Reflection

     For this assignment, I have learned a lot about theories and research done by scholars. I have a better understanding of the issue that faced by document designers when designing a document. Besides that, I also take into account of every details when I doing the blog post.

          According to Nielsen (2005) many of the blogs neglected the key usability issues. So, as for my blog, I make it as user friendly as possible by giving a direct link and useful information on the right side bar.

          By writing this blog, it trains me to become an ethical blogger because we need to cite and acknowledge the source from the web to avoid plagiarism. Other than that, based on Schriver (1997) communication will become much easier when images and texts are combine together to make a better understanding.  Hence, I put some images on my blog post to let readers can understand easily.

     I personally own a blog too, after I learn all this, I think I can manage my own blog in a more effective way.

References:

Nielsen, J 2005, ‘Weblog usability: Top ten design mistakes,’ Alertbox, 17 October, viewed on 15 November 2011< http://www.useit.com/alertbox/weblogs.html>

Schriver, KA 1997, ‘The interplay of words and pictures’, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Pub, New York, pp. 361-441. 

8TV pulled out Racist Ads

     During Ramadan, 8TV channel released a series of commercial regarding how to behave well in Ramadan. According to Yow Hong Chieh (2011) the advertisement makes the public angry. It was claimed to have racist issue in the advertisement. Chief operating officer of Media Prima posted up a statement on Twitter saying that he will pull out the advertisement. The former 8TV chief executive asking public to stay calm, the purpose of the advertisement was just to inform non-Muslin how to behave on Muslim’s fasting festival.

8TV controversy ads

(Source: Youtube.com)

     Recently, a news by Jones (2011) stated that an advertisement for Marc Jacobs perfume starring Dakota Fanning, a 17 years old actor was banned because it “sexualized children’’. Britain's Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) also claimed that the 17 years old actor posing was sexually offensive.

17 years old Dakota Fanning holding the perfume bottle in between her leg,
was sexual provocative
(Source: Google.com)

     Based on the two examples above, we should take precaution on designing an advertisement like this. As we all know, tobacco and alcohol advertisement are strictly banned in Malaysia. Same goes to advertisement that content of sexual elements. Besides that, advertisement that touches racial issue also has to be careful because Malaysian race relations issue is still on a dangerous level.    

     According to Lebedev(2001) Definition of Cultural Context can be by our educational and cultural background. It means that the opinions, thoughts, and feelings from us that result from experiences. As a designer must know his cultural context at very well, especially multiracial country like Malaysia, he must has an objective vision when designing the advertisement, which means knowing what should and what shouldn’t. If he or she manages to know the country cultural context, situation that I just mentioned above might not exist.   

  

     For my conclusion, based on Schriver (1997) each reader has their unique experience to interpret documents, which means that experience comes into an important role each time he or she interprets visual or verbal language. Hence, different culture has different meaning on evaluating that Ramadan public service announcement.  

References:

Yow Hong Chieh 2011, Media Prima pulls out ‘racist’ Ramadan ads, viewed on 15 November 2011<http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/print/malaysia/media-prima-pulls-out-racist-ramadan-ads/>

Jones, B 2011, 'Sexually provocative' Dakota Fanning perfume ad banned in UK, viewed on 15 November 2011, <http://articles.cnn.com/2011-11-11/world/world_europe_dakota-fanning-perfume-ad-banned_1_advertising-standards-agency-perfume-asa?_s=PM:EUROPE>  
Lebedev, A 2001, § 73. Cultural contexts, viewed on 15 November 2011, <http://www.artlebedev.com/mandership/73/>

Schriver, K.A., 1997. Dynamics in document design: creating text for readers, John Wiley & Sons, New York, USA. 

Learn about copyright and fair use

Copyright logo
(Source: gstatic.com)

      According to Jensen (n.d), plagiarism defines as uses another author’s text or content and presents it as their own effort without any quotation and citation for it. Based on Scanlon & Neumann (2002) survey done by 698 undergraduates from nine colleges reported that they do their work by copy and paste the text from the Internet without citation. Another indication of growth of Internet plagiarism is the development of plagiarism detection software. For example, Scanmyessay.com, Turnitin.com and canexus.com are software that enables students to check their plagiarism rate.

      

      There is an article posted by Pichon (2011) about a copyrighted lawsuit. A company named Righthaven specializing in copyright litigation sued a user of medjacksports.com named Wayne Hoehn. It was because Hoehn posted an article to bring out a discussion. Due to the article that posted by Hoehn is not for commercial purpose, therefore Righthaven could not bring the case to the court. Federal judge in Nevada declared that Hoehn’s posted article was fair use.  

      According to Kravets (2011) fair use means that reproducing a copyrighted material for the purpose of commenting, teaching, research and also critics. A person can get the copyrighted materials without informing the right owner. Besides that, another reason Righthaven could not bring the case to court because Righthaven have no legal standing. Legal standing means a legal right to bring the lawsuit on behalf of the copyrights owner. The articles was originally belongs to Stephens Media. 

  

      Hence, from the case study above, students must aware on the differences between the online plagiarism and fair use. Misuse of this both will lead to punishment from the institutions or worst case end up a lawsuit. Especially students in Malaysia, they doing copycat work because they always do assignments last minute. Some of the students said their English is poor, but that is not the excuses to do plagiarize work.   

References: 

Jensen, R n.d, The Plagiarism Problem, University of Illinois, Chicago, viewed on 14 November 2011< http://www.oah.org/pubs/nl/2002aug/jensen.html>

Pichon, F 2011, Copyrighted material: fair and unfair use, viewed on 14 November 2011, <http://www.editorsweblog.org/newsrooms_and_journalism/2011/06/copyrighted_material_fair_and_unfair_use.php>

Scanlon, P.M  & Neuman, D.R 2002, Internet Plagiarism Among College Student, Rochester Institute of Technology, viewed on 15 November 2011, <http://www4.ncsu.edu/~ladare/eac595/readings/scanlon-neumann.pdf>

Kravets, D 2011, Righthaven Loss: Judge Rules Reposting Entire Article Is Fair Use, viewed on 15 November 2011, < http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/06/fair-use-defense/>

Use online video to cover news

     It is now very important to take into consideration that online video has become very common in covering news. According to D S Simon (2011) the uses of video to cover news have jumped up to 85 percent which jumped by a third last year. Based on Santini (n.d) genres on the web have different communicative functions and role at the same time. For example, in a web page there has different sections and it was organized by lists of links. The best example of media website is Youtube. According to Bullas (2011) YouTube has total of 490 million users’ worldwide.

     According to Davies (2011) there are also benefits for online video, for examples, viewers can leave opinions on the comment box regarding the news. Express their thoughts, getting responded from other audience, it is a type of interactive between the web users. Besides that, we need to turn on the television on a specific time for news report, now with online video; we can watch news whenever we want. We can search the news video by typing key words on the search engine bar. Other than that, people who are interacting with content are more interested on advertising.

     Megan O’Neill (2011) also said that consumers these days have shorter attention spans to read a long news article; they prefer to watch a short news video. Imagine if they were to read millions of words just to get the news idea, it would be irritating for them. Watching a few minutes video would be much more convenient to them. Based on Putnis and Petelin (1996)), a good document design must highlight the most important points and allow the reader to absorb the content efficiently. Hence, a good video must have the good criteria such as, high quality, clear voice and subtitle (in case the sound is not clear enough).

     As for conclusion, online video is keeping on growing and will be very high demand also in the future. 

Examples of online news video: CNN , TVNZ (New Zealand information channel) , The Star Online TV , RTM TV1

References

Simon, D.S 2011, Media Websites’ Use of Video Footage to Cover Stories, D S Simon Production, viewed on 14 November 2011 <http://news.dssimon.com/news+releases/2011webinfluencerssurvey.htm>

Santini, M n.d, Characterizing Genres of Web Pages:Genre Hybridism and Individualization, University of Brighton, UK.

Bullas, J 2011, 50 Awesome YouTube Facts and Figures, viewed on 14 November 2011< http://www.jeffbullas.com/2011/05/09/50-awesome-youtube-facts-and-figures/>

Davies, L 2011, Five Benefits of Communities for Online Vide, viewed on 14 November 2011 <http://theplatform.com/blog/entry/five_benefits_of_communities_for_online_video/>

Putnis, Peter & Petelin, Roslyn 1996, ‘Writing to communicate,’ in Professional communication, Prentice Hall, Sydney.

O’Neill, M 2011, 85% of Media Websites Now Use Online Video to Cover News, viewed on 14 November 2011 <http://socialtimes.com/85-of-media-websites-now-use-online-video-to-cover-news_b60505>

Newspaper iPad Version

     Technology has been changed more advance today, as well as newspaper. Last time, we need to go out from our house just to get a newspaper; another easiest way is delivery the newspaper to your house. According to Wilson (2011) few years ago, thanks to technology advancements,we just need to sit down, click few buttons on your computer and you can read whatever news that you want. Nowadays, you can even read news in just few tap and flip because iPad has the app for reading news in a more fun and engaging way. In Malaysia, we have The Star on iPad, Sinchew-I App, Berita Harian iPad App (iBH). All of these are Malaysian newspaper but in iPad version.

Malaysia's newspaper in iPad version
(Source: Own photo)

     According to Walsh (2006), reading print-based text and multimodal text requires different process. Electronic or digital screen has sound and movement which is an advance in giving impact to the readers and easier for reader to manipulate it.

    However, according to an article titled: “iPad-only newspaper furthers media trend” by Trotter (2011) stated the opinion of students regarding the new multimedia of reading news. Some of them prefer to read the traditional newspaper; they don’t think that iPad news reading can be replaced. The students rather stick with the traditional way. But some still prefer the digital way because it is very convenient and cheap. iPad users need to pay only $1 per week or $40 per year to subscribe the news app. It is cheaper compared to a physical newspaper which cost $2 per edition.

     According to Nielsen’s (2011) article titled: "iPad Usability" stated that the user interfere on iPad has become less wacky compare to last year (2010). They have ‘back button’, ‘homepage button’, ‘direct lead to the article by tapping the title’ and also ‘broader lead of search’ now. Pictures below show the comparison of last year and this year navigation of USA Today.   

Left: Last year's navigation
Right: This year navigation with SECTIONS button
（Source: useit.com）

     For conclusion, I encourage people to read news using the digital way because it is environmental friendly, you can even retrieve back the older news from the web. However, can’t deny, majority of people still reading the print-based news, especially the older generations.  

References:

Wilson, J.L 2011, The Best iPad News Reading Apps, viewed on 14 November 2011, <http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2384661,00.asp#fbid=5AlGyfeXu38>

Nielsen, J 2011, Ipad Usability: Year One, viewed on 14 November 2011 <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ipad.html>

 Trotter, C 2011, iPad-only newspaper furthers media trend, viewed on 14 November 2011  <http://www.thecento.com/news/2011/feb/17/ipad-only-newspaper-furthers-media-trend/>

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. 

Screen Design Vs Print Design

When it comes to designing, there are questions you need to consider - whether the layout/ writing structures is correct format and the different between screen and print design. The following will discuss the differences of document design for the screen and print documents:

Layout & Writing Structures

In this case study, The Star Newspaper in print documents has separate each topic different section. It has the headline on front page, and brief story of text below the headline. Also, an image represent the topic of the day. The advantage of print document is much easier to focus on a physical text and easy to flick through and scan. The disadvantage of print document is not easy to search and its difficult to make notes compare to online web, you just have to bookmark the tabs.

Newspaper Layout

The Star online website layout has 3 column layout and is easy to annotate. It is customisable on the website, and the navigation bar has separate each topic in general format. The advantage of screen document (website) is often access to links for further discussion and the interactive media such as videos, social media and comments. Moreover, the disadvantage of screen document (website) is not reading in isolation, it involve disturbance away from text and other on screen interruptions.

3 Column layout with navigation menu and interactive media

Typography

The Star application on iPad has an attractive typography on every single page (News). It shows the headline in different way compare to print document. The print document font is more static because screen document such as iPad, can be animated and shows interactive to the readers.

The Star iPad Application layout

Page Composition

The print document has a static design of page layouts. The printed page has the same font size, static graphics in same place, and the printed page doesn’t change the document size. However, the screen document such as website has more flexible, dynamic pages and the reader has many ways on how they view the pages. 

References:

Bear, J.H, Similarities and Differences in Print and Web Design. [online] Available at: <http://desktoppub.about.com/od/transitionprintweb/tp/Print_Design_vs_Web_Design.htm>  [Accessed 25th August 2011]

Nielsen, J. 1999. Differences Between Print Design and Web Design. [online] Available at: <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990124.html>[Accessed 25th August 2011]

New Forms of Media Publishing

Social media become a trend that people can’t live without it such as Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. Younger generation are familiar with this new social media because of social networking among their friends. However, there are no more a tools that only for connecting people and for the purpose of gaming. There evolving into a tools which provide latest information and news to the society. It also play a role as a way to let people to voice out their opinion without any constraint. Take Twitter as example, it was also known as Microblog where people can post their feelings and opinions in a short and simple way. Twitter provides a unique way of following discussion and news just by using  the hash-tags (#). For example, you would want to know more about Steve Jobs, Just type # follow by his name.

Journalist uses Twitter to get the latest news. According to Robinson (2011) if you’re not on Twitter, you’re making your job (journalism) more difficult because it's a place where people are talking about things that matter to them. He did pointed out 5 main points for journalists who use Twitter:

1. Breaking news
2. Networks
3. Interesting Conversations
4. Interesting links about journalism
5. Story ideas

References:

Robinson, J., 2011. Aquick start guide to Twitter for ASNE members. [online] Available at: <http://asne.org/article_view/articleid/1823/a-user-s-guide-to-twitter-for-asne-members.aspx> [Accessed 25th August 2011]

Internet Evangelism Day,2011. Twitter and micro-blogging, Internet Evangelism Day.[Online]. Available at: <http://www.internetevangelismday.com/twitter.php#top>[Accessed 25th August 2011]

3 Types of Blogging Communities

Blogging community is a community that interacted online in the blog environment. By using technology tools such as Wordpress or Blogger, it gives user to communicate online in the blogging community as refer to White (2006).

There are many types of blogging communities but White (2006) categorized it into 3 main types which is Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community, Central Connecting Topic Community and Boundaried Communities.

Single Blog/Blogger

Figure 1: Single Blog/Blogger 

(Source: White)

Based on figure 1, there is only one owner or organization but there might be multiple of blogger writing in a blog. Commentors commented on the blog and readers will read and respond to the comments, thus the commentors are attracting their own set of readers to read their blog also.

Topic Centric Community

Figure 2: Topic Centric Community

(Source: White)

In this community based on figure 2, the blogger shared the same topic and interest. It can be specific only in Food, Fashion, Travel and so on. For example, Suarez (2006) wants to gather everyone who studies Knowledge Management to interact with each other, therefore she established a mailing list so that it can form a network  within the same people.

Boundaried Communities

Figure 3: Boundaried Communities

(Source: White)

This blog contain a lots of tool on it such as instant messaging built in, thus everybody can chat at the same time, discussion board and also social networking features. The benefits of this blog is it can provide instant feedback and possibly building a community.

Our Prime Minister Dato Sri Najib Tun Razak has his own blog click here, I categorized his blog as Boundaried Communities because his blog consists of several social networking tools such as link to his own Facebook page, his Twitter, Youtube, as well as Flickr. I found out that the blog is very interactive also because got comment box that can allow people to comment on certain post. Besides that, we can subscribe for the blog also to receive the latest updates.

(Source: 1Malaysia.com)

References:

White, N., 2006. Blogs and community – launching a new paradigm for online community?, The knowledge tree. [online]. Available at <http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community> [Accessed 25th August 2011]

Classification of Blogs

People has their own purpose to write a blog, and it has different types of blog depends on the interest and target audience. According to media analyst, Margaret Simons (2008), blog can be classified as 9 different types. The first will be Pamphleteering blog, Digest blog, Advocate blog, Mechanics, Exhibition blog, Gate watcher, Personal blog, Advertisement and lastly new blog.

Furthermore, Misty Belardo (2010) also classified different types of blog which are Collaborative blog, Travelling blog, Tutorial blog,  Current fashion blog and also Personal blog.

Comparison between the 2 classification above:

In my opinion, the classification from Simons is more specific compared to Belardo because she has narrowed down the topics unlike Belardo the topic such as Personal blog is more general.

Moreover, it has different type of audience because Simons has more specify type of readers depends on what topic of the audience is searching for such as news blog, diary or advertisement. On the another hand, Belardo blog classification has more general because it concentrate certain type on blog such as Fashion blog, Travel blog or Tutorial Blog.

References:

Simons, Margaret, 2008. Towards a taxonomy of Blogs. [online] September 11th 2008.
Available at: <http://www.apo.org.au/commentary/towards-taxonomy-blogs-0> [Accessed 24th August 2011]

Belardo, Misty, 2010. The 5 Types of Blogs | Which One Suits You Best?. [online]. Available at: <http://www.inkrebels.com/insp/the-5-types-of-blogs-which-one-suits-you-best/> [Accessed 24th August 2011]

Blogging Phenomena and Benefits to the Community

The blogoshpere has made up all blogs connected to each others as a social network, which the blogger can read, write and comment on them. Blogoshpere is the realm of the Internet blogs and to people to read and write them.

Figure 1: Weblogs cumulative from March 2003-March 2007

(Source: Technorati)

According to Sifry (figure 1), Technorati is tracking over 70 million weblogs, and in worldwide about 120,000 blogs was created each day.

Mobile blogging was the trend on 2010 based on Technorati's report. There is 25% of all bloggers are already using their mobile phone as a tool for blogging. Bloggers that reported Smartphone is a device that changes the way they blog is about 40% of them, they can even blog more fast by just few tap or few click. This shows that more websites customized for mobile platform. It would have social media application that integrates with the blog.

TheStar newspaper (2008) reported that the most highest active bloggers in the world was Malaysia, then the next country was Indonesia and the European Union. Also, Dr Abu Hassan Hasbullah (2008) from University Malaya saying that even nowadays 70% of the election results were influenced by blogs.

Moreover, the types of blog are prevalent in malaysia are about writing personal stuff (28%),
politics (16%) and technology (16%). Blog can be powerful tools that can influence people especially social blog or political blog. According to Gaman (2008), kennysia.com was ranked top 1 as most popular blogger in Malaysia. He is a full time blogger, who spend most of his time writing a blog. There are always have positive and negative feedbacks from the readers, and it helps the community to have different point of view.

The prevalent blog can bring benefits to the community because it can voice out their own opinion and share their point of view to the community. Blog can be part of the news, if the source has citation or credibility from the original author. It can bring latest information to the community and also interactive comment with the readers.

References:

Sifry, D.,2007. The State of the Live Web. [online] Available at: <http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000493.html>[Accessed 24th August 2011]

Sobel, J. State of the Blogosphere 2010 Introduction. [online] Available at: <http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2010-introduction/>[Accessed 24th August 2011]

Anon., Blogging in Malaysia ranks among highest in the world. The Star Online,[online] Available at: < http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/4/3/nation/20827588&sec=nation> [Accessed 24th August 2011]

Gaman. 2007. 50 most Influential blogs in Malaysia. [online]. (Updated 6 February 2007) Available at: <http://www.sabahan.com/2007/02/06/50-most-influential-blogs-in-malaysia/>[Accessed 24th August 2011]

Purpose of my blog

Hi readers, the purpose of this blog is review on the issues regarding on media publishing and design issues. Also, it would help me to understand relevant theories and concept of publication and design. For example, a good design may not be delivering to the correct audience if you don’t understand the concept of the publication. In the field of media or communications, my target audiences would be student or professional and they could find this blog as a reference.