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

Sunday, 12 June 2011

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