Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Conclusion

Throughout the whole process of blogging for this Introduction to Publication and Design (IPD) subject, I have learnt so much knowledge and gain many knowledge about the principles and element of printing, theories on web design as well as knowledge of blogging. I have learnt that images and verbal text are equally important in a document as they help each other to produce the accurate meaning of a message to the audience. Besides, I also learnt that, as a document designer, we need to firstly understand clearly our target audience before we design a document as Penman (1998) stated that a document's functionality is dependent on its structure matching readers' habits, expectations and context used.


Last but not least, I have learnt that bloggers have to be careful on those words used on their post as unsuitable words may cause the readers to feel discomfort. According to Patterson & Wilkins (2005), as ethical bloggers, we need to respect the feelings and personal space of other web-users. Bloggers also have to be responsibility on what they have posted on the blog as people are very sensitive towards the issues of publication an design. I hope to put into practice all that I have learnt from here in my daily life and I also hope that this blog could provide some useful information about publication and design to the others.


(Source: Assessor 2008)


References:
  • Patterson, P & Wilkins, L 2005, 'Media Ethics: Issues and Cases', Fifth Edition, McGrawHill, High Education, New York.
  •  Penman, R 1998, 'Document structures and readers' habits, Communication news, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 1 and 10-11.
Posted by Joanne Choo at 2:42 AM 0 comments

Citizen Journalistic Blogging

With the advanced of internet nowadays, it seems so easy to publish information on the Internet. People using the social power of the internet to communicate with their own and the outside world (Funnell 2010). Today, the World Wide Web (WWW) is at its height of evolution, Blogs are all over the Internet. Blogging and citizen journalism have become an active and important role in the delivery of news, leading to a debate that everyone can actually be a journalist. This, it is not surprising that many blogs are being used for journalism purpose. 
Lasica (2007) defined citizen journalism as the act of people or citizens assuming the role of a journalist in gathering, investigating and dissemination information as truthful as possible through weblogs.
Common journalistic tool: Camera and handphones.
(Source: IDTM 2010)
According to Lasica (2007), personal gadgets such as camera, mobile phones and recorders can be use to collect the sufficient information by taking images and recording the videos the audios to support the information.
Blogs as the independent news for the public:
According to Papacharissi (cited in Tremayne 2007, p.21), "blogs offer a real space where information that do not allow to publish in mainstream media can be published". Same as the mainstream media, weblogs have some publishing rules that need to followed such as defermation law (Lee 2007). However, compared to the mainstream media, weblogs do not have an editor or gatekeeper to fliter the news. Thus, bloggers are freely to express their own feelings or write out the true story of a news that being hiden by the mainstream median without worrying that their news will be filtered . It is important to let the people in the country to actually voice up their opinion, rather than always filtered through others' perceptions and biases (Loewenstein 2010). Besides that, people are more likely to seek information online as in weblogs, information is presented in many different modes, combining text with images, sound effects, animation and hyperlinks that will easily grab the audience attention compared to the normal print media (Walsh 2006). According to Walsh (2006), multimodal text is where the words are complemented by pictures and other modes help to make the readers understand more towards a topic. 
In additions, blogs as a independent news site are important to let the mainstream media know that audiences are not passive absorbers of information. Audiences do have the rights to know the whole true story. According to Tremayne (2007), not all of the information provided from the mainstream media are not fully accurate as due to the censorship or the confidential to certain bodies of power such as the government. The existing of the citizen journalistic blogs provides the public with two-sided perspective in a story. The mainstream media's view and the other extra view from the outsiders help to satisfied the needs of the readers (Lannon 2006).
Can journalistic blogs be trusted?
The credibility of citizen journalistic blogs has always been an issue as there are more and more citizen journalism in the country. The credibility of information in these blogs always been questioned as the writer are mostly just a normal citizen and not a professional journalism. Their news might be filtered by their own perception or biased opinions. 
To solve this problem, Independent news sites, OhMyNews. com in South Korea has come out with an online community of journalistic editors to check and confirm the credibility of the news written by the normal citizens before they publish online (Glaser 2004).As Lannon (2006) once said, credibility and accuracy of the information is very important in a useful website. Thus, bloggers have to make sure that all the information provided on their blogs are true and accurate.


References:
Posted by Joanne Choo at 2:22 AM 0 comments

E-book VS Printed Book

Amazon.com which is the famous online book selling site, has released the International Version of Kindle during the Christmas season in the year 2009, while Apple Ipad had launched on April 2010 (Cornwall 2010). These have seriously brought down the demand of the virtual book among the society. The published of the electronic or eBook has been met with the fierce resistance by the all the book lovers. However, in the past few months, many publishers around the world have come to realized that the book industry is just as the music and movie industry, they do not get to survive if they don not go digital (Cornwall 2010). There is a prediction out there that saying up to 50 per cent of books will be sold in digital form in the future and we may need to pay for it. 


Kindle and Apple ipad are electronic book readers that allow us to download and read the books by using the device (Kindle port 2009). Free downloading for the first chapter of a book allows readers to decide whether to purchase the book or not. Although the popularity of E-books are raising nowadays, in my opinion, I believe the printed books will still exist due to the fact that different audience have different likings on how they get their information. 

E-book and Printed book:
The target audience for the digital book and printed book is different. The older generation would prefer the printed book as they do not know much about the Internet and technology. Books are still popular demand for the elderly. Printed books provide bigger font that make it easy for those elderly to read. Penman (1998) once said, older people prefer to read in A4 size paper with large fonts. Another reason will be, the older people rather spent time on reading a physical book than read the book in front of the computer or with a small device on hand. 

Printed book- Preferable by most of the elderly as it provides bigger fonts and physical texture.
(Source: SmashingMagazine 2007)

On the other hand, the younger generation like spent more time on facing computer, thus, they will sure prefer the new media which is the e-book. As penman (1998) stated that younger generation prefer a pocket size book so that they could fit it in their pocket and bring it to anywhere they want. They prefer to e-book compare to the virtual as it is more convenience. There could easily find the book online anytime even its in the middle of night. However, books are also demand from this younger generation as new publications cannot be obtain in e-book form.
Kindle VS Ipad
(Sources: mariosundar.wordpress 2007)

 
As for the young children, Richards (2000) have listed down few reasons why e-book should be read to the young children.
  • E-books are interactive. It allows the parents to interact with their kids and teach them to become familiar with the workings of the computer.
  • Attractive colours and pictures on the computer screen increase the learning process.
  • Most school now used computers to teach in the classroom. Thus, teaching children with the e-books will give them a head start before they enter school.
  • E-books are imperishable. The device such as ipad and kindle can last for decades. It can be pass to the next genetation.
  • E-books are eco friendly, they do not need papers.
 Acceptance of E-book by the public:
Due to the advanced technology, people are slowly adopt to E-book. E-book is very convenience in searching a book. Just by typing the key term in e-book, it will lead you to the page that contains the key term and the term will be highlighted. However, according to Mercieca (2004), printed books easier for students to refer to their notes and it allows students to highlighted literally on it. According to Naughton (2006), the growth of Internet changes our daily habit in a way that it forces the readers to read online and so, accept e-book. 

According to Mercieca (2004), based on the design issue, reading process on screen would become 25% to 40% slower than from the virtual book. E-book makes the readers tend to skim read on the screen instead of reading the content. In conclusion, choosing between e-book and printed book, we already choose the e-book. However, I still believe in printed books as better technology does not means to be better communication (Schriver 1997). 


References:


Posted by Joanne Choo at 1:02 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Acceptance of Internet based TV by the public

The mainstream media company, especially television company, are now facing the facts that their program, product, entertainment and information are affected by the internet era. Now, the television industry is undergoing another transformation,Web TV. It has became more and more popular in the society now. Diaz (2009) stated that the audiences are not just ready to change, but they are already doing it. Survey shows that most of the audience are willing to pay more for this web TV service.


Acceptance and adoption of Web TV by the public:
Web TV is the adoption of the internet-like interface in accessing and watching the television (Noam et. al 2004). Web TV is often been said as an interactive gadget. It uses Internet access over the home television receiver using a keyboard that attaches to the telephone line as well as the TV set for display. This service has attracted very little audience. Not much audience can really accept this. Nevertheless, the predictions of a big market for interactive TV continue to be made would be high. 


Challenges faced by Web TV:
The top issue that faced by the Internet TV now is the technical reach (Daukidis et. al 2003). According to Daukidis et. al (2003), the measure of the number of the online households are important for the Web TV providers. However, this cannot be achieve as the broadband technology is still in its beginning state today. Its acceotance and avalability must undergo some important improvements to make the Web TV a feasible alternative new media to the other media.


Watching TV online:
According to Wilson (2006), the content and the quality of web TV deffer widely is because the Internet now is very cheap that everyone can afford it. They can easily make their own videos and movies and then publish them online in the Internet. Network 2 is an example of Web TV. It is a new Web TV that just launched. It provides show such as food shows, instructional videos, video blogs as well as funny movies. Unlike the mainstream media, the censorship for the Web TV is not so tight. Web TV provides many of the shows that a normal TV channel will never wants to bring to the television. Wilson (2006)  also agreed that almost all of the content of Web TV will never being shown in the mainstream TV and this is the reason why Web TV is popular among the audience. 


Symbol of Network 2
(Source: RET 1978)


Examples of Internet-based TV programming:

However, not all of the programming are available in Malaysia, yet they are soon to be here. All in all, Web TV has a very good marketing and bright future in Malaysia. When will it be accepted all of us then? I truly believe its not far from now. 




References:
Posted by Joanne Choo at 10:32 PM 0 comments

The Misusage of Blogs

With the mixture of the World Wide Web, weblogs can be put to good use such as citizen journalistic blogging. People can also express their feeling in their own blogs and unlike the mainstream media, more uncensored information is provided. However, these weblogs can also be misused for the bad intentions.

Take for an instance, bloggers insulting others on their blogs. According to Shadige (2010), a 28-year-old blogger known as Aduka Taruna, was arrested by the polices in Johor due to the post of an allegedly insulting comment on this blog following the demise of the late sultan of Johor. The blogger used the insulting words in commenting on how the announcement of the death of the late sultan of Johor was made. His actions aleady against the defamtion law.

Accorfing to Laws of Malaysia (2006), defamation act is an act relating to the law of libel and insulting others by communication that effected someone's reputation.
Johor police chief Datuk Mohktar Shariff (2010) advised the public to not misuse their blogs for not making any insulting or defaming allegations. He hopes that the arrest of Aduka Taruna will act as a deterrent others.



The blogger, Aduka Taruna.
(Image source: TranungKite 2005 )

Blogging with ethics
Weblog is a place for the internet users to share the useful information and sometimes to share about the blogger's feelings and expressions. It is true that people are free to express their feelings and opinions on their logs. However, bloggers are not supposed to use those insulting words that will cause others feeling unpleasant as it is such a disrespect action towards the audiences. 

Bloggers belonged to an online social networking system is known as the Blogosphere (Tremayne 2007). There are certain rules and ethics that need to follow by a blogger (Patterson & Wilkins 2005). According to Patterson & Wilkins (2005), as internet users and ethical bloggers, we need to respect the feelings an personal space of other web-users. Therefore, to avoid offending anyone's feeling, bloggers need to be more careful in choosing the information to post up on their blogs and the words used on their posts. According to Schriver (1997), decoding of a message is influenced by a person's general knowledge, personal experiences, feelings and culture. Different people with different background will have different perspective on the same issue. Thus, as ethical bloggers, we need to make sure that the contents that provided in our weblogs are balanced and understandable by the others and also should not abused the weblogs in the way that will causes harm and discomfort to the rest.


References:
  • Laws of Malaysia 2006, Defamation Act 1957, The commissioner of Law Revision malaysia, Percetakan Nasional Malaysia Bhd, viewed 9th June 2010, <http://www.agc.gov.my/agc/Akta/Vol.%206/Act%20286.pdf>.
  • Patterson, P & Wilkins, L 2005, 'Media Ethics: Issues and Cases', Fifth Edition, McGrawHill, High Education, New York.
  • Schriver, KA 1997, 'Dynamics in Document Design: Creating Text for Readers', Wiley Computer Publisher, New York.
  • Shadige, J 2010, 'Blogger held over insulting posting', viewed 10th June 2010, <http://yquake.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/articles/12eiss/Article/index_html>.
  • Tremayne, M 2007, 'Blogging, Citizenship and the Future Media', Routledge, New York.
Posted by Joanne Choo at 1:34 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Good design for screen genre

Document design refers to the physical appearance of a document (Reep, 2006). According to Reep (2006), there are four design principles that we need to take note when designing a document.
  • Balance
  • Proportion
  • Sequence
  • Consistency

    The layout we used for our slides is simple yet the we pictures we used are attractive. Besides that, reading take effort and not every audience are willing to read the long sentences in the slides. Thus, we try to make our sentences in point form and try to use less word as the chances to attract the readers' attention is higher (Schriver, 1997). We balanced this slide with a picture in the center, and both left and right side of the page with words. There is also a balance of colour in this screen where we used the same colour for the texts, which is white.

    Readers do not read only the printed texts in a page, but also 'read' the images (Reep, 2006). Putnis & Petelin (1996) states that the aspect on graphics help to describe and to allow readers to have better understanding of the messages conveyed. Thus, we have put in some related images in the slides so that it will enhance the understanding of audiences on what is this presentation about. Besides, we also balanced the page with more pictures in the left side of the page and more words in the right side of the page.


    By using the relevant font size and the emphasis on the main point, it allow readers to differentiate which is the most salient element. In  term of proportion principle, we used different sizes of text to differentiate the contents in the presentation slides. For example, the bigger size of the words represent the title while the smaller size of the text represent the contents. Furthermore, present points in bulleted lists and provide one idea per paragraph are encouraged as it is easier for the readers to absorb and read (Nielson, 1997).


    In my opinion, a good document design uses both text and image to bring the right messages to its audience as Schriver (1997) states that, document design deals with texts which include books, posters and others that incorporate words and pictures that help people to achieve their specific goals for different purposes. Overall, it was a good document design. However, I think there is still some improvement can be make by us as the whole presentation slides do not have a consistent margins. Each page of the presentation has its different margins. 




    References:
    • Nielsen, J 1997, How Users Read on the Web, viewed 19th April 2010, <www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html>
    • Putnis, P & Petelim, R 1996, 'Writing to communicate', in Professional communication: principles and applications, Prentice Hall, Sydney, pp. 223-263.
    • Reep, Diana C 2006, 'Shp 4: Principles of Document Design', in Technical Writing, 6th edn., Pearson Edu, Inc., New York, p.173-190.
    • Schriver, K.A 1997, 'The interplay of words and pictures', Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, p. 361-441, Wiley Computer Pub, New York.

    Posted by Joanne Choo at 12:00 PM 0 comments

    Monday, April 19, 2010

    New Forms of Media Publishing

    New media technologies today are radically challenging the mainstream media.  The new media now has allow people to connect with others in a more open public sphere. We can now share our feelings, thoughts and views and even voice up our opinions and experiences to everyone through the new media. The newest forms of media publishing include Facebook, Twitter, Youtube as well as online newspaper.

    (Source: Google 2010)
    YouTube is one of the famous and successful new media in this 21st century. It is an example of Video Blog(Vlog) where communities are able to share videos with each other online. Youtube is one of the fastest growing media nowadays. According to Plunkett (2006), in UK, the users of Youtube increased by 500% in first six months of 2006. It is such a huge amount that it successfully beat the other social networking sites such as Facebook and My Space. The reason why Youtube is so famous is because it provides users with wide range of video and easy browsing feature for free (Why YouTube Works, 2006). For instance, people can easily watch the video of a Singapore director, Jack Neo explaning his scandal anytime in youtube. This strongly beats the mainstream media where they will only showing this Jack Neo's video in a particular time during reporting the news. 

    (Source: Google 2007)

    (Source: Google 2010)

    Besides that, Twitter and Facebook are also the famous new form of publishing in this era. Twitter and Facebook allow people to sent information and receive updates through internet. Facebook too allow people to share their personal stuffs such as, personal information and pictures with the other users. According to Munk (2009), the news of Michael Jackson's death was first released on Twitter right before it was confirmed by the mainstream media news. This proves that Twitter is faster than the mainstream media in publishing news and the news published from Twitter are credible. 

    (Source: Google 2009)

    In addition, alternative online newspaper is now altered the roles of journalism. Malaysiakini would be the best example. Malaysiakini is an online newspaper. It is an independent media which provides alternative source of political issues (Nadarajah, 2000). Comparing to the mainstream media, this new media allows people to voice up their opinion. There are also many rules that journalists have to obey when it comes to publishing in the mainstream media, which cause most of the news or true stories had been filtered. People switched from mainstream media to Malaysiakini to look for more information as mainstream media have the limits in publishing news. The new media has more freedom of speech comparing with the mainstream media. However, this altered the role or journalism and communications in a way of people will know be knowing what the truth is as two different media are reporting the same issues but with different views. 



    References: 
    Posted by Joanne Choo at 11:33 PM 0 comments

    The Blogging Communities

    What is blogging community?
    Blogging means write something online in a blog that you want to share with the publics.Community referred to those people who shared the same area of interests. Thus, blogging communities are those people or bloggers who have the same interest in a particular area and they discuss together in a group or in this case, in a blog.


    How to create a blogging community?
    1. Choose a central gathering place (Bensen, 2009). According to Rowse (2009), comments section in the blog is a good and natural place to start to build the 'community'. Ask questions in the posts and try to interact with the readers.

    2. Set up web analytics on the blog. For example, plug in google analytics (Bensen, 2009).

    3. Start to find out who and where your potential readers are at (Bensen, 2009). Setting up Google Alerts on your blog will helps to determine who is your targeted readers.

    4. Update your blog frequently and regularly to maintain you readers' interest. Use hyperlinks, forum, tag, links, chat space and comment post to allow the readers to be interactive with the blog they are reading. It also attract more readers to subscribe and link to your blog to maintain the readership.

    5. Participate in specific social networking and get involved in it. Try to develop relationships with others and meet as many people as possible (Bensen, 2009).

    Types of Blogging communities
    According to Nancy White (2006), blogging communities show up in three main patterns:
    • Single Blog/ Blogger Centric Community
    • Central Connecting Topic Community
    • Boundaried Community

    Global Voices is one of the online communities. This online community falls into the Central Connecting Topic Community where it used technology to create an experience of a shared community. Global Voices Community aggregates blogs from developing nations in an effort to get the mainstream media to pay attention to the issues in those countries (White, 2006). Bloggers in Global Voices Community still have and maintain their own blogs. They group together in one community and supporting each other and basically learning from each other. 




    References:


      Posted by Joanne Choo at 9:17 PM 0 comments