Tuesday 10 May 2011

World of Communication - Era of New Media



The communication environment now, the beginning of the of the 21st century, has changed immensely due to the combination of digital convergence, the speedy development in personal computing and global networking (Naughton n.d.).  People are opened to a whole new technological era of message receiving via mediums like computers or the internet all because of the development in multimodality and affordances.

Multimodality has been defined by Kress and Van Leeuwen (1998) to be all texts that are accompanied by other semiotic modes. This means that any text must be written with proper linguistics and visual arrangements and languages must be spoken with the correct gesture, intonation, and speech sound. Therefore, there are more visuals and graphics contexts being used to convey messages and information as compared to the traditional methods. It is because of this that websites like Youtube, Facebook, and new weblogs have emerged more stronger and attracting more viewers.

Affordances, on the other hand, is defined as the possibilities derived from how the multimodal modes are used, for example, the affordance of a print-based text lies in how the words are used in the text(Walsh 2006, p.34). With formation of weblogs and websites, communication of messages and information provides improved affordance as now there are more associations made with visual and texts.



Understanding multimodality and affordances, it is clearer to see the reason behind the many different variations in the combinations of visual and texts. These variations are meant to provide a variety to the readers or viewers as each one of them have different ways of interpreting the messages that are being conveyed (Shriver 1997, p.365). Shriver (1997, p.365) further stresses that it is important for document designers to understand both the individual differences among readers and the shared ways that people experience documents as these individual interpretations will determined whether or not the messages were properly received and to avoid any misunderstanding. Misinterpretation or misunderstanding may result in serious damages to the image of a company and lead to negative word of mouth among the public.



References:

Kress, G & Van Leeuwen, T 1998, 'Front Pages: (The Critical) Analysis of Newspaper Layout', Approaches to Media Discourse, Blackwell, Oxford

Naughton, J n.d., Blogging and Emerging Media Ecosystem, Reuters Institute, viewed 6 May 2011,

Schriver, K 1997, 'The Interplay of Words and Pictures', Dynamics in Document Design : Creating Texts for Readers, Wiley Computer Publisher, New York

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

The World of Blogging Communities



Blogging community, also known as blogosphere, is a collective community of several blogs (WebBusinessWizz 2009). It aggregates the individual and independent blogs of a number of people with shared interest, such as sharing the same cause, similar political views, similar business interest, and so on  (Kinkeldei 2007, p.1).

To form a blogging community, a blogger needs to (eHow.com n.d.):
  • Read other blogs – get a feel of what he is more inclined to and to discover other blogs with common interest
  • Leave comments on other blogs – provides a calling card for other bloggers to find you
  • Reply to comments – shows you are engaging with other bloggers
  • List your blog in directories – to allow your blog to be found
  • Write often – can give readers variety and maintain them to stay on your blog longer
  • Posts must be entertaining – provide readers with fresh content and not bore them
  • Market your blog – besides visiting other bloggers, take other means of marketing your blog



There are three forms which blogging communities are derived from (White 2006):
  1. One Blog Centric Community – the blog is owned by one blogger or organization and it possess full control over other blog members using this platform
  2. Topic Centric Community – community that arises between blogs linked with a common passion or topic via hyperlinks; no single technological platform
  3. Boundaried Community – a collection of blogs and blog readers hosted on a single site or platform



To give further analysis on the type of blogging communities, let’s look at Anecdote. Anecdote’s tagline, “Putting stories to work”, in itself explains what the blog is all about. This blog allows corporate people to share their business strategies in the form of stories whereby any readers will finder it easier to relate to.  It’s a really good example of a One Blog Centric Community as it is owned by Mark Schenk, one owner, and it allows other bloggers to tell share their stories. 

White (2006) states that if the owner decides to take or shut down the whole blog, it will lead to the destruction of the community and other consequences. Since Anecdote is a business related blog, it allows bloggers opportunity to build working relationships among each other and relationships/networks are important for business. Therefore, if this weblog were to shut down and unless the bloggers have alternative communication paths, it could cause lost of relationship or other chances of improving or forming new relationships. Thus, One Blog Centric Community can be beneficial and yet damaging as well.

References:

Blogging Communities for the Blogging Enthusiast, Web Business Wizz, viewed 5 May 2011,

How To Build a Blogging Community, eHow, viewed 5 May 2011,

Kinkeldei, B 2007, Whitepaper Blog Communities - Forging Connnections and Promoting Growth Through Blog Communities, 21 Publish, viewed 6 May 2011,
<http://www.21publish.com/pub/21publish/blogging-whitepaper.pdf>

White, N 2006, Blogs and Community - Launcing a New Paradigm for Online Community, Australian Flexible Learning Framework, viewed on 5 May 2011,


Monday 9 May 2011

Types of blogs??



Weblogs possess a common classification system whereby they are classed according to subject matter, media type, device, or the status of the publisher.
  • Subject Matter – refers to the topics that the blog postings is about
    • Politics
    • Fashion
    • History
    • Law
    • Technology
    • Sport
    • Travel
    • Food

  • Media Type – what type of blogs
    • Vlog - a blog that uses videos as its primary media in each post, e.g  vlog sites like youtube.com and metacafe.com (Learn Online 2009)
    • Linklog  - maintains a list of links which the user finds interesting to collect
    • Tumblelogs -  also known as  microblogging, is a broadcasting medium which allows the user to exchange small elements of content e.g. a short sentence, individual images, or video links
    • Sketchlogs – a blog that mainly consists of images, especially sketches and other drawings
    • Photoblog – similar to a sketchlog but it is a blog in the form of photo sharing and publishing where the pictures are the main element rather than txt e.g. Flickr.com

  • Device
    • Moblog – a means allowing the user to post on their blogs directly via a mobile/smart phone

  • Status of Publishers
    • Business blogs
    • Corporate blogs




The main goal of a blogger is to consistently deliver compelling and informative content. It is important, therefore, that bloggers understand what their readers are more inclined to; whether it is the topic, style, format, or even the audience. The most successful blogs are ones that contain fascinating and attention grabbing topics and excellent writing (Compukol Connection 2010). 

Funnell (2008) quotes Margaret Simons who defines nine different types of blogs: pamphleteering, digest, advocacy, popular mechanics, exhibition, gatewatched, diary, advertisement, and news. The types of blog that appeals more to readers will be the news blogs, pamphleteering, and popular mechanics as these blogs provide information and topics which readers are consistently searching for. Blogs and other informative websites are now taking over the traditional source of information, such as newspapers or magazines, as they provide much more convenience to the readers as sources of interesting topics and facts.

Reference:

Effective Blog Writing Styles, Compukol Connection, viewed 4 May 2011,

Funnell, A 2008, A Taxomony of Blogs, The Media Report, viewed 5 May 2011, 

What is Vlogging?, Learn Online, viewed 5 May 2011,

Sunday 8 May 2011

Blogs - A Phenomenon


Weblogs has become a part of everyone’s life, whether it be for blogging as an electric diary, or a means to express out their anger or problems in life, or for businesses. In Branum (2001), he quotes Werbach who defines weblogs as “frequently updated observations, news, headlines, commentary, recommended links and/or diary entries, generally organized chronologically.” Blogging has become a phenomenon of interconnection between millions of blogs and this domain is now known as a blogosphere (Amit Bhawani 2008)






The constant, speedy improvement of technology has lead to the formation of more bloggers and these bloggers have continued to converge with various social media tools whereby the sharing of blog posts are increasingly done through social networks, reducing the lines between blogs, micro-blogs, and social networks (Sobel 2010, p. 1). 


The current trend for this phenomenon lies in mobile blogging. In this regard, 25% of all bloggers are already engaged in mobile blogging and 40% of bloggers who are engaged in mobile blogging has stated that it has changed the way they blog, encouraging shorter and more spontaneous posts (Sobel 2010, p.1). Another important trend lies in influential blogs from women and moms, especially in the segment of brands as they mostly blog about brands (Sobel 2010, p.1). Research has shown also that 48% of all bloggers believe that more people will be getting their news and entertainment from blogs in the next five years than from the traditional media, hence the continuous increase of bloggers (Sobel 2010, p.1).

By 2008, Malaysia recorded 500,000 active bloggers which help ranked Malaysia one of the highest for blogging after Indonesia and the European Union (The Star 2008). The Star (2008) continued to quote Dr. Abu Hassan Abdullah, lecturer of University Malaya, who states that blogs have a wide reach especially in influencing the thinking of people in terms of politics. He goes on to further state that 70% of election results derived from influential information from blogs (The Star 2008).


References:


Blogging in Malaysia ranks among highest in the world, The Star, viewed 4 May 2011,

Branum, J 2001, The Blogging Phenomenon – An Overview and Theorectical Consideration, JMB Zine, viewed 3 May 2011,
<http://www.ajy.net/jmb/blogphenomenon.htm>

Sobel, J 2010, State of Blogosphere 2010, Technorati, viewed 3 May 2011,
http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2010-introduction/#ixzz1LoKklqvc>

What is Blogosphere?,  Amit Bhawani, viewed 4 May 2011,