Reflection - Understanding What I have learned

These postings and analysis of articles have aided me to have a better understanding towards the importance of communicating a message, whether it is via print, video, or pictures. I have better understanding of how the combination of visual and texts can provide a clearer picture as compared to just print alone (Shriver 1997). I have also learned that this combination of visual and text is also a ‘mode’ of communicating text known as multimodal text (Walsh 2006). It has also helped me see the changes and developments that have been made towards the combination of visual and text; how text are now no longer as dominant as compared to the visuals (Kress & Van Leeuwen 1998). Having understood this, it is clearer to see why this integration with visual and text has been more prominent in the recent years and how much emphasis it has been given via the improvement of technology.

References

Kress, G & Van Leeuwen, T 1998, ‘Front pages: (the critical) analysis of newspaper layout,’ Approaches to media discourse, Blackwell, Oxford

Schriver, KA 1997, Chp 6: The interplay of words and pictures, Dynamics in document design:creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Publishing, 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

Japan Disaster - A Different Experienced

Internet has enabled a constant growth and improvement to social media. It has been provided us the opportunity to change the way people utilise their freedom of speech and helped sped the spread of information globally. With the aid of the article published on Mediashift, it would be clearer to understand the changes it has made.

 

The article, ‘How Social Media, Internet changed experience of Japan disaster,’ illustrates how, in the eyes of Dorian Benkoil, the internet/social media has enhanced the experience of the Japan disaster as compared to if the disaster had taken place many years back. Benkoil points out that back in 1995 there was still the difficulty of understanding what was being broadcasted in the news report. However, now with the internet and social media vehicles, the Japan disaster is exposed everywhere from the television right up to the iPad. There is also an increased of video footage published on vehicles like Youtube and Facebook, which can provide the viewers a live experience of what is or has taken place as compared to what a media print could provide. All these have been able to emotionally affect our experience towards the disaster than it could have many years back.

 

From the article, it is clear to see that the internet has somewhat improved the multimodality of texts. Multimodal refers to the different ‘modes’ by which information can be communicated (Walsh 2006), in this case the article emphasised on the multimodal texts in non-print form i.e. videos. Heath (2000) further emphasises that visual texts have impact on ‘neural networks’ and leads to different conceptualisations and different way of thinking. On this note, internet has thus allowed an increase of video footages to be viewed by audiences and it aids us in our understanding and perception towards, in this case, the Japan disaster. As seen in the article, video exposure of the disaster alongside personal sharing of experience of the event has helped viewers around the world to be drawn emotionally to obtain a full understanding of all the little, but real, details of the situation and then contribute, if they can, to help them.

 

In conclusion, the internet and social media vehicles have allowed a further advancement and development to multimodal texting. These improvements to multimodality has provided viewers around the world to understand, not only emotionally, but with full details of how tragic was the Japan disaster on its people.

References

Heath, SB 2000, ‘Seeing our Way into Learning’, Cambridge Joumal of Education,

Vol.30, no.1,121-131.

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

 

Cellphone Videos Fuel Arabs!!!

Technology advancement has accelerated the growth of social medias, allowing faster spread of information via different media vehicles, especially the cellphones. Cellphones and their in-built cameras have given people the ability to publicise videos and pictures as information faster than before. This then could be dangerous as they will be purely free from media and public relations manipulation.

 The article “Social Media, cellphone video fuel arabs,” displays how cellphone videos lead to the removal of Muhammad Hosni Sayyid Mubarak’s of his presidency. Murbarak is the fourth president of Egypt and due to the Egyptian revolution which took place earlier this year. Footage from camera phones, displaying harsh crackdowns by security forces on crowds of protestors, were uploaded to Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and other sites, leading to international condemnation for the Bahrain and Libya government and increased anger in the streets. Once these footages were posted on media vehicles like Facebook and Youtube, the event was blown up and already spread like wildfire.

The older form of media took longer to have an effect on the viewers’ emotions. Newspapers and other print media had a limit to providing a full depiction of an event. But with the invention of television and, now, the internet and other social media vehicles, full pictures or videos could be easily seen and understood. All these can lead to changes in behaviour and thoughts, especially from observing models in the world around us like our parents, peers, or other role models, such as those provided by mass media (Murray 2008). The videos were able to fuel the anger of the people because there was no media manipulation involved, meaning there was no bias selection or press selection (Parenti 2001) on what should be shown to the viewers, thus allowing them to have a full ‘down to earth’ (Gunther & Van Leeuwen 1998) representation of the event from the eyes of the people there. These footages also do not fall under media ownership, meaning that the media does not possess ownership or power to select, edit, or choose the manner of its presentation (Armijo 2009), thus it is free to be shown via media vehicles like Youtube, Flickr, or Facebook.

 In conclusion, technology has advanced and improved our freedom within social media networks. These advances has allowed us to practice a whole new means of freedom of speech as well as accelerated the spread of news globally.

References

Armijo, 2009, 'Media ownership regulation: a comparative perspective', The Georgia journal of international and comparative law,

vol. 37, no. 3, p 422 – 467, viewed on 11 June 2011,

<http://heinonline.org.ezlibproxy.unisa.edu.au/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/gjicl37&collection=journals&page=421>

 

Kress, G & Van Leeuwen, T 1998, ‘Front pages: (the critical) analysis of newspaper layout,’ Approaches to media discourse, Blackwell, Oxford

 

Murray, JP 2008, ‘Media Violence: the effects are both real and strong,’ American Behavioural Scientist, vol.51, no.8, pp.1212-1230, viewed on 11 June 2011,

<http://abs.sagepub.com.ezlibproxy.unisa.edu.au/content/51/8/1212.full.pdf+html> 

 

Parenti, M 2002, ‘Monoply Media Manipulation,’ Mediterranean Quarterly, vol.13, pp.53-66, viewed on 11 June 2011,

<http://stopnwo.com/docs2/michael_parenti_monopoly_media_manipulation.pdf>

Plagiarism Boom!!!

Plagiarism is a major offence towards academic and publication ethics, yet it has been an existing problem for a number of years. It has caused damages to people and other people’s work and yet it continues to exist. Analysing the article from BBC magazine will help us have a better perspective to plagiarism and its existence.

“Plagiarism: the Ctrl+C, Ctrl + V boom,” talks about plagiarism and its existence over the years. Technology advancement, especially the internet, has provided people the opportunity to a bigger digital library, hence increasing the rate of plagiarism. This article also points out that there are reasons for the existence of plagiarism and it differs between plagiarism found in academic and publication works. Plagiarism tends to be more prominent among first year undergraduates due to lack of appropriate instructions and also due to their adapting stage towards a new environment. In relation to publication works, plagiarism could exist due to editors dropping their guard to prevent this and also the difficulty to detect plagiarism.

The fourth rule of the principles of ethical publishing in the international journal of cardiology, as stated in Coats (2008), requires any work that is submitted should contained acquired material via ethical standards and not copied from others without permission. Plagiarism violates this rule and it can cause major damages to the reputation of the writer and it should be avoided by all cost. These damages could extend to the point of violating other authors’ copyright which will allow these authors to see that appropriate consequences should come to the copier. Game and West (2002) provides a solution to plagiarism, encouraging that detailed note-taking and record keeping of ideas used and accurately attributed to the right sources. They also encourage that quotation marks should be used and the source is appropriately cited. Appropriate and just punishment should be given to those who cannot practice these simple rules. In terms of academic writings, students should be consistently encouraged not to plagiarise and to understand the consequences of the plagiarism. Changes should not be made to any rule associated with plagiarism as it would defeat any effort made to emphasise the dangers of plagiarism.

In conlusion, plagiarism is a major offense and dangerous whether for academic or publication works. Every effort and more should be made to ensure this emphasis is made and understood.

References

Coats, AJS 2009, ‘Ethical Authorship and Publishing,’ International Journal of Cardiology, vol. 131, pp. 149-150, viewed on 10 June 2011,

<http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezlibproxy.unisa.edu.au/science/article/pii/S0167527308012266>

Game, A & West, MA 2002, ‘Principles of Publishing,’ Psychologist, vol.15, no.3, pp. 126-129, viewed on 10 June 2011,

<http://proquest.umi.com.ezlibproxy.unisa.edu.au/pqdlink?Ver=1&Exp=06-10-2016&FMT=7&DID=113389686&RQT=309>

Public Apology by Berita Harian Over Tsunami Cartoon

Publishing of articles, especially in regards to global issues, demands writers to practice ethics. Readers of articles can be influenced by what they read and understand, therefore articles must display proof practiced ethics to avoid misunderstanding. For further understanding, analysis on a newspaper article will help us.

On March 14^th 2011, an article was published online titled: “Berita Harian issues public apology over tsunami cartoon.” Japan faced a major earthquake on the 11^th of March causing a massive tsunami to hit its shores. Berita Harian published a cartoon created by Mohd Zohri Sukimi, a.k.a Zoy, which showed the popular Japanese icon Ultraman running away from a huge oncoming wave. This publication caused a disturbance on social networking sites due to its insensitive and offensive characteristic, leading both politicians and the public to criticise it. Due to the criticisms, an apology needed to be made though it was not the daily’s intention to be insensitive.

Shriver (1997) indicates that the decisions document designers make about the relationships between prose and graphics can have a major impact on the clarity of the message and how engaging the message is. Reep (2006) also agrees stressing that graphic aids in isolating the main topics and appeal particularly to general and non-expert readers. In line with this, the cartoon was very clear on the message and, had it been published at another time, it would have been quite funny and well done. However, due to the time it was published, the cartoon was very insensitive and was not well thought off in terms of ethics.

It is clear that the editor was not thorough in his practice of ethics. Morton (2009) highlights two specific duties and responsibilities of editors and publishers: peer review and responsible publication practice. He goes on to say that peer review is necessary to declare conflicts of interest and provide objective, unbiased reviews while the editors need to ensure accuracy and encourage academic discourse and debate. With the publication of the cartoon, it is clear to see that these two duties were lacking and this caused them some damage to the name of their newspaper. Therefore, an apology was necessary and appropriate towards the Japanese citizens.

In conclusion, ethics is important to be practiced before any publication is made in order to avoid unnecessary misunderstanding as it can lead to other unwanted issues.

Reference:

Morton, NS 2009, ‘Publication Ethics,’ Pediatric Anesthesia, vol.19, no.10, pp. 1011-1013, viewed on 10 June 2011,

<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezlibproxy.unisa.edu.au/doi/10.1111/j.1460-9592.2009.03086.x/pdf>

Schriver, KA 1997, Chp 6: The interplay of words and pictures, Dynamics in document design:creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Publishing, New York

Reep, Diana C. 2006, Chp 4: Principles of Document Design, Technical Writing, 6th ed., Pearson Edu, Inc., New York

World of Communication - Era of New Media

The communication environment now, the beginning of the of the 21^st 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,

<http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/discussion/blogging.pdf>

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,

<http://www.webbusinesswiz.com/blogging/blogging-communities-for-the-blogging-enthusiast/>

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

<http://www.ehow.com/how_2152382_build-blogging-community.html>

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,

<http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community>