Reflections

From the commencement of this semester until now, I declare that I’ve learnt a lot from Issues in Publication and Design, and I also have to admit that this is one of the most interesting subjects that I’ve taken.


Furthermore, I have gain knowledge in the field of designing documents in differencing form, which include print, web or even video. Additionally, I realised that it is not easy to prepare or design documents that will effectively delivers the message you hope to deliver to the audience. Hence, it is important to know the audience, purpose and context before designing my documents, as it will affect the effectiveness of the message delivered.

Moreover, according to Walsh (2006), in designing documents, it is essential to take into consideration of the audience’s social, cultural, and situational factors. Similarly, document designers must also take into consideration about the sensitivity about their readers so that readers would not be offended on certain publication that might be unappropriate for them (Putnis and Petelin 1996).

Last but not least, I learnt that ethics in writing should be taken into consideration considered when writing documents such as blog. As such, I included reference list in every citation to give credit to the original writer.

References:

Putnis, P & Petelin, R 1996 ‘Professional communication: principles and applications’, Prentice Hall, Sydney.


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, pp. 24-37. 

To support or not to support WikiLeaks

(Source from: youtube.com)

WikiLeaks is a non-profit media organisation, their primary purpose is to bring important news and information to the public (WikiLeaks, n,d), as a matter of fact, they are well-known in exposing official secrets such as materials that governments would prefer to keep secret (ABC NEWS, 2010).

According to Cherian George (cited steele, J, 2008), the journalism practiced at Malaysiakini (in this case Wikileaks, which are practicing the same form of journalism) are “contentious”. Steele (2008) further note that Internet news (WikiLeaks) are contentious in that they directly and explicitly challenge the authority of elites in setting the national agenda and in forging consensus. Furthermore, According George (2006), Governments are not the only institutions targeted by this particular movement’s claims where It is also in contention with the institutional news media and the norms of professional journalism and that the claim that it counts as ‘journalism’ is itself contentious.

As such, the Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, publicly announced in the 7pm TV News NSW on Thursday 2nd December 2011 that the placement of the government official secrets in the WikiLeaks website is an irresponsible and illegal things to do. In response to that, some of Australia's most senior media professionals including  ABC director of news Kate Torney, have written to Prime Minister Julia Gillard to oppose that WikiLeaks is a illegal website and hence express their support for WikiLeaks (ABC News, 2010).

In the letter, written to the Prime Minister, they argue that "To aggressively attempt to shut WikiLeaks down, to threaten to prosecute those who publish official leaks and to pressure companies to cease doing commercial business with WikiLeaks is a serious threat to democracy, which relies on a free and fearless press" (ABC news, 2010). Similarly, they are trying to defend the notion that by publishing official leaks should not be regarded as going against the law. Their reason is that, the prohibition regarding that kind of information to be published will not only impact WikiLeaks but also every media organization in the world that aims to inform the public about decision made on their behalf (ABC news, 2010).

In my opinion, there are right and there are wrong in what the WikiLeaks website provides to the general public which depends on how people view it from their own point of view. Therefore, I agree that the public must be made known of any information that should be of their concern especially on information regarding their country, the place they live. The government should not have banned such information to be published because the citizens have their rights to know what is going on in the country, the government, the nation and so on. Conversely, WikiLeaks should also be aware that to publish this kind of information requires huge responsibility, what if the information published has the potential to threaten the national’s security or would put certain individual lives in danger? As such, WikiLeaks should consider being more sensitive to their readers (Putnis and Petelin, 1996) because they have diverse reader from all over the world. Nonetheless, there is still no evidence proving that WikiLeaks have broken any Australian law (ABC news, 2010).

References:

ABC news, 2010 ‘Media chiefs throw support behind Wikileaks’, viewed on 2 June 2011, <http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/12/13/3092174.htm>

George, C, 2006 'Contentious Journalism and The Internet: Towards Democratic Discourse In Malaysia And Singapore', NUS publishing, Singapore. (also view-able at <http://books.google.com.my/books?id=9S3EeFlJImYC&pg=PA96&lpg=PA96&dq=what+is+contentious+journalism&source=bl&ots=iwpED0A8lG&sig=lc6tM-19eCfueRf5EaQcbJq7-hk&hl=en&ei=GwzxTdT9OIrnrAfdw9An&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CEgQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=what%20is%20contentious%20journalism&f=false>)


Steele, J, 2008 'Professionalism Online: How Malaysiakini Challenges Authoritarianism', The International Journal of Press/Politics, viewed on 2 June 2011, <http://www.gwu.edu/~smpa/faculty/documents/Professionalism_Online.pdf>

Putnis, P & Petelin, R 1996, Professional communication: principles and applications, Prentice Hall, Sydney. 

WikiLeaks, n,d ‘What is Wikileaks?’, viewed on 2 June 2011, <http://www.wikileaks.org/About.html>

Confidentiality breaches in use of social media/new media

(Source from: http://news.bbc.co.uk)

I have encountered numerous numbers of posts in Twitter and also Facebook posted by individuals who are in my Facebook and Twitter network circle posting about their everyday task, or worst, their every minutes task! ‘I am eating...’, ‘I am in the toilet doing...’, ‘I am at... and so on which I felt is unnecessary or worst, it is ridiculous because I feel that no one is interested in knowing what you are doing every minutes.

Regarding that issue, doctors and medical students who posted that kind of information would have never realised that they are actually leaking confidential information regarding their patients, as we know, doctors are often looked up highly on protecting their patients’ rights by not disclosing their private information. AMA Council Of Doctors In Training chair Michael Bonning (ABC NEWS, 2010) said that “it's the comments you made a month ago saying which hospital you work at, two weeks ago saying which ward you work in and then the comment from today about the adverse outcome for a patient you treated where when you stack those three things up together it's suddenly very easy to identify who the patient was”.

For that reason, The Australian medical association (AMA) has launched guidelines for doctors and medical students using social media (ABC NEWS, 2010).The guidelines are designed to assists doctors and students in retaining their professionalism (ABC NEWS, 2010). One of the guidelines is ‘In maintaining confidentiality, you must ensure that any patient or situation cannot be identified by the sum of information available online’ (Mansfield et al, n.d). Mansfield et al (n.d) further note that breaching confidentiality erodes the public’s trust in the medical profession, impairing the ability to treat patients effectively.

In my opinion, the guidelines must not only applicable for doctors and medical students using the social media but also applied to all social media users. Hence, we as users of the social media should be aware that posting such information regarding ourselves would also be dangerous as we might be stalked and/or robbed, such as disclosing information on our current whereabouts. This is because as more people use social media as a primary communication tool, in this case a disclosure of unnecessary information, there is where it will lead to social missteps (ABC NEWS, 2010).

References:

ABC NEWS, 2010 ‘Guidelines for doctors’ use of social media’, viewed on 1 June 2011, <http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/11/30/3080760.htm>

Mansfield et al, n.d, ‘Social Media and the Medical Profession: A guide to online professionalism for medical practitioners and medical students’, viewed on 9 June 2011, <http://ama.com.au/socialmedia>

Business to learn social media networking

I remember two months ago, I was having difficulties in finding buyer for my old laptop. I posted my advertisement hoping to sell off my laptop, in Mudah and Lelong, which is the Malaysia largest e-marketplace. However, I got no emails or phone calls regarding people interests on purchasing it. As such,  after failed to get buyer from both of the sites, I went on posted the advertisement (pictures and price) on my Facebook page and shootouts on Twitter which surprisingly had led me to successfully sold the laptop off in just within a week after posting the advertisement up.

Consequently, it does not surprise me that businesses are trying to catch up with the trend and the availability of social media in doing their business for the purpose of advertising their brand or products and services. Consistently, Silverstone (1999) asserted that, the Internet had greatly increased the efficiency of producing mass cultural objects and distributing them around the world. He further note that the Internet transgress the limits of the print and broadcast models by (Silverstone, 1999):

(1)  Enabling many-to-many communications;

(2)  Enabling the simultaneous reception, alteration and redistribution of cultural objects;

(3)  Dislocating communicative action from the posts of the nation, from the territorialized spatial relations of modernity;

(4)  Providing instantaneous global contact; and

(5)  Inserting the modern/late modern subject into a machine apparatus that is networked.

Such as in Australia, Lynnette Carney from South Coast and Illawarra innovation holds a workshop basically to provide the commercial operators in the Bega Valley on the New South Wales far south coast the opportunity to learn about differencing ways to promote their businesses using social media networking (ABC news, 2011).

The social media technology is rather important for modern businesses because the advertising reach of Facebook and Twitter is growing (ABC news, 2011). Consistent with this, Walsh (2006) suggested that a textual shift is taking place from the monomodal to the multimodal that includes different modes of communication such as prose, graphics, video and audio which can all be found in the contents of social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Helfland J and Maeda J (2001) declare that it is more efficient to surf the web, where information can come handy and timeliness whereas its interactivity, as a two-way medium, provides a greater feeling of personal reward.

Furthermore, Carney (ABC NEWS, 2011) commented that doing advertising using social media are complicated which I believe that the advertisement must be of good design and attractive contents as Reep (2003) declared that the contents on a website is the attraction that draw the users attention to the details. 

References:


ABC NEWS, 2011 ‘business to learn social media networking’, viewed on 1 June 2011 <http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/04/28/3202502.htm>

Silverstone, R, 1999 ‘What’s new about new media?’ new media & society, SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi Vol1(1):10–82, viewed on 9 June 2011, <http://blog.lib.umn.edu/swiss/archive/Silverstone.pdf>

Walsh, M 2006, 'Textual shift: examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts', in Australian Journal of Language and Literacy,vol. 29, no.1, pp. 24 - 37.

Helfland J and Maeda J, 2001 ‘Screen Essays on graphic design, new media, and visual culture’, viewed on 9 June 2011, <http://books.google.com.my/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ktYO5RKPHygC&oi=fnd&pg=PA44&dq=new+media+concept+interactivity+and+immediacy+to+explain+the+quick+%26+preciseness+of+media+in+disseminate+messages&ots=kPcgvtGetz&sig=uSbRcIMPNshH82O4BZQXHzGC_74#v=onepage&q&f=false>

A new way to apologize, tweeter?

(Source from: techcentral.my)

The tweet above is showing a Malaysia citizen, Fahmi Fadzil, apologised the 11^th times to Blu Inc Media and Female Magazine as part of a settlement agreed by the defendant (Fahmi Fadzil) in a defamation case. Fahmi's lawyer, Syahredzan Johan, said that Fahmi settled the case by agreeing to apologize 100 times over three days on Twitter, where he has more than 4,200 followers (TechCentral, 2011). To put it in simple english, he is required by the law to tweet 100 apologies to the plaintiff (Blu Inc Media). The penalty comes after the defendant tweeted, in January 2011, which his pregnant friend had been poorly treated by her employers at a magazine run by BluInc Media (TechCentral, 2011).

Defamation in the eyes of law is when a person expresses words that may lower another person’s reputation in the eyes of the public. Such as in this case, the defamation occurs in the form of ‘Libel’ where words are expressed in a permanent form which is usually visible to the eye, such as the words can be seen in the Tweeter post (The Commissioner of Law Revision, 2006).

In my opinion, we all have our freedom of speech however we should not practice defamation, in this case false accusation, because we must also know that false accusation will lead to serious consequences, in Malay saying “Pasal mulut, badan binasa”. As such, we must, when blogging (in this case micro blogging) about something or someone, we must first have supportive and reliable facts. As such, We must follow the four ethical principles which are truth telling, accountability, minimizing harm, and attribution when writes about something or someone (Cenite et al., 2009).

References:

The Commissioner of Law Revision, Malaysia, 2006 ‘Act 268 Defamation Act 1957: LAWS OF MALAYSIA’, viewed on 2 June 2011, <http://www.agc.gov.my/Akta/Vol.%206/Act%20286.pdf>

Cenite, M, Detenber, B, Koh, A, Lim, A, Soon, N 2009 ‘Doing the right thing online: a survey of bloggers' ethical beliefs and practices’, New Media Society.

TechCentral, 2011 ‘Local activist made to tweet apologies’, viewed on 3 June 2011, <http://techcentral.my/news/story.aspxfile=/2011/6/2/it_news/20110602151943&sec=IT_News>

Blogs as Current Phenomenon & Benefits to the Community

The size blogosphere has been increasing tremendously from one year to another. Technorati’s (2010) findings in 2006 tracked 50million weblogs and also revealed that blogging activity is doubling in size every 200days and about 175,000 new weblogs were created everyday in the last three years. In addition, Pingdom.com (2010) recently published that there are over 126million of blogs in the internet.

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and et cetera are known as micro-blogging site. It has been formerly used as a way to stay connected with friends/family now has expanded its importance for businesses for marketing such as branding and advertising as well (McGiboney 2009).

Malaysia has about 500,000 active bloggers, ranking the country among the highest in the world after Indonesia and the European Union, Utusan Malaysia reported (The Star, 2008). In Malaysia, blogs are often used politically, serving as the 'alternative voices' such as MalaysiaKini blog and the famous political blog by Jeff Ooi. The blog has become an effective tool for journalists as well as the activists (Sussman, 2010).

According to Universiti Malaya media department lecturer, Dr Abu Hassan Hasbullah, blogs has the power in influencing the thinking of people in Malaysia especially about politics (The Star, 2008). In the US, the overall growth in blog readership is attributable to political blogs (Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2005). Similarly in the Iran, political blogs is the trend where according to Nasrin Alavi (2005) blogs were created in Iran for freedom of speech and to protest against their government despite the strict state censorship on political internet sites.

References:

The Star, 2008. Blogging in Malaysia ranks among highest in the world. Viewed on 27 April 2011,<http://thestar.com.my/news/story.aspfile=/2008/4/3/nation/20827588&sec=nation>.

McGiboney, M 2009, Twitter’s tweet smell of success, viewed on 27 April 2011, <http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/twitters-tweet-smell-of-success/>.

Sussman, M 2010, Day 1: Who are the bloggers? SOTB 2009, Technorati, October 19, viewed on 25 April 2011, <http://technorati.com/blogging/article/day-1-who-are-the-bloggers1/>

Technorati, 2010, State of blogosphere, viewed 24 April 2011, <http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000436.html>

Nasrin Alavi, 2005, We Are Iran, viewed on 25 April 2011, <http://bloggersenzafrontiere.blogosfere.it/files/WeAreIran_SampleChapterLo.pdf>

Pigdom.com, 2010, Internet 2009 in numbers, viewed on 25 April 2011, <http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/01/22/internet-2009-in-numbers/>

Classification of Blogs

In this day and age, the World Wide Web contains millions of blogs covered with different topics and targeting to different audiences. Smich (2010) argues that there are various kinds of blogs which range from diary types to news information types. As such, it is pretty hard to classify them specifically.

For myself, I categorize blogs basically by their subject matter. Such as:

·         Food

·         Law

·         Travel

·         Sports

·         Politics

·         Fashion

·         Technology/Gadgets

·         News

Generally, according to Farrington (2009), blogs can be classified into four basic types:

• Personal Blogs - Blogs that act as a diary.
• Corporate Blogs - Blogs specifically for one's business.
• Professional Blogs - Blogs that focuses and specialize in specific subjects and fields of work.
• Micro Blogs - Blogs that have short texts and they post up micro media like pictures.

On the other hand, Margaret Simons, an Australian author and media analyst, classified blogs into 9 categories (Funnell and Davies, 2008):

• Pamphleteering blogs - political, social movement.
• Digest blog - tend to point or to summarize or to collect material from elsewhere.
• Advocacy blog - pushing a particular point of view on a particular issue.
• Popular Mechanics blog - fascinating collection of information on how to do stuff.
• Exhibition blog - Vanity publishing, maintained by craftspeople, artists, writers.
• Gatewatcher blog - keep an eye on the media, gatekeepers.
• The diary - social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace (taken over the function).
• The advertisement - commercial companies flogging a product.
• The news blog - break news.

I believe there are more other different and unique types of blog will arise in the future which in turn there may be a rise in that one type of blog may overlap the others based on their classification. Therefore, a more specific classification is needed for the ease of identifying and classifying them. Here, we can see that Simons's classifications are a lot more specific than Farrington's classifications. As such, it is more detailed and provides easy identification to various blog classifications.

References:

Smich, M 2010, Different types of blogs, myhosting, viewed 6 May 2011, <http://myhosting.com/blog/2010/04/types-blogs-2/>.

Farrington, R 2009, 'Different types of blogs', viewed 6 May 2011, <http://www.articlemonkeys.com/Different-Types-Of-Blogs-8430.html>.

Funnell, A & Davies, A 2008, 'A taxonomy of blogs', viewed 6 May 2011, <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript>

Simons. M 2008, Towards a taxonomy of blogs, viewed on 5 May 2011, <http://www.apo.org.au/commentary/towards-taxonomy-blogs-0>.

Blogging Communities

Blogging community as a general knowledge means that community consists of bloggers whose blogs are interconnected where a group of people with similar interest comes together and they interact with one another, forming a social network.

Blogging community can be created by several ways:

• Comments: 

Leaving comments in others’ blog is a good way to start interacting by means of asking questions and giving ideas. Also, Replying comments are a great way to get the ball rolling as it creates a sense of connection between the reader and the blogger (Mueller, 2009).

• Link: 

Creating search friendly permalinks are a great way to getting started as they act as a direct key to one's blog, saving time for the reader (Doolin, 2009). In addition, Linking out to other blogs is the essence of the spirit of generosity that is needed to have a vibrant online blog community (Bauer, 2006). This can be done by adding other blogs to your own blog roll and they will most likely return the favour which in turn increases traffic/readership of both at the same time.

• Reader centred/entertaining posts: 

The quality of one’s blog counts too as readers wants information, not crap (Rowse, 2008). Publishing posts about the readers can be done via answering their burning questions and inviting or posting up questions for discussion. This allows for more feedback. Also, entertaining posts will keep them coming back for more.

• Interactive tools: 

Posting quizzes, surveys, and weekly polls will allow readers to feel more connected as they are able to participate in the interactive projects.

• Promote:

One’s blog can be promoted via other media forms such as Twitter, Facebook and etc. This is useful to increase a follower which eventually increases the traffic/readership of the blog.

According to White (2006), there are three types of blogging communities:


One blog centric community:

Owned by one person or an organisation but may have multiple authors. Blogger have the ultimate power of control as the person can remove comment or censor certain readers.

Topic centric community:

Formed through a network of common passion driven blogs linked together and create membership and combination of domain within the community.

Boundaried community:

Compilation of blog readers on one site or platform. Registration is required in order to join the community or to be offered the chance to create a blog.

                Boundaried Community    One Blog Centric Community      Topic Centric Community             

(Source: White, 2006)

The community that we are familiar with is the boundaried community. Social networking site such as Facebook, Mysplace and Friendster are some of the examples for boundaried community. The structure of these is that a profile and login provide a clear identity, an entry point, and emphasizes the boundary of the community. In addition, to blogging and commenting on other blogs, the community uses other tools to connect to each other, and so dialog and interactions also take place outside of the blogs, with comments and posts often used as feedback and affirmation of these other interactions. The focus is on ongoing interactions between members, and norms and agreements across the community are emphasized over individual control. Individual identity is formed through participation in the community (Koterwas, 2007).

References:

Mueller, E 2009, 'How to create community on your blog (For WordPress Users)', viewed 3 May 2011, <http://blissfullydomestic.com/2009/how-to-create-community-on-your-blog-for-wordpress-users>.

Doolin, D 2009, 'How to easily create permalinks with post slugs that help your blog SEO', viewed 3 May 2011, <http://website-in-a-weekend.net/building-traffic/easily-create-permalinks-help-your-seo/>.

Rowse, D 2008, 'Secrets to good community and conversation on your blog', viewed 3 May 2011, <http://www.scribefire.com/2008/06/22/secrets-to-good-community-conversation-on-your-blog/>.

White, N 2006, 'Blogs and community - Launching a new paradigm for online community?', viewed 5 May 2011, <http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-–-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community>.

Bauer, E 2006, How to build blog traffic – community, BlogHer, viewed 3 May 2011, <http://www.blogher.com/node/8128>.

Koterwas, T 2007, Blogs and Community –Parts 1-5, WDIL, viewed in 3 May 2011, < http://www.wdil.org/resources/blogs-and-community-parts-1-5>.

The New Forms of Media Publishing

    Today in this progressing society, new media technologies have changed on how we communicate socially. With the emergence of new media trends such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Blogs, online news sources changed the roles of journalism & communication.

New media like these are able to deliver news and information to readers faster than the normal media like regular newspaper and magazines. Consistent with this, Silverstone (1999) asserted that, the Internet had greatly increased the efficiency of producing mass cultural objects and distributing them around the world.

  

For instance, the latest news about the dead of the world most wanted terrorist, Osama Bin Laden would not be spread so promptly and extensively around the world without these new media technologies (read news here). Printed newspaper could not have done this so promptly, I found out the news from Facebook itself spread by my friend circle and watched the breaking news itself from Youtube. In fact, according to The Telegraph (2009), The first recorded tweet about the New York airplane crash 2 years ago, came from Jim Hanrahan, four minutes after the plane went down.

All of the new media publishings have one thing in common, which is that they are all on the internet. The internet makes readers better informed, giving them resources that makes them more knowledgeable on the subject (Naughton, 2006). This bad side of using these new media is related to ethics, for example, Youtube , where it allows user to publish/upload video without being strictly screened for the content of video uploaded.


An example of this bad side can be seen in a number of videos published/uploaded by Wee Meng Chee or famously known as Namewee of him singing an edited lyric of Malaysia national anthem which rose up controversial issue which cased a racial tension among the Malaysian community. His conduct led him to face risks of being arrested under the ISA and worst, his citizenship being revoked (The Star,2010). Therefore, we must always bear in mind that freedom of speech should always come with responsibility.

Note: all of his controversial music videos can be found in-

<http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=namewee&page=&utm_source=opensearch>

References:

Naughton, John 2006, ‘Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem’, viewed on 4 May 2011, <http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/discussion/blogging.pdf>.

The Star 2010, “Namewee is ready to face the law”, viewed on 4 May 2011, <http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/10/20/nation/7257513&sec=nation>.

The Telegraph, 2009, 'New York plane crash: Twitter breaks the news, again', viewed on 4 May 2011, <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/4269765/New-York-plane-crash-Twitter-breaks-the-news-again.html>.

Silverstone, R, 1999 ‘What’s new about new media?’ new media & society, SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi Vol1(1):10–82, viewed on 9 June 2011, <http://blog.lib.umn.edu/swiss/archive/Silverstone.pdf>