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,