Reflection

After studied this course, I have learnt a lot of thing about the web such as way to write a blog, customize and personalize the blog so that it would look attractive. Furthermore, things that I learnt from this assignment is by customizing the blog, it would be more user-friendly and attractive. I have learnt that images and texts must be cooperate in order to let audiences to understand more (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006).

In the blog, I have put images, texts and widget into this blog due to multimodal plays an important role among audiences nowadays (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001). Besides, I also realize that to enhance the readability, it is important to know about the layouts, composition of salience and framing (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006). I also understand that the way in which elements of a compostion may be connected to each other through the absence of disconnection devices, vectors, continuities and similarities of colour, visual shape and so on (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001). I also understand more about designs are to realize discourses in the context of a given communication situation (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001).

In short, I would like to thank Miss Jenny as she has used the simplest way to teach us such as visual communication, design principles, genre and so forth. Moreover, I have learnt that in order to create a document, we must research about the audience, purpose and context for the document.

References:

Kress, G. & van Leeuwen 2006, 'Chapter 1: The semiotic landscape: Language and Visual Communication', Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design, 2nd edition, Routledge, London.

Kress, G. & van Leeuwen 2001, Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication, Arnold, London.

Is the new trend of comic blogs replacing newspaper?

Nowadays, in a world where audiences need more entertainment to let themselves get entertain such as comic blog. Comic blog is a blog which updated its comic everyday without fail. It gives the readers a lot of time to build up the affection of comics (Molina 2009). Moreover, I believe that comic can attract the attention of audiences easily. Fruhlinger (n.d.) stated that he had once started to hate a comic but most of the time he actually starts to love it. There are more newspaper cartoonists had become freelancer cartoonists. Owens (2009) stated that in early 2007, the comic was picked up for newspaper syndication but in 2008, it went back to the web-only version. According to Owens (2009), he claims that the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists Convention has had the flavor of a wake as cartoonists mourn the loss of full-time newspaper positions. Owens (2009) also declared that many newspapers used to cover the cost of their cartoonists attending the long, four-day AAEC Convention and cartoonists have to find a way to cover the cost on their own in these days.

Besides, comics in these days not merely sell story but also sell merchandisers. The web comic is a kind of loss leader for the print product which gathers fans that can be turned into the paying customers (Owens 2009). The social media platforms build buzz, boost business and serve small business as low-cost maketing tools (Thomas 2009). Trevino (2010) affirms it is proven that small business owners can use an online marketing tool to increase interest and sales among their customers. Based on Owens (2009), he states that he might do a comic of eight panels of people digressing and if he gets a lot of feedbacks from readers, he will try to transfer a line from the comic into a shirt. Below is one of the examples of comic blog:

Source: Comic Strip Blog

On the other hand, some cartoonists might find that the web is a useful tool that can generate readers interest (Molina 2009). Owens (2009) utter that comic will come along to replace newspapers which have been able to do whatever the newspapers do. Furthermore, newspapers are dying and the syndication model is dying as well and comics is going to replace it (Owens 2009). In my opinion, comic blogs and newspaper are both important and irreplaceable.

References:

Molina 2009, ABC.net.au, Newspaper Cartoonists Engage Audiences (Including Haters) Online, viewed 14 June 2010, http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2009/03/newspaper-cartoonists-engage-audiences-including-haters-online089.html.

Owens 2009, ABC.net.au, What Newspaper Cartoonists Can Learn from Web Comics, viewed 14 June 2010, http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2009/09/what-newspaper-cartoonists-can-learn-from-web-comics273.html.

Thomas 2009, Web Marketing Today, Social Media Marketing for Small Business, viewed 16 June 2010, http://www.wilsonweb.com/newmedia/social-media-sme.htm.

Trevino 2010, Small Company Big Image, Rev-up Your Small Business Website with an Online Video, viewed 16 June 2010, http://www.smallcompanybigimage.com/rev-up-your-small-business-website-with-an-online-video/.

To Censor or Not to Censor?

Do anyone ever think that why sometimes they search for some videos in YouTube or on the internet, they could not find some of the videos? It is because it was being censored. Internet censorship is the control of information on the internet circulated among people within the society. Based on an article on ABC net, Pakistan had lifted the ban on YouTube but pages that contain obscene materials will be hidden (ABC.net 2010). According to Google co-founder Brin, he states that the internet will filter pornographic and obscene materials (Farrar 2010). Besides, a court in Pakistan on 19 May 2010 had also ordered a block on Facebook until 31 May 2010 which implemented by the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA). Moreover, YouTube and other websites including Wikipedia had also banned and restricted the access (ABC.net 2010). Therefore, people can no longer surf the internet as they like because some of the websites were banned. YouTube which owned by Google had said that it was working to ensure that the service was restored although Schmidt, Google chief executive was suspected that he suppressed the political criticism behind the ban (ABC.net 2010).

Source: Sultan Knish Blog

PTA spokesman Mehran claimed that although the ban on YouTube was lifted yet the links to obscene content would remain inaccessible in Pakistan (ABC.net 2010). Hence, people can watch video on YouTube but those links to obscene content is not accessible. Walsh (2010) declared that the censorship had also triggered the criticism on Twitter and English-language media in the country. In addition, the internet users were initially able to evade the ban through proxy sites but were defeated when the government blocked those as well (Walsh 2010). On the other hand, Facebook had restricted access to the page entitled 'Everybody Draw Mohammed Day' in certain countries including Pakistan but had not remove in others (Walsh 2010). What do you think about censorship? Is there a need for censorship? I personally think that there is a need for censorship as nowadays no matter they are kids or adults would also surf the internet. Thus, it is important to have censorship as the kids may click on links that contain obscene materials.

References:

ABC.net.au 2010, Pakistan lifts YouTube ban, viewed 13 June 2010, http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/05/27/2911562.htm.

Farrar 2010, CNN Tech, Cashing in on Internet censorship, viewed 13 June 2010, http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/02/18/internet.censorship.business/index.html.

Walsh 2010, The Guardian, Pakistan lifts Facebook ban but 'blasphemous' pages stay hidden, viewed 13 June 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/31/pakistan-lifts-facebook-ban.

Is photojournalism dead?

Photograph is a powerful tool that able to let people to convey messages through it. According to Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006), images and texts need to be combining together in order to let audiences to convey the messages. Everyone interpret differently and tend to fill in the gaps based on their cultural background and experiences (Walsh 2006). Photographs used to catch the audiences’ attentions and lead them to the story (Kraus 2009). Photojournalism refers to photographs and texts cooperate to convey information about events (About.com n.d.) Based on Watt (2007), he states that photojournalism is telling the story by showing both images and texts.

Is photojournalism dead or is it a change in the perception? Kraus (2009) claimed that photojournalism is dead due to people nowadays does not care about the appropriate and meaningful photography. Moreover, he declared that those who do not work as the journalist before such as owners, editors and publishers runs the media killed photojournalism as photography is no longer important. No one will concern about the quality of photographs and news relevance anymore as the media only concern about the coverage (Kraus 2009). The media will publish any photographs that they have and do not care about the quality.

In addition, there are also evidences show that photojournalism jobs are fewer due to the decline of print media and the increase of citizen photojournalism and free digital media (Taylor n.d.). Taylor (n.d.) stated that the newspaper and magazine publishers tend to redefine the meaning of freelance photojournalism and it results to less pay for increased rights. Kraus (2009) also claimed that there are no time for relevance and no money for quality which caused photojournalism these days are dead. Whilst Cartwright (n.d.) affirmed that as time goes by, audiences tend to view visually which caused photojournalists become the interpreters. Hence, I believe that in certain situation, photojournalism is still alive as people can understand the situation such as natural disaster. Photojournalism may be misconstrued in certain situation such as political because images are too polysemous and too open to a variety of possible meanings (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006).

References:

Answer.com n.d., Photojournalism, viewed 12 June 2010, http://www.answers.com/topic/photojournalism.

Cartwright n.d., Photojournalism, viewed 12 June 2010, http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/1054/Photojournalism.html.

Kraus 2009, The Digital Journalist, Rest in Peace: Photojournalism is Dead, viewed 12 June 2010, http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0912/rest-in-peace-photojournalism-is-dead.html.

Kress, G. & van Leeuwen 2006, Reading Images: Grammar of Visual Design, Routledge, London.

Walsh, M. 2006, 'Textual shift: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts", Australian Journal of Language.

Watt 2007, ABC.net.au, Portraiture and photojournalism: Chris Beck, viewed 12 June 2010, http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2007/06/15/1952583.htm?site=melbourne.

Violation of Privacy in Facebook

I bet that most of the people do not know that there are privacy laws for social networking sites. Hence, I will discuss about the privacy laws for social networking sites in this post. Privacy laws refer to rule that protects a person's right and administrate storage and release of their detailed personal information (BusinessDictionary.com). Gross and Acquisti (2005) claimed that the consideration of information revealed in a social networking site should inform that person's expectations for privacy of information released in the network.

I am pretty sure that everyone had heard about the privacy problem that Facebook, the largest social networking site is facing these days. Facebook are involved in an accusation by violating Canada's privacy laws. There was 15 groups of people filed complaint about Facebook at Federal Trade Commission and it was forced to take steps to safeguard against security infringes. There is a report stated that Facebook is keeping the personal information of users who have deactivated their accounts in its databases which had violates the privacy laws in Canada (Telegraph). Besides, Facebook also reveals the users' personal information to the advertisers without the permission of users (Jones 2010). Facebook had also provided the information that will create confusion such as its only show the users about the way to deactivate their accounts but not delete it (Telegraph). Facebook told the commissioner that it need to keep personal information for those who shut down their accounts as most of the users reactivate accounts that they had deactivated (Telegraph). According to Facebook, more than 400 millions active users. Below is the statistics of active users on Facebook in Asia and Middle East:

Source: Erictric

The top 10 countries of users on Facebook:

Source: Shiny Shiny

The weekly visits rate of people to Facebook and Google:

Source: AllFacebook.com

According to MacMillan (2010), he states that the recent changes at Facebook are violating user expectations, diminishes user privacy and oppose Facebook's own representation. There are even users that do not know that Facebook have the privacy control button for them to choose what kind of information that its can reveals to others. For instance, when users click on a link, it will pop out a dialog box that requests for reveal their information (Jones 2010). Moreover, most of the people are willing to reveal their personal information to strangers than to those who know them better (Gross and Acquisti 2005). I found a journal that users can understand more about privacy settings in Facebook. Therefore, everyone who are on Facebook, do check out the privacy control to protect your personal information.

References:

Bloomberg.com, "Facebook policies draw criticism by consumer groups (update2)", viewed 8 June 2010, http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-06/facebook-policies-draw-criticism-by-consumer-groups-update2-.html.

BusinessDictionary.com, "Privacy law", viewed 8 June 2010, http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/privacy-law.html.

Electronic Frontier Foundation, "Facebook violates privacy promises, leaks user info to advertisers", viewed 8 June 2010, http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/05/facebook-privacy-promises.

Ralph Gross, Alessandro Acquisti 2005, "Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Networks", Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA.

Telegraph.co.uk, "Facebook 'violates' privacy law", viewed 8 June 2010, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/5846719/Facebook-violates-privacy-law.html.

Vidyarthi 2010, AllFacebook.com, "Facebook Surpasses Google As Number One U.S. Site", viewed 17 June 2010, http://www.allfacebook.com/2010/03/facebook-is-number-one-in-visits-per-week/.

New Forms of Media Publishing

New media define as new methods of communication in the digital world allow a group of people to congregate online and share, sell and swap goods and information (PCmag.com). Nowadays, the development of media are as fast as technology, thus the new media are slowly take over the conventional media in the society. For examples of new media are Facebook, Tweeter, online newspapers and so on.

Facebook:

Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites and is uniquely recognized as a resource for locating persons (Mark-Shane Scale). Other than that, Facebook is the fifth-most trafficked site on the internet worldwide and the second-most trafficked social media site in the world which claiming more than 70 million active users include me and you (facebook.com). The newsfeed feature in Facebook also helps to keep friends and colleagues updated on activities and get to know each other more than everyday working and studying life (Allison Faix, Jamie M, Lisa Hartman).

Online newspaper:

Online newspaper is a website provides news information for the reader through the internet. Instead of touchable newspaper, online newspaper allows people to update the latest news everywhere, every time as long as they have internet. Research proved that the usability and familiarity on the websites do influence the reader attribute but not the reputation, privacy and trust of the websites (Carlos Flavián, Raquel Gurrea).

References:

Allison Faix, Jamie M, Lisa Hartman 2009, “Crashing the Facebook Party,” Kimbel Library, Coastal Carolina University, Conway, South Carolina, USA, vol.58.

Carlos Flavián, Raquel Gurrea 2008, “Reading Newspaper on the Internet: the Influence of Websites Attributes”, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain, Vol.18

Facebook.com, “Press Room”, n.d..

Mark-Shane Scale 2008, “Facebook as a social search engine and the implications for libraries in the twenty – first century” Library and Information Studies, University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica, Vol.26.

PCmag.com, “Definition of New Media,”, viewed April 20 2010, http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=new+media&i=47936,00.asp.

Blogging Communities

Bloggers refers to a group of people that communicate through internet and 'online community' implied a community who interacted online within some bounded set of technologies. There are three types of communities which is the Single Centric Community, the Central Connecting Topic Community and the Boundaried Community. Let me briefly discuss the 3 types of communities:

Single Centric community

The one blog is owned by one owner or organisation. There may be more than one blogger writing a blog, but this is not an aggregation of blogs. For example, I create a blog and talk about cake cuisine. Ashley, one of the readers share with me that she likes to eat cheese cake and she hope that I can teach how to make her favourite cake.

Central Connecting Topic Community

This form is a community that arises between blogs linked by a common passion or topic.

Boundaried Communities

Typically members register and 'join' the community and are offered the chance to create a blog. It can be use by a club blog or social blog.

References:
White, N 2005, Blogs and community " launching a new paradigm for online community?", viewed 19 April 2010, http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community.