Reflections.......

As I was looking back before learning Issues in Publication and Design subject, I can say that I won’t able sharpen my skills in the design stuff such as designing factsheet, magazine article, website and the latest task that I’d done is the ‘Blogs’. This subject also help me to sharpen my skills and in being me creative and innovative person in lives. Besides that, after learning this subject, I realize that there is still a lot of things that I should experienced in gaining more knowledge especially with the evolving with the new media such as blogs, YouTube and so forth. This is somehow will allow me to educate myself in order to make an early preparation for my job environment as far as for my carrier I will need to practice all the skills by myself. Here, I still have the opportunity to be guard by my mentor and learning lots of things from them.

I have to admit that my experience in creating blogs was bit tiring and overall it was an interesting journey which I had the opportunity to create my own profile and sharing all the thoughts and ideas with other people especially the communication student and the people who is interested in this program. In addition, besides gaining knowledge, improves my writing and communication skills, I also help me to learn about media issues widely.

As Walsh (2006) explained in his article, print based text are no longer dominant and appealing to readers anymore since the emergence of multimodal text, which incorporates both important visual and verbal modes in making a document interesting to readers.

To be truth, the subject is killing me! As I didn’t have much skills and experienced in the new media, but after learning it for few months, I found that this subject is not quite hard as I think the generous lecturer and the course has help me a lot by being demolished by the new media, and surely I will keep my track and efforts to continue learning these stuff until I reach the volume of satisfaction in my education learning!!!

References:

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. 24-37

Media/Publishing issues

The rise of new media called 'YouTube'

YouTube and brands: How it relates to each other through media lives?

Source: www.youtube.com

I am probably of the internet junkies who rely a lot on the internet for information, especially information that come together with visual and text like YouTube. YouTube is one of the sources that which allow me to experience varying degrees of engagement with videos, ranging from casual viewing to sharing videos in order to maintain my social relationships. But somehow, these sites also may contain defamation, pornography, copyright violations, and material encouraging criminal conduct (Wikipedia, 2009)

Sinclair (2009) in her article from The Australian said that brands should be upfront about their advertising intentions on sites such as YouTube. In Australia, YouTube is keen to highlight the virtually unbranded videos released by advertisers, including a Nike video showing basketballer Kobe Bryant jumping over a car as well as paid ads. She mentioned that these brands can help to grab the YouTube audience attention and they also love watching stunts as well.

According to Nielson Net Ratings, approximately 4.3 million users view the videos every month, around 75 per cent are younger than 50, divided evenly into teens, 18-34 year-olds and 35-49 year-olds, making it a broad-reach medium.

Kress (1997, 2003) shows that, with writing, words rely on the ‘logic of speech’ involving time and sequence, whereas the ‘logic of the image’ involves the presentation of space and simultaneity.

While Walsh (2006), declares that images have other effects that are different from words, particularly at affective, aesthetic and imaginative levels.

Although I’m not of the YouTube lover, but I do find these sites as one of the interesting sites which allow me to view millions of entertaining videos from all over the worlds and despite of that, it might not be important for my daily lives but somehow it will helps in my assignment tasks and in improving my knowledge about other cultures, religions and so on.



References:
Wikipedia 2009, YouTube (Online, accessed 27 May 2009)
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube

The Australian online 2009, How You Tube ads can sneak up on you
(Online, accessed 27 May 2009),
URL: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25635275-7582,00.html

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. 24-37

Kress, G 1997, Visual and verbal modes of representation in electronically mediated communication: the potentials of new forms of text. In I. Snyder (Ed.) Page to Screen. Sydney, Allen & Unwin

Kress, G 2003, Literacy in the New Media Age, Routledge, London

Media function in today's lives

Source: www.image.google.com

As media has emerged extensively in today’s world, I am one of the audience who feel delighted and thankful because besides the internet media such as blogs, video sharing and others. Public mass such as newspapers, television and radio allow me to search other information during my offline day.

An article, ‘Relationship between food and media’, which was featured on ABC Radio National Media Report on 10 April, shows that media today’s has become a main dish in business major and is the best way to publicize their brands, products and others. He notes, one of the successful Restaurant’s owners in Brisbane, Philip Johnson, agrees that the media has changed his restaurant business and how it has grown his profile of food and cooking. But he admits that the media yet still has the negative impacts.

Reep (2006) states that readers do not read only the printed words on a page; they also "reads'
the visual presentation of the text, just as a television viewer pays attention nor only to the main actor and the words he or she speaks but also to the background action, noises, music, and other actors' movements. In an effective document, as in an effective television scene, the words and visuals support each other.

In my opinion, the mass media has help me to increase my knowledge about the world’s today and open my eyes to realize that there are still a lot of resources out there waiting to be implied in today’s lives. Although I found that this media, has promoted me to the real world, but sometimes I found that it could turn to bad impacts to me and the world as well. As the growth of mass media, has emerged widely, it could sometimes transmit a tacit knowledge, manipulating our mind for the benefit of a particular political party and the truth is that the media is not a watchdog that protect us from the powerful; it is a lapdog begging for scraps.

References:
ABC Radio National Media Report 2008, Relationship between food and media
(Online, accessed 29 May 2009),
URL: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/

Reep, Diana C 2006, ‘Chp 6: Document Design,’ in Technical Writing, 6th ed., Pearson Edu, Inc., New York, pp. 133-172.

Racism Controversy: Can Suharto replace the Jesus?

Tempo magazine cover 'Last Supper of Suharto'
Source: images.google.com.my

ONE of Indonesia's top news weeklies apologised about the cover of its latest issue, which depicts Suharto and his children in a composition mimicking Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper. The front cover featured a sketch of former president Suharto, who died last month, taking Jesus Christ's central place at a table surrounded by his three daughters and sons instead of apostles, triggering complaints from Christians. The Tempo chief editor, Toriq Hadad in his apology said that they had no intention of hurting Christians. They were only inspired by the composition of the Leonardo painting, and not in the concept or context of the event told in the holy bible.

Leonardo da Vinci's Paintitng, The Last Supper
Source: images.google.com.my

The Christians in Indonesia viewed the publication of Suharto’s Last Supper as an insult to their religion. They felt that wasn’t appropriate to do. Walsh (2006) mentioned that comprehending the cultural and social context plays a part in making meaning of a given text. Before publishing a certain article, publishers and even journalists must make sure that the article can be accepted by the public and would not rub them the wrong way.

The major reason why the Christians protested is because the picture represents Suharto as Jesus Christ, the god that they have faith in. Of course, every one of us here would be annoyed if someone is messing around with our religion and especially our god being compared with a norm people? This absolutely will raise anger on everyone’s heart.


Ethics in Context

Inappropriate visuals can lead to misinterpretation and can lead to ‘serious potential threat’ to society and diversity cultures Kress & Leeuwen (2006), so Pomsta (2003) suggest that people should have the ability to asses a situation with respect to an audience’s social, cultural or emotional sensitivity in avoiding such misinterpretation issues.

My personal opinions

According to Feijter (2008) , exploitation of religious themes or persons for the selling of products is deemed as morally wrong and it should not be done by anyone. I personally think that the cover of Tempo mimicking The Last Supper was absolutely wrong. This is because for people who didn’t practice the religion of Christians or whio is not familiar with the Holy Bible, should know that what people actually do, is both constrained by, and develops as a response to, the rules and conventions of a culture.

References:
Feijter, I 2008, ‘The Art of Dialogue: Religion, Communication and Global Media Culture’, LIT Verlag Berlin-Hamburg-Münster, (Online, accessed 30 May 2009), URL:http://books.google.com/books?id=gq2yJFu3EUAC&printsec=frontcover

ABC.net 2008, ‘Indonesian weekly apologises over Last Supper Suharto cover’ (Online, accessed 30 May 2009), URL:http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/06/2156269.htm >

Kress, G & Leeuwen, V 2006, 'Reading Images: visual communication', Routledge, New York.

Facebook and its benefits to the community

An article by BBC News, Facebook ‘improves social skills’ reported that a study has suggested that Facebook can encourage people to be more sociable. The researchers also discovered that these sites gave people more choice oh how they conduct relationships and was a way of storing biography and enhancing social memory. It has been told that the study showed many people used it to track people they liked or to find out what ex-partners were up to.

Facebook helps old friends keep in touch, the study found
Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Sara Williams in The Daily Collegian notes that students are improving their communication through social networks, such as Facebook, a skill the study found is essential for a successful career.

Compared to a single-mode of interface in which the user can only use either voice/ audio or visual modes, multimodal applications gives them multiple options for inputting and receiving information. This makes the service application much easier to use or more intuitive (Kirusa, 2001)

Walsh (2006) indicates that Internet sites combine animation, graphics, hyperlinks and so forth that allow users to navigate to multiple sites at once. However, these sites will make it easy for the predators or strangers to find them and pounce on any users that pose as vulnerable targets of abuse. Not just that, in 2008 cases, two women were murdered by their estranged husbands over a changed Facebook marital status and there is some other crimes reported that a man’s identity was stolen by hackers on Facebook who conned his friends out of more than $1,500.
All in all, parents should play an important role in order ensure their children safety in online sphere and we ourselves should make sure that our privacy settings always remain private to avoid such crimes.

References:

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. 24-37

Kirusa 2009, Multimodality (Online, accessed 6 June 2009), http://www.kirusa.com/multimodality.html

Williams, S 2008, Study: Facebook improves communication skills
(Online, accessed 6 June 2009),
http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2008/08/06/study_facebook_improves_commun.aspx

New forms of publishing

Is he patriotic enough to be Malaysian or just insulting the country with his 'Negarakuku' lyrics

Source: http://www.image.google.com/

Wee Meng Chee or commonly known as Namewee has hit Malaysia with his controversial song fused with the national anthem of Malaysia, Negaraku, which describes the state and the government. He is formerly an undergraduate student majoring in Mass Communication in Taipei.

Besides the ‘negarakuku’ rap video-clip, Wee had composed and performed hip hop music in various languages, and had released several songs in YouTube. The ‘Negarakuku’ song has lead anger to Malaysia community especially the Muslim. This is because according to Malay tabloid, Harian Metro, claiming that Wee’s song had mocked Islam and the mindset of Malay people. His comments were further directed at Metro, claiming that the paper did not understand the implicit meaning of his song's lyrics before concluding its nature (Wikipedia, 2007)

Freedom of speech here as defined by (Wikipedia, 2007), as the freedom to speak freely without censorship or limitation. But then today, the law and regulations has become more strict and since the country has been ruled by different political party.

In this issues, Wee should not be fully blame as stated in the freedom of speech definition, Wee is just voice up his own thoughts and ideas in the songs through his own perspectives with no intention to humiliate and insult his own country.

He may have expressed his patriotism in a wrong way, by showing his disrespectful to other cultures. MCA Youth chief Liow Tiong Lai said that Wee seemed patriotic he need to be guide to shoe his patriotism in proper way.

In my opinion, the emerged of YouTube has bring a lots of meaning and excitement to most of us. There a lot of benefits that can be find through these video-sharing technologies such as music videos, TV clips, movie clips, video blogging and so forth. Despite of that, these technologies also might turn to bad indications such as pornography, and others. So, my advice is that think first before creating something on YouTube because sometimes you might never know that something that you wish to CREATE is something that people don’t ever want to see!



References:

Thew, SK 2007, Negarakuku: Is it really necessary to extradite the student?! (Online, accessed 3 June 2009),
URL: http://www.skthew.com/2007/08/10/negarakuku-is-it-really-necessary-to-extradite-the-student/

Wikipedia 2007, (Online, accessed 3 June 2009) URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wee_Meng_Chee

Wikipedia, 2007, (Online, accessed 3 June 2009) URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech

There are various types of blogs, and each differs in the way content is delivered or written.
The media type comprise of (Wikipedia, 2007):

· Vlog - a blog comprising videos

· Linklog - one comprising links

· Sketchblog - a site which contain a portfolio of sketches

· Photoblog- one comprising photos

While the device has only one type which is the ‘moblog’; a blog which written by a mobile device like a mobile phone or PDA.

Meanwhile, some blogs focus on a particular subject, such as (Wikipedia, 2007):

· Political blogs

· Travel blogs

· Fashion blogs

· Project blogs

· Legal blogs (often referred to as a blawgs)

· Niche blogs

· Art blogs


The state of publishers can be categorized into two blogs (Answers.com, 2009):


Personal blogs - An ongoing diary or commentary by an individual, is the traditional, most common blog. Personal bloggers usually take pride in their blog posts, even if their blog is never read by anyone but them. Few personal blogs rise to fame and the mainstream, but some personal blogs quickly garner an extensive following. A type of personal blog is referred to as "microblogging," which is extremely detailed blogging as it seeks to capture a moment in time.

Corporate blogs - A blog can be private, as in most cases, or it can be for business purposes. Either used internally to enhance the communication and culture in a corporation or externally for marketing, branding or public relations purposes are called corporate blogs.


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.

There are currently 3 types of blogging communities which are the:


The 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. The one blog is owned by one owner or organisation. There may be more than one blogger writing in a blog, but this is not an aggregation of blogs. It is best exemplified by well known or ‘A List’ bloggers, but has expanded to key bloggers in particular fields such as Stephen Downes or The Knowledge Tree, in e-learning, or blogs run by an organisation such as Interplast or Anecdote. Technologically, these communities rest on one blogging platform and a single blog.



The Central Connecting Topic Community

Instead of a hub and spoke, the Central Connecting Topic Centric blog community is a network formation. 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). Beyond the visible membership of linked blogs is the wider and mostly invisible network of readers. This form is exemplified by groups such as food bloggers, mummy bloggers, travel bloggers and political bloggers with a particular party or issue identification. They are often second wave adopters who would be hard pressed to attract the large numbers of readers as the early ‘A list’ bloggers did. They may be far less interested in positioning themselves, as they are in the topic they blog about.



The Boundaried Community

Boundaried communities are collections of blogs and blog readers hosted on a single site or platform. Typically members register and ‘join’ the community and are offered the chance to create a blog. This boundary makes them the closest form to traditional forum based communities. Examples include the huge teen oriented site, MySpace.com, Yahoo 360, March of Dimes, Share Your Story and others. Often these communities have other tools such as discussion boards, social networking features, wikis and instant messaging built in. The blogs are part of the overall ecosystem. Because they are within a defined boundary, bloggers can see and easily access other blogs.


References:

Wikipedia 2007, Blog (Online, accessed 18 May 2009)
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

Answers 2009, Blog (Online, accesses 18 May 2009)
URL: http://www.answers.com/topic/blog

White, N 2006, Blogs and Community – launching a new paradigm for online community? (Online, accessed 19 May 2009),
URL: http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community

Blogging Phenomenon

Blogging and Design Issues

A blog is a Web-based publication of periodic articles, often subject-based or in diary form, typically combine text and graphics, with links to other materials and easy web publishing without needing to know much HTML.

In its simplest form, the blog might just consist of lots of links to whatever the author finds interesting on the Internet. From the cover of this week's Fortune magazine blares the headline "Why You Can't Ignore Bloggers." Merriam-Webster dubbed "blog" as the Word of the Year for 2004 while ABC News declared that bloggers are the People of the Year!

Trends and Types


The blogosphere is continuing to evolve and grow at a very rapid rate. According to Technorati’s 2008 State of the Blogosphere Report, “bloggers collectively create nearly one million blog posts each day, and half of bloggers believe blogs will be a primary source of news and entertainment in the next five years”. On the other hand, McCann Universal 2008 research indicates that about 184 million people world wide have started a blog and 364 million people read and blogs only.

There are significance differences between the trend in Europe, Asia and Malaysia. In Europe and Asia, there have been plenty of blogs dealing with business, technology and politics. Based on Technorati, the blogger statistics in Europe currently stand at 27 per cent and in Asia 13 per cent. Ramadas (2006) also, states that nearly half of those online in Asia own a blog. Malaysian and Asian bloggers currently are more interested in the entertainment site such as music, whereas in Europe, the blog phenomenon is more prevalent in music and computer based.

As we know there are several various types of blogs such as personal blogs, collaborative blogs, corporate blogs, topical blogs, spam blogs (splogs), podcasts and videocasts, and photologs. Personal blogs and corporate blogs seem prevalent in Europe, Asia and Malaysia.


Blogging Benefits to the Malaysia Community


There are several benefits that can be associated with blogging, which explains why there has been a rapid growth of blogs over the years. On of the main reason for the rise of blogs in Malaysia’s community is because of its ability to communicate and share information effectively with others at a low cost. Here. are the benefits of blogs to the community:

Education

Blogs allow the students or the bloggers to create their own personal diaries or forum to voice up their feelings, thoughts and ideas. Kennysia.com is of the famous blogs in Malaysia that provides variety of information and entertainment from all over the world and this will help to educate the people in Malaysia to improve their writing, communication and get to know other people culture in the region.

Politics

There are lots of politics blogs in Malaysia that relates to the human rights, social justice, media and journalism and so forth. For example, one of the well-known politics blogs limkitsiang.com, which featured about the politics issues in Malaysia that relates to the political party. With the presence of these blogs, it will help the politicians, lawyers, governments and others to gain information or latest news regarding the politics in Malaysia and these blogs will allow these people to voice up their thoughts or ideas on politics.

Social

In this new technology era, everyone should have their own blogs! As we can see nowadays, people tend to use blogs rather than using the traditional old diary to write about them or something. This is because they find that blogs can be publish through the internet that will allow another users to view it as it will help them to share their experiences and information with other people from all over the world. Compare to normal diaries, it can’t be publish to the public and the size has make difficult for the people to bring it everywhere they wanted. That is why blogs tend to be more flexible and convenience to use.

References:

Ramadass, V 2006, ‘Blogging phenomenon sweeps Asia’, Lowyat.NET: Malaysia’s Tech Enthusiast Resource Community (Online, accessed 15 May 2009),
URL: http://www.lowyat.net/v2/latest/blogging-phenomenon-sweeps-asia.html

Blogging-The Phenomenon, Types of Blogs, viewed 15 May 2009
<http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/01130/typesofblogs_othermedia.html>

Technorati 2007 & 2008, State of blogosphere (Online, accessed 16 May 2009),
URL: www.technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere

Vale, K 2006, Blogs: Benefits, Risks, and Exposures (Online, accessed 16 May 2006)
URL: http://web.mit.edu/itpartners/conf/spring2006/blogs.pdf

Document Design

Purpose

The blog is created to blending with purpose multimodal elements and to meet the needs of variety features related to publication and design. A major benefit of multiple modalities is that they allow us to experience learning in ways in which they are most comfortable while also challenging them to experience and learn in other ways as well. The targeted audiences are focused to all the students major in communication and those who want to increase their knowledge in document design.

What is a good document?

Realizing that a good document as Anderson (1987, p. 428) points out, is a document that helps readers read efficiently, emphasizes the most important contents, and encourages readers to feel good about a communication. A combination of other elements such as visual images, graphic elements, will enhance the audiences interest, and it is also agreed by Reep (2006, p. 134), that reader’s do not read only printed words on a page; but also “read” visual presentations of the text.

Having the same information in multiple places on a page, presented in different ways, is OK. Different readers use different strategies for finding what they want, and the goal is to help them find what they want, not to produce the one "correct" way. Once a reader finds something in one place on a page, they often will continue to look there on other pages. The 'Redundancy' principle in combining graphics and prose as elaborated in Schriver (1997) was applied to enhance the audience's understanding of my points.

By looking at this article, I can say that the present of the visual grammar such as colors, angle, perspective, line and so on would be more interesting rather that the written-text alone because it will allow the audiences to read imaginatively and effectively (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996; Simpson 2004; Unsworth 2001)

In my presentation, I’ll try to make my words precise and shorts, most importantly to conclude all sentences into summaries. This is because audiences will usually look for the ‘shorter parts’ in the reading. In fact, fluffy sentences will only makes the document complicated and decrease the reader’s interest and understanding. That is why I’ll try to visualize the text into other elements such as ‘images’.

Now we all knows that pictures says a thousand words but do we all agree with this idea and according to Walsh (2006, pg. 30) in her discussion of the picture book said that images can fills the page. A function of a picture is to create a meaning and helps the audience or readers give an understanding of what it is trying to say. For example take a look of the picture below:

By looking at this picture without any words, readers will know that it is a picture of a car accident. In this context, pictures play a very important in conducting a good document design. This is because it’s generating connection between the readers and the text.

Last but not least, I notice how much easier the list use in my slides for the readers to read. I provide less information so that the conclusion will be written in short statements to enhance my audience understanding.

REFERENCES

• Anderson, P, Brockmann, RJ, & Miller, C (Eds), 1983, New essays in scientific and technical communication : Research, theory, practice, Farmingdale, New York, Raywood.


• Reep, Diana C. 2006, ‘Chp 6: Document Design,’ in Technical Writing, 6th ed., Pearson Edu, Inc., New York, p. 133-172.


• Simpson, A 2004, Visual Literacy: A Coded Language for Viewing in the Classroom, PEN 142, Peta, Sydney.
  
• Unsworth, L 2001, Teaching Multiliteracies Across the Curriculum, Changing Contexts of Text and Image in Classroom Practice, Open University Press, Buckingham.
  
• 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.
  
• Schriver K.A 1997, Dynamics in Document Design: Creating Texts for Readers, Wiley Computer Pub., New York.