Reflection

Throughout the past eleven weeks, I have gained practical knowledge on design and publishing issues through all the discussions carried out on this blog. As a blogger, there are few matters that need to be taken into considerations before publishing to ensure effective delivery of message to the readers.

Firstly, writers must be well informed of the existing publishing ethics to ensure their writing content does not violate any legal rules and regulations. Secondly, background of audience, purpose and the context need to be taken into account before preparing documents. It is important for designers to be culturally sensitive in producing design documents. Last but not least, as explained by Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006), design documents today consist of multimodality. Hence, designers need to incorporate various elements, such as images and audiovisuals aside from texts, in their document content.

Indeed, all the discussions in this blog have given me a better understanding and insight of design and publishing matters. I hope this blog would provide useful information for those who seek to acquire more knowledge in the mentioned subjects. Thank you.

Reference:

Kress, G and van Leeuwen, T 2006, ‘The semitoic landscape: language and visual communication’, Reading Images, pg.16-44.

The Power of Social Media

It comes to no surprise that most of my peers today no longer seek news updates from newspapers. The first thing that we normally do in the morning after waking up; open our laptop/ PC/ smart phone to check on social networking sites for any interesting updates. Inevitably, social media has become part of our daily lives. Personally, my daily social interaction is inseparable from Facebook and Twitter. The two social networking sites are on constant check throughout the day to keep myself updated with the latest happenings around.

New media, as defined by Chun and Keenan (2006), is “an interactive medium or form of distribution as independent as the information it relayed.” The difference between new media and old or traditional media lies on the presentation of the content it presents, in which new media has it all digitized. Digitality, interactivity, hypertextuality, dispersal and virtuality are the qualities of new media (Lister et al 2003).

Today, we live in a globalized world with new media as a major part of it. Aligned with the earlier statement, Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006) mentioned that most documents today incorporate a mixture of text, images and other graphic or sound elements. In today’s era of globalization, we can use various modes of communication to deliver messages to others. Walsh (2006) added that readers utilize their senses; sight, hearing, tactile, kinaesthetic in interpreting multimodal texts.

It came to realization of how powerful social media in disseminating information when the recent Tsunami disaster hit Japan earlier this year. Within few hours of the occurrence, news about the destruction spread like a wildfire on various social networking sites (Benkoil 2011). Twitter users all across the globe filled the timeline of the micro-blogging site by sharing reports, concerns and prayers through their tweets. The hash tags used in Tsunami-related tweets such as, #prayforjapan, #Tsunami, Sendai, NHK World, Tokyo Disneyland became Trending Topics on Twitter for several consequent days since the disaster occurrence (Magnier 2011).

Social media has indeed allowed people all over the world to access immediate news updates about the disaster. With all the interactive contents provided; raw pictures and footages of the affected victims and places, social media brought more depth in reporting that brings the audience’s experience to a whole new level.

In Malaysian context, most major newspapers have embarked on social media as well. Take The Star as an example. Aside from the print version, the Malaysia’s number 1 English newspaper has an online site (http://thestar.com.my) that is constantly updated with latest news reports along with interactive pictures and video clips. The Star has a twitter account (twitter.com/staronline) for those mobile users who would like to access their news conveniently from their smart phones.

References:

Benkoil, D 2011, How Social Media, Internet Changed Experience of Japan Disaster, Media Shift, viewed 8^th June 2011, <http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2011/03/how-social-media-internet-changed-experience-of-japan-disaster-074.html>

Chun, WHK and Keenan, T 2006, New Media Old Media: A History and Theory Reader, Routledge, London.

Kress, G and van Leeuwen, T 2006, ‘The semiotic landscape: language and visual communication’, Reading Images,pg.16-44.

Lister, M, Dovey, J, Giddings, S, Grant, I and Kelly, K 2003, New Media: A Critical Introduction, Routledge, London.

Magnier, M 2011, Twitter response to Japan earthquake, tsunami is fast widespread, Los Angeles Times, viewed 8^thJune 2011, <http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/11/world/la-fg-japan-quake-twitter-20110312>

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.

New Media, Political Crisis and Democracy.

I can still clearly recall about two years ago, a fire incident took place in my previous campus. There was no injured victim or serious damage caused by the misfortune. Interestingly, merely few hours after the occurrence, a senior of mine posted a video recording of the fire evacuation process on his YouTube account. It was very efficient of him to post the raw footage up to the video sharing site almost immediately after the actual event happened. This would not have been possible without the existence of new media. From the perspective of a media student, his act of capturing the event and sharing it as a piece of information is considered as a form of citizen journalism.

It is no doubt that the emergence of citizen journalism sprouted from new media. Glaser (2006) explained the term ‘citizen journalism’ as a form of reporting by individuals with no professional journalism training, who utilize modern technologies and Internet as their tools to disseminate information. The reporting can come in forms of blogs, pictures, pod casts and videos; basically, new media.

New media has been proven to play a significant role in contributing to political shift in the Middle East countries. Many street protesters recorded the anti-government rallies and uploaded them to social networking and video sharing websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube for the rest of the world to see. These amateur footages were also aired in Al-Jazeera and gained worldwide attention on the political issues in the Middle East. The abdication of Egypt’s president, Mubarak would have never happened without the help of Facebook, Twitter, Google and YouTube, as expressed by Wael Ghonim, Google executive and cyberactivist, who is also a supporter of anti-government protests in Egypt (Relaxnews 2011).

Internet allows information to be disseminated interactively to individuals across the globe with no hierarchical and geographical boundaries. With these characteristics, Internet has the power to dissolve political control. Internet provides access to social networking sites that act as a platform for individuals to interact with each other to identify and discuss societal issues, and make a change to political situation; also known as public sphere (Habermas 1991). Raboy and Dagenais (1992) added by stating that media act as agents of social communication by which a crisis is made public, and the media-crisis relationship is the key factor in the struggle for democracy. Internet is undoubtedly a major contributor in supporting democracy in political practice.

In local context, alternative media namely, MalaysiaKini and Malaysian Insider serve as platforms for Malaysian citizens to champion freedom of speech and encourage the society to be vocal in expressing their opinions on political matters.

References:

Raboy, M and Dagenais, B 1992, Media, Crisis And Democracy: Mass Communication and the Disruption of Social Order, SAGE Publications, London.

Relaxnews 2011, Social media, cellphone video fuel Arab protests, viewed 8^th June 2011, <http://techcentral.my/news/story.aspx?file=/2011/2/28/it_news/20110228100840&sec=it_news>

Habermas, J 1991, The Structural Transformation of Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Buroeis Society, MIT Press, United States, viewed 8^th June 2011, <http://books.google.com/books?id=e799caakIWoC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false>

Glaser, M 2006, Your Guide to Citizen Journalism, Media Shift, viewed 8^th June 2011, <http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2006/09/your-guide-to-citizen-journalism270.html>

Photojournalism Ethic: Real or Fake?

Many might not notice that the news-magazine section in book stores are getting filled with more and more various choices of newspapers and magazines. The pressure to win readers is becoming more competitive for each media outlet. Take gossip tabloid as an example. Hollywood magazines prey on celebrities for newsworthy articles or often enough, just their photographs. There are cases where celebrities became the target of paparazzi, who were found responsible for manipulating and publishing their photos to sell their magazines with 'juicier' content that appeal to the readers. One of the latest case was Kim Kardashian's photoshopped picture displaying her fake baby bump published in a US online entertainment site (Gossipcop.com 2011).

Photo manipulation appears to be one of the major ethical issues in visual reporting, or also known as photojournalism. (Patterson and Wilkins 2008). With the advanced digital technologies available today, alteration of pictures can be done instantly by anyone who is familiar with Photoshop or any other photo-editing software. To avoid being deceived, viewers need to be more critical in analyzing news contents that circulate in our existing media today.

Al-Ahram, Egyptian’s daily newspaper was found guilty of committing unethical conduct of photo alteration in its news report. The state-run newspaper published a manipulated photograph of US President Barack Obama walking on red carpet along with Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian leaders for the Middle East peace talks conducted in the White House. The original image displays President Barack Obama leading the group by walking in front, whereas the altered picture depicts Egypt President Hosni Mubarak walking ahead from the rest. There was no acknowledgement by the Al-Ahram to address that the image has been manipulated (BBC 2010).

Bauder (2009) stated that in media ethics, journalists must always deliver accurate, impartial and truthful reporting to the public in fulfilling their professional duty. It is arguable that media ownership and advertisers do affect the objectivity of news reporting (Truth Amnesty 2011). Many media outlets are restrained from publishing any reporting that can potentially harm the advertisers or the media owners.

Relating to Al-Ahram case, the newspaper serves the interest of its owner, the Egypt government, instead of disseminating honest reporting for the public. Hence, Al-Ahram’s conduct of photojournalism in the discussed news article is seen as unprofessional and unethical.

The role of existing media today, particularly the mainstream press has somehow turned from watchdog into 'lapdog'.With more giant media corporations abusing their ownership power to control the news content disseminated to the public, media integrity is subject to ethical question.

References:

Bauder, J 2009, Media Ethics, Greenhaven Press, Michigan.

BBC 2010, Egyptian newspaper under fire over altered photo, viewed 8^th June 2011, <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11313738>

Gossipcop.com 2011, Kim Kardashian "Knock Up" Story Takes The Wrong Angle, viewed 8th June 2011,

Patterson, P and Wilkins, L 2008, Media Ethics: Issues and Cases, 6^th edn, McGraw-Hill, New York.

Truth Amnesty 2011, Media Ownership And Control, Viewed 8^th June 2011, <http://truthamnesty.com/2011/03/20/media-ownership-and-control/>

Cartooning Gone Wrong

How often do you come across articles in newspapers and you wonder,

“Why is this allowed to be published? Is it ethical?”

These questions did strike readers of Berita Harian, when the local newspaper published a controversial cartoon of the fictional Japanese superhero character, Ultraman fleeing from an approaching Tsunami. The cartoon was issued in the newspaper not long after the Tsunami disaster hit Japan. It resulted in public backlash against the newspaper, as the cartoon was deemed as “inappropriate” and “distasteful” (The Star 2011).

Berita Harian eventually issued a public apology for publishing the cartoon and explained that it had no intention to disrespect the Tsunami victims in Japan. The caricature could have possibly disrupted diplomatic relationship between Japan and Malaysia, but fortunately it did not.

To some, the cartoon may seem to depict nothing but a witty remark, and I am personally one of those readers who responded by merely smiling at the caricature and flipped to the next page. This leads to the question; why individuals interpret visuals differently from one another?

Kress and Leeuwen (2006) see images in the realms of realizations and instantiation of ideology for articulation of ideological position. In other words, every image conveys a contested ideology. According to social semiotic theory of representation, signs or visuals are produced based on cultural, social and psychological background of the designers, or also called ‘social actors’. Aside from several aspects of the readers’ background, designers need to also take situational context into consideration to ensure the message is delivered to the viewers.

Publishing ethic involves media outlets to self regulate in deciding on which materials considered as ethical to be published. If media outlet were proven to be responsible for unethical publishing, government would take action by possibly revoking or suspending the publishing permit.

This case happened before to one of the Tamil daily newspapers in Malaysia, Makkal Osai in 2007 when it published a caricature of Jesus Christ holding cigarettes and beer in its Quote of The Day section. The drawing was intended to convey to that those who repent would go to heaven. The Tamil daily was charged under section 6(2) of the Printing Presses and Publication Act 1984 (PPPA) and suspended for one month by the government (Malaysia Kini2007).

References:

Kress, G and van Leeuwen, T 2006, ‘The semiotic landscape: language and visual communication’, Reading Images, pg.16-44.

Malaysia Kini 2007, Makkal Osai Suspended, viewed 8^th June 2011, <http://www.indianmalaysian.com/sound/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=602>

Mei, WP 2011, Berita Harian issues public apology over tsunami cartoon, The Star, Malaysia. viewed 8th June 2011, <http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/3/14/nation/8262608&sec=nation>

New Forms of Media Publishing

Facebook, Twitter, Youtube are no longer foreign to many of us today. The existence of these online media platforms allows a new form of publishing other than using the traditional media.

Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) mentioned that there is a shift in visual literacy, from old to new style. In today’s era of globalization, we are no longer subject to use speech as major mode of communication. Most documents today incorporate a mixture of text, images, graphic and sound elements, or also called as 'multimodal'. Naughton (2006) endorsed by stating that the integration of digital convergence, personal computing and global networking seems to have contributed to the development pace and radical shifts in the current communication environment.

Take Twitter as an example. As the latest addition to the most popular social networking sites worldwide, Twitter allows its users to publish a short message within constraint of 140 words in one single post along with pictures or links to other sites (optional).

Image source: (appadvice.com 2010)

Twitter is proven to be a resourceful tool in providing latest news and updates, particularly during crisis. The recent earthquake in Japan is an example signifies how people has shifted to social media for alternative information source (Katy 2011). Even notable news sources such as BBC, CNN and The Star Online are now available on Twitter; sending out instant news updates from their own respective accounts.

References:

Katy 2011, Social Media Response During the Japanese Earthquake, viewed 25th April 2011, available at <http://agiledudes.com/all/utilizing-social-media-japan-earthquake/>

Kress, G and van Leeuwen, T 2006, 'The semiotic landscape: language and visual communication', Reading Images, pg. 16-44.

Naughton, J 2006, Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem, viewed 25th April 2011, available at<http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/discussion/blogging.pdf>

Blogging Community

The emergence of blogs has eventually led to the formation of online/ blogging communities among the society today. Owyang (2007) defines online community as "a group of people with similar goals or interest connect and exchange information using web tools (blogs)"

As cited from White (2008), there are several tools that can be utilized in building blogging communities such as blogging platforms namely Blogger, Wordpress and Typepad, RSS (Really Simple Syndication), feedreaders, tags, mashups, blogrolls and blog rings.

Blogging communities can be categorized into three types; One Blog Centric Community, Topic Centric Community and Boundaried Community.
For this post, I will further discuss on the first type of blogging community; Single Blog Centric Community.

The figure below briefly illustrates how the community is formed.

Image source: (The Knowledge Tree 2008)

Kennysia.com is an example of One Blog Centric Community from the local context.

Image source: (Kennysia.com 2011)

Kenny Sia, the owner of Kennysia.com is renowned in the blogging communities as an A-list blogger in Malaysia and Singapore under Nuffnang online advertising company. He attracts about 9,000-10,000 site views per day and earns around RM10,000-RM20,000 per month from the advertising revenue on his blog (William 2010).

Image source: (Kennysia.com 2011)

Kennysia.com allows readers to drop their comments in response to each post in the blog. Kenny Sia as the owner of the blog controls the power in the existing community ofKennysia.com readers; he sets the topics of the blogposts (Occasionally, his posts are advertorials written based on his advertising deals with clients of Nuffnang, the advertising company). Kenny also has the authority to filter the posted comments from his blog's readers by deleting those who are deemed as inappropriate or unfavorable.

In addition to the comment section, the site also provides sign ups and chatbox for fellow readers to interact with each other via online.

All these characteristics shown in Kennysia.com signifies the existence of One Blog Centric Community.

References:

Owyang, J 2007, Defining the term: "Online Community", Web Strategy,viewed 25th April 2011, available at "><http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/12/28/defining-the-term-community/>

White, N 2006, Blogs and Community - launching a new paradigm for online community, viewed 25th April 2011, available at <http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-–-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community>

William 2010, An Online Business Case Study, Kennysia.com, Online Business Malaysia, viewed 25th April 2011, available at, <http://onlinebusinessmalaysia.com/online-business-case-studies/an-online-business-case-study-kennysia-com/>