way to protect our privacy by our self not depend on the website itself. Jeremiah Grossman (2008) indicated that, there is no longer privacy guarantee for people who sharing or uploading something online.

Besides sharing information to companies, we must be aware of stalker and hacker too. Stalker and hacker are totally involved in our daily life in anytime and anywhere. People who keep check other’s profile with their personal information or life, even you or me is counted as a stalker behavior. According to Wallace Wang (2006, pg. 189) indicated that, stalkers can be anyone, your neighbor, relative, stranger, etc, few of the stalkers have the motivation to pick a stranger at random…. Facebook even others social networking, there have to guarantee the security system for our privacy information, you, yourself is the way to keep your information as privacy as well.

www.thesecuritypub.com/tag/faceb...privacy/

             

References List

1. ABC News 2010, [online], Facebook Admits Privacy Breach, viewed 7 Nov 2010, available at:

           http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/10/19/3042594.htm

2. Reddick, R, King, E, 2001, The Online Journalist: Using the internet and other electronic resources, 3rd edition, Harcourt College Publisher, United State of America . 
3. Jeremiah Grossman, 2008, [online], Jeremiah Grossman, viewed 7 November 2010, available at:

http://jeremiahgrossman.blogspot.com/

4. Wallace Wang 2006, [online], Steal this computer book 4.0, ch. 4, pg. 189,viewed 7 November 2010, available at:

http://books.google.com.my/books?id=nMwy2y_4VFcC&pg=PT207&dq=internet+stalker&hl=en&ei=kpneTOX1BYH5cfG22ZcM&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=internet%20stalker&f=false

Time to kick sexism out of advertising

Advertising is use to promotes a product, service or event to its target audience by using visual printing, voice, text or graphic. (Sheri Cyprus,2010). For past year ago, advertising is using creative idea and graphic to grab the attention from audience, but nowadays, everyone are using sexist as a selling point, especially making something that are derogatory towards women.

  Based on Kathryn Perera, 2010 indicated that advertising are plays on gender stereotypes now. Many ads have a sexist and offensive tone or content especially showing the how sexy of women. Usually this is hidden behind a semblance of subtlety: the nakedness of the female character is loosely connected to the product in question; the gender stereotype is reinforced in an indirect or "knowing" way. These sexist images is become a part of our modern life, the sexist images of women are becoming more and more common.

 Besides the humiliate images about women, some of the text on advertisement are totally showing gender stereotyping, especially for women. For example, The campaign of World Cup advertising, wrote that "EXPLAIN YOUR FOOTBALL PASSION TO THE MISSUS. IF YOU CAN GET A SIGNAL IN SOUTH AFRICA" which mean, women are stupid, no matter how many ways are you using to explain the football passion to your girl’s friend, she will not receive the message from you, just like the poor signal in South Africa (Kathryn Perera , 2010).

www.cpltraining.co.uk/fruit/default.aspx

 Looking at such advertisements, occasionally, they main contain different group of information on the same page. In many times, the upper section of the page visualizes the ‘promise of the product’, the status of glamour it can gives on its users, or the sensory fulfillment it can bring. The lower section presents the product itself, providing some factual information about it or where it can be obtained. According to Kress and Van Leeuwen (1998), the concept of Ideal and Real, explains the information value of top and bottom page of an advertisement. They mentioned that the upper section tends to make some kind of emotional appeal and to show us ‘what might be’; while the lower section tends to be more informative  and practical, showing us the ‘what is’.

In my opinion, the concept of gender stereotyping are based on the different background of people with different knowledge even culture, so their view of the gender stereotyping which in differently. Me, myself as a Chinese, the view of the gender stereotyping in Chinese is more concern on traditional and serious way. As a traditional Chinese man even people in new trend, their mind concept is ‘women have to stay at home as a housewife rather than learn more things than men’. According to Schriver (1997, pg. 364) indicated that an individual act in that it depends critically on the reader’s (advertiser and people who sexism) unique knowledge, attitudes, and values.

Next, to avoid the gender stereotype in advertising even anywhere, we have to think some useful idea to solve the problem. Such as, provide the rights of women and bans the advertisement that relate with sexual, drugs and immoral suggestions.

References List

1. Kathryn Perera 2010, [online], Time to Kick Sexism Out of Advertising, viewed 7 Nov 2010, available at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/29/kick-sexism-out-of-advertising

2. Shriver K.A 1997, Dynamics In Document Design, Creating Text for Readers: The Interplay of Words and Pictures: The Immediacy of Interpretation, Ch.6, pp. 364, Wiley Computer Pub., New York
3. Kress, Gunther & Theo van Leeuwen (1998): 'Front Pages: (The Critical) Analysis of Newspaper Layout'. In Allan Bell & Peter Garrett (Eds.): Approaches to Media Discourse. Oxford: Blackwell.

New forms of media publishing

New forms of media publishing

The new ecosystem will be richer, more diverse and immeasurably more complex because of the number of content producers, the density of the interactions between them and their products, the speed with which actors in this space can communicate with one another, and the pace of development made possible by ubiquitous networking (John 2006).

The new media technology today, internet has become the new form of media publishing. For example, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and alternative online newspapers have altered the roles of Journalism or communication. Although there have a lot of the new form media publishing, but for here, I choose to more concern about YouTube.

 Firstly, when someone asking what is about YouTube, I believe that, most of the people can answer it. The reason is, YouTube is a famous medium which can share and upload any video as you like in any time and any place with free. According to YouTube factsheet, their user base is broad in age range, 18-55, fifty-one percent of their users go to YouTube weekly or more often, and 52 percent of 18-34 year-olds share videos often with friends and colleagues. From the amount of audience shows, the chance to publishing of political in new media is not that surprising. YouTube is the easier way for us to click in the news that we want to concern on, by anytime and anywhere, especially, we can always watch the latest news with graphic and sound but not in words. The reason is, people nowadays are lazier to read the news by words to words, especially political news.

In understanding the newest trend in newest forms of media publishing (YouTube), journalists in print may get influences because of the trend. A new organism has arrived in our media ecosystem and existing organisms are having to accommodate themselves to the newcomer. And vice versa. Interesting, complex – and essentially symbiotic – relationships are emerging between the new medium of blogging and more conventional print journalism. My conjecture is that this is beneficial to both (John 2006).

Issues concerning the new trend

YouTube is the best way to publish all the video as we like, including those video clip about issues can publish it easily and fastest by using new media rather than print media. For example, a video showing about “girl throwing puppies into the river” is the most popular video clip that spreading in vlog, after the video uploaded, it has attracted over thousand of viewers to concern on. Especially for those commenters who dislike the attitude of that girl on animal abuse, there would like to post or upload their own comment video on YouTube to discuss about that case. In understanding, we know YouTube is the easier and fastest way to show what is happening around the world in time or any times rather than miss out the news from any print media or something that does not publish on print media.

http://www.christmastree.org/youtube.jpg

 Here is the video (girl throwing puppies into the river):

and another link that related with that case:

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/296836

References List

Video (YouTube)

• Youtube, 2010, ‘ girl throw puppies into the river’, viewed 29 September 2010,

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNo-dFGyh9c&feature=related

Whole video of girl throwing puppies into the river

• Digital Journal, 2010, ‘ Girl throwing puppies into the river’, viewed 29 September 2010,

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/296836

• Naughton, John 2006, ‘Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem’, viewed 29 September 2010,

              http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/discussion/blogging.pdf

Blogging Community

Online community has been an important part of the Internet, mainly forming around email lists, bulletin boards and forums. In recent years, the ascendancy of blogs has introduced a new platform for communities (Nancy White 2006).

How do you create a blogging community?
According to Nikkis (ehow), it mention that create a blogging community have to:
 Refer to others blog and get the idea from them. You will also discover blogs that you share common interests with.

 Leave comments on other blogs. By leaving a comment, you are also leaving a URL for others to find you.

 Reply to your comments. When people comment on your blog or your posts, mean they have read and want a reply from you. A simple comment, "Thank you for visiting my blog" is enough to show people you are engaging with them.

 List your blog in directories. There are many blog directories on the Internet to choose from. A simple Google search for "blog directories" will bring thousands of results.

 Write often. In fact, most professional bloggers will advise that you post more than once a day. To get a chance for keep your readers longer, posting is the way to interest them by every day.

 Make your posts more entertaining. Firstly, we have to understand about your reader’s interest, and make an interesting topic to grab their attention. The important is, people are hated to read an article by words with words and using formal type in blog post, readers are prefer to read your opinion and the words shows personally .

 Start marketing your blog. To have a signature link to your blog on message boards and forums.

http://www.dom4j.org/photos/blogger.png

 The types blogging communities

Based on Nancy White (2006), in recent years, the ascendancy of blogs has introduced a new platform for communities. Blog based community shows up in three main patterns with a wide variety of hybrid forms emerging between the three. The Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community, the Central Connecting Topic Community and the Boundaried Community.

1: Blog Based Communities

By looking at the patterns we can start thinking about strategic approaches to blogs as a medium for community development. For example, technology/design - the impact of how the blogging tools are deployed and their impact on the community and etc.

2: Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community

·         This is the first form of blog based community to emerge as readers begin returning to early bloggers’ sites, commenting and getting to know not only the blogger, but the community of commentors, it is own by owner but they also can be own by more than one blogger to write.

3:Central Connecting Topic Community

·         This form is a community that arises between blogs linked by a common passion or topic. The boundary of the network is a combination of subject matter (domain) and membership (community).

4: Boundaried Communities

·         The chance to create a blog is by the members register and ‘joins’ the community. This boundary makes them the closest form to traditional forum based communities. For examples the sides that youth usually go, MySpace.com, Yahoo 360, March of Dimes, Share Your Story, and Farmer’s (2006) Australian free educational blogging sites Edublogs, ESLblogs, Uniblogs and Learnerblogs.

Structure of one blogging community

From the social networking started in our social life, everyone starting to create their own blogging community as a part of their life. The most famous news blogger in Malaysia Jeff Ooi produced a lot of local news and voicing out his opinion to shows human rights, besides that he is also dare to criticism on the news that no local newspaper dare to publish or voice out. According to Onn Yeoh 2005, Ooi is hardly a traditionalist but his blogging style follows the classic blogging formula of Excerpts + Links + Commentary, initially used by tech geeks in the late Nineties when they wanted to share information and articles they found with other geeks.

So that, the main audience mostly is the citizen in Malaysia and those pro government to focus what he is really comment about. Why he becomes a famous blogger in Malaysia, the reason is, he creates a thing that less even none people are dare to do, but most of the people would like to cover on it.

References List

·         The knowledge Tree, 2006, ‘Blogs and community- launching a new paradigm for online community’, viewed 28 September 2010

http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community

• eHow, 2008,’ How to Build a Blogging community’, viewed 28 September 2010 http://www.ehow.com/how_2152382_build-blogging-community.html
• Oon Yeoh, 2005, ‘ Jeff Ooi’, viewed 29 September 2010, http://oonyeoh.squarespace.com/chrome/2005/12/3/jeff-ooi-screenshooter.html
• Asian correspondent, ‘Jeff Ooi Blog’, viewed 29 September 2010, http://asiancorrespondent.com/jeff-ooi-blog/

Classification of blogs

Classification of blogs & opinion about the most appropriate classification approach

Classification system

Blog can be classifying into many different type to full fill different interest of audience. The classification types include:

Subject matter:

1.    Politics – Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak (http://blognajib.blogspot.com/)

2.    Fashion- Vivi shop (http://vivi-shop.blogspot.com/)

3.    History – Malaysian Economy History Blog (http://malaysiaeconomy.blogspot.com/)

4.    Law- law blog (http://www.lawblog.com/)

5.    Food – masak-masak (http://masak-masak.blogspot.com/)

Device:

1.    Moblog (mobile blogging)- Flickr (http://blog.flickr.net/en/2009/12/)

Media type:

      1. Vlog (video logging)- YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/)

      2. linklog (Link or URL)- currybetdotnet (http://www.currybet.net/delicious.php)

      3. Sketchlog (about graphic, sketches, art) –deviantART (http://www.deviantart.com/)

      4. Tumblelogs (Link with media mix) - Nay, a tumblelog (http://a.tumblelog.com/)

Status of publishers:

1.    Business blog- NRG blog business-networking (http://business-networking.blogspot.com/)

2.    Corporate blog-  Redfin Corporate Blog (http://blog.redfin.com/)

Identifying unique type and compare the classifications

As we know most of the blogs are combinations of the styles, types which makes identifying unique types difficult. For example, to differentiate the blog of linklog and thumblelog is the hardest. The reason is, the type between both of them shows similarity, especially both of them are using the link to view your favorites post. For easier way to differentiate the type of the blog, we have to more focus on the style, graphics, photos, format and their target audience. For example, if the blog are uploaded the photo about cloth and fashion with clearly information and the most detail of the cloth, so which mean it is a fashion blog. 

Blog

What is blog?

In 1997, Jorn Barger is the first users and creator of weblogs. In 1998 there were just a handful of sites of the type that are now identified as weblogs (so named by Jorn Barger in December 1997) (Blood, 2000). For now, weblogs is becoming a diary for people to share about their daily life, a discussion station, or a market to create business.

What’s the size of current blogosphere?

Since 2004, Technorati is a website known generally to state out the rate, and analyzing the trend of Blogosphere every year. In that study shows that, the rate of the Blogosphere had growth every year.

According to Technorati 2009, based on the survey demonstrates shows, the growth of the rate in blogosphere is influencing the way information from business to goes well in communities. Every year, during the time of revolutions and elections were organized by blogs, the strongest and the highest rate of the Blogosphere, bloggers are blogging more than ever.

Technorati 2007 is tracking over 70 million weblogs, about 120,000 new weblogs being created worldwide each day and it has about 1.4 blogs created every second of every day.

                                                                   http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000493.html

As we all know, the size of the blogosphere will only increase in everyday, the chance to get down the rate are barely.

What’s the trend in eg. Europe, Asia & Malaysia?

There are so many different kind of social networking around us, for example: the most popular social networking which people like to log in in every time and every second - facebook, twitter and many others, because of this, it may affect the size of blogoshpere. Based on (Technorati 2009), the entire blogosphere, with a focus on professional bloggers that founded is:

• Professional blogging activities
• Brands in the blogosphere
• Monetization
• Twitter & micro-blogging

What types of blogs are prevalent in certain countries?

According to Pew Internet, in UK, the majority of the bloggers like to describe about their life and experiences as their primary topic, but in the topics of politics and government are came in second. While in Malaysia, according to Press Microsoft Malaysia 2006 said that, entertainment and social connection is the reasons to make them blog, (63%) for entertainment, and 49% for a connection with their friend and family. In India, majority of online users reading blogs to stay informed about world events. The most they enjoy to read is about technology (Dikshit 2006).

What are the benefits of those prevalent blogs (as above) to the community, eg. benefits of political/ social blogs in Iranian or Malaysian context?

Why political and social blogs brings benefits to Malaysian? It’s giving us a chance to voice out our opinion and what citizen need to against the government with a simple speech and comment (human rights). Besides that, government can more understanding about human rights easily, so that, it is a win- win situation for us to create a blog.

References List

1. Microsoft Press Malaysia, 2006,' Women Rule in Malaysian Blogosphere', viewed 28 September 2010

http://www.microsoft.com/malaysia/press/archive2006/linkpage4337.mspx

2. Nevillehobson, 2006, 'Latest blog trends from Pew Internet', viewed 28 September 2010 http://www.nevillehobson.com/2006/07/19/latest-blog-trends-from-pew-internet/
3. The Hindu, 2006, 'Interesting blogging trends in India revealed in new survey  http://hindu.com/2006/11/28/stories/2006112800452200.htm

    4. Technorati, 2009, 'State of blogosphere 2009', viewed 28 September 2010

         http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2009-introduction/