Reflection

In the end of the semester, I realized that I had learned a lot of things that related to the web design principle. Previously, I thought design a web and post an article is very simple, in fact we have to aware a lot of rules and principle.The things that I should aware when we post our article of web design is more than my imagination. Without a doubt, the important thing that I learnt I had learned how to use a blog and what can do in the blog except post an article. Yet, I learned how to personalize and customizing the blog to make it look attractive. I have learnt that images and texts must be cooperate in order to let audiences to understand more (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006).

I know how to make our blog more usability and attractive. Besides, I also realize that to enhance the readability, it is important to know about the layouts, composition of salience and framing (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006). The way that personalize and customize the blog is also one of the features that I have learned from this assignment.

Kress and van Leeuwen (1998) claims that multimodal plays an important role among today readers, so I incorporate images, text and widget into my blog. Title name, search information, summaries, type in our own word, citation, search picture and how to make an article to attract people to leave on our article, is very important for our works, especially references. References is very important for every assignment that we did, this is the most important and useful thing that I learnt in this subject.

Last but not least, I have to thanks to Miss Jenny, her humorous and passion is I the thing that I respect in her. Genre, design principle, redundant and so on,everything that I never before. In order to design a document, we should know that who is our audience, purpose and context.


References:

Kress, G & van Leeuwen 1998, front pages: (the critical) analysis of newspaper layout. in Approaches to media discourse, eds Bell, A & Garrett, P, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 186-219

Kress, G & van Leeuwen 2006, 'Chapter 1: The semiotic landscape: Language and Visual Communication', Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design, 2nd edition, Routledge, London.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is a common known term in the academic world, avoiding being caught of plagiarism is already a common among scholars and students who are working on a piece of assessment or article. To commit plagiarism is easy which usually just apply copy and paste function on the computer against a certain source of publishing and paste it towards another article that under progress, as well hand-copy from text books or other sources of publishing. (Eastment D 2005)

Students from colleges and universities worldwide are assuming to be the largest participant of committing plagiarism, simply because it’s a culture among them (Nexis UK 2011). But in reality, plagiarism is much more complicated. At its core, plagiarism involves using other people's thoughts, words or ideas without acknowledgement.

Programs that designed to deliver lesson of intellectual property towards the teenagers are increasing rapidly as we speak(Nexis UK 2011). Yet it just the matter of citing the sources correctly in articles.

It’s best to consider avoiding plagiarism by practising to cite sources right in a work. A book called “Cite Them Right” which published by Richard The website Plagiarism Advice (http://www.plagiarismadvice.org/) has lots of useful information on tackling plagiarism, and includes free downloadable guides from Ofqual for teachers, students and parents. The Plagiarism Resource Site also offers software for detecting copies. Called ‘WCopyFind’, it is intended to search locally-stored electronic documents, but it does have some ability to search on the Web. (Eastment D 2005)

Eventually it begs the question, is plagiarism out of control, well for a fact that I think it is. “Google with the copy and paste function equal plagiarism” quoted from George Cole (2010), which have open the path for obtaining information, but teenagers currently in the globe are pampered and spoil to take things for granted. Taking issue and task lightly and seek the easy way out has become a culture among the teenager, for its not surprise to assume that teenage students in achieving higher education prefer the easy method as well.

References:

Cole G.,2010. Times Education Supplement, Eastment. D 2005, ELT Journal Volume 59/2 April 2005. Oxford University Press, viewed 9 June 2011,.ca/panasia/ev.11150-201-1-DO_TOPIC,html>.

Tennant P and Rowell G 2010, Benchmark Plagiarism Tariff, A benchmark tariff for the application of penalties for student plagiarism in higher education, Plagiarism advice, viewed 9 June 2011, http://plagarismadvice.org/BTariff.pdf.

Nexis UK, 2011, Nexis the Global Business Information Research Database, Nexis Business Intelligent, viewed 10 June 2011, http://lexisnexis.org.uk/nexis.

Insensitive Visual Context Published

The media should follow the ethical publishing principles and check for the content before publish. However, there is an issue that a Malaysian paper published a tsunami cartoon portraying the overwhelming tsunami and earthquake at Japan. This issue had caused Malaysians to reacted with anger and there are critics on Facebook and Twitter that some even commented to boycott the paper (The Australian 2011). The publication had created a buzz on social networking sites with politicians. It was criticized by the public for it's poor judgment on publishing content and described the cartoon as "distasteful" and "insensitive" (Wong 2011).

Source: The Straits Times

The paper had published the apology on its website, Facebook and Twitter accounts after several quarters demanded the paper to apologizes for the publication (The Straits Times 2011). This issue was even published in different countries such as The Australian and The Straits Times from Australia and Singapore. According to the paper's editor, they apologize for the publication of the cartoon in Berita Minggu and they had no intention of poking fun at the disaster that has befallen the nation of Japan and its people (Wong 2011). Besides, the paper's editor also stated that they were greatly sympathise with their plight and share the sorrow of the Japanese people (Wong 2011). This publication had created a huge buzz in Malaysia. Hence, the media have to be careful with the visual and situational context before publishing and should publish ethically.

References:

The Australian 2011, Malaysian paper sorry for tsunami cartoon, viewed 9 June 2011,
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/malaysian-paper-sorry-for-tsunami-cartoon/story-fn3dxity-1226021224356

The Straits Times 2011, Malaysia newspaper sorry for tsunami cartoon, viewed 8 June 2011, http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/SEAsia/Story/STIStory_644924.html

Wong 2011, The Star Online, Berita Harian issues public apology over tsunami cartoon, viewed 9 June 2011, http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/3/14/nation/8262608&sec=nation

Social Media the causes for uprising in Egypt?

It all started with Tunisia and things began similarly, thousands began taking to the streets to protest poverty, rampant unemployment, government corruption and autocratic governance of President Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled the country for 30 years. (Deeb. S.E 2011)

These were the first protests on such a large scale in Egypt since the 1970s., the protests demanding that President Hosni Mubarak step down were a catalyst for years or decades of repressed anger at mistreatment at the hands of the state and country where social media play an important role towards the even which started on 25th January 2011 and right before social media was commercialised, people were afraid to go against the authorities with possible prosecution. This is when social media such Facebook and twitter began to get popular throughout the globe when people across the globe is connected through their personal computer only with internet connectivity is compulsory. It all begins when people around Egypt started to interacting with this sites and it made possible where almost 80 million of the population is more connected to each ever as before. (Boyd.E.B 2011)

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, cell phones and even cable news outlets are putting a tremendous amount of power right into the hands of the people. And don't think for a second that the rest of the Arab world isn't watching what is happening when information that is allocated on the world wide web in tremendous amount. For starters, these communication tools allow ordinary citizens to plan, organize and accelerate protests in a way that was unthinkable just a few years ago. They can spread the word about mass protests, ensuring more people will show up. In turn, the sheer size of some of these protests makes it close to impossible for officials to stop them. (Cafferty.J 2011)

Just imagine the world with the innovation of social media back when it was during the 1960s or 1970s, what could possibly happen when the assassination of Martin Luther King took place? People might even stand up and democracy will go into a very next level where freedom of speech is no longer able to be restrict by several governmental organisations and suppression of truth because the people is sick with the lies made by the news media and the conspiracy involved, the truth and justice is what people want and widely expected more uprising against the government especially the rest of the middle east nation will have something to be worried on if such regime existed in those country soon enough that we would expected it to begin.

References:

Deeb.S.E 2011, Egypt’s uprising unites society in rage, for many, protests were catalyst for years or decades repressed anger at government, Mideast N. Africa on msnbc.com, viewed 7 June 2011, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41334041/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/egypts-uprising-unites-society-rage/.

BOYD E.B. 2011, How Social Media Accelerated the Uprising in Egypt, Fast Company, viewed 7 June 2011, <http://www.fastcompany.com/1722492/how-social-media-accelerated-the-uprising-in-egypt>.

Jack C 2011, Social media and Egypt uprising, CNN Politics, viewed 6 June 2011, <http://caffertyfile.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/31/social-media-egypt-uprising/>.

New Media Technological Innovation

Remember the times while we get what we want to know about the world through the news from our television? At most of the time we are not in front of the television to get live feed from numerous network and if we missed it we could only get to know when our friends and relatives inform us about the particular event and newspaper were only circulated every 24 hours. According to Korea Times, with an influx of new media into the news market, print newspapers, with their subscriptions plunging, are struggling to survive. Some predict that the traditional media is soon destined to disappear, ending its hundreds of years of domination.

The idea of technological convergence generally referees to shifts in the use of different technologies from diverse scientific and technical spheres that have been brought together to create new objects and news uses for those objects. In a converged media world, consumers increasingly call the shots. They use Apple iPods to make their own music playlists. Personal video recorders allow them to customize televisoin schedules. Digital Audio Broadcasting or DAB Digital Radio pumps static-free music to their homes and cars. These consumers pull stock-market updates, text messages, wallpaper, ring-tones, and short-form video into their mobile phones. They come together in online communities, generate their own content, mix it, and share it on a growing number of social networks just like how the netizen has used it to give support during the 2011 Japanese Earthquake or use it against the governments as it happened in the Middle East Uprising (Serajul I. Bhuiyan, 2006). Social networks have given countless internet users a platform for showcasing their creativity, espousing their causes, sharing their thoughts, and furthering their personal and professional agendas (Amanda 2010).

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube is also considered a very important media tools for the online audience as well as to find out their wanted news and leaving out comments and where the other could discuss the given issue. According to Marshall Kirkpatrick (2008), YouTube dominates video more than Google in search and this is evident where many news network like BBC and CNN has started to upload their video via YouTube and user could just only search for the selected news on video format and when newspaper uploaded their content every 24 hours, it's a remarkable feat when the social media uploaded their content every second of given possible spare time for the user things they desired whether it was for the right or wrong purposes and there is overflow of information when anyone who has the access to the web can search for information they desired with their fingertips. For better or worse of media transparency, new media has gained it much needed popularity for accurate news analysis but it is also important that content can get obtained is what people is looking for.

References:

Bhuiyan S.I 2006, Asia Media Archives, Impact of new media technology on society, viewed 6 June 2011, http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=52164

Kirkpatrick M 2008, Read Write Web, Report: YouTube dominates video more that Google dominate search, viewed 5 June 2011, http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/youtube_dominates _video.php

Korea Times 2006, Asia Media Archives, Paper face challenge from new media, viewed 6 June 2011, http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=37130

Blogging Communities

A blogging community is essential to being a successful blogger to create name and reputation. Driving the traffic to the blog to build a reader community. Blog communities refer to community who interacted online within some bounded set of technologies. There are three types of community:
i. Single blogger Centric Community - One blog owned by one owner or organisation. It is a blog by commenting not only get to know only the blogger but the community of commentors where could build up identity.
ii. Central Connecting topic community - This form of community that arises between blogs linked between a common topic. Power distributed across all the blogs. Each bloggers has unique identity

iii. Boundaried Community - Collections of blogs and blogs reader hosted a single site or platform. Community leaders may have more influence site owner wields ultimate power.
(White, 2005)

How to create a blogging community:
Step 1: Discover other blogs that share common interest with you. By reading blogs also give you a starting point to discuss topic with your readers.

Step 2: Leave a comment on other bloggers to create the communication. Leaving a comment is like leaving a calling card, there are URL that people could discover you.

Step 3: Reply to your comments whoever that comment on your blog. Give a simple " Thank you" and appreciate to engage the relationship in between.

Step 4: List out your blog in directories

Step 5: A professional blogger will advise that post more than once a day. By more posting you are providing your readers to stay longer time to read at your blog longer.

Step 6: Make your post entertaining and giving some different opinion from others. People would not want to read the samething with other blogger. Writing skills is one of the key point to keep your readers loyalty.

Step 7: Beside commenting and and visiting on other blog, marketing your blog such as have a signature link to your blog on message boards or forum. (eHow.com)

One of the famous local blogging community is Nuffnang. Nuffnang is a blog advertising platform for bloggers to bloggers. What this means that is cerntain bloggers with associated skills and influence have been invited to take a stake in the company. Most of the blogger act are all partners of Nuffnang and act as ambassadors and advisors. They could help you to find the best opportunities for your blog, tell them what you want to see and generally weave their magic to ensure that your Nuffnang experience is the best it can be.They relates the bloggers and advertiser together. Nuffnang already become the focal point of Asia Pacific. (Nuffnang.com)

Naffnang.com, n.d., Our Community, viewed 1 May 2011, http://www.naffnang.com.my/our-community/

Nikkis, n.d., eHow, How to build a Blogging Community, viewed 1 May 2011, http://www.ehow.com/how_2152382_build-blogging-community.html

White N, 2005, Blogs and Community - Launching a new paradigm for online community, viewed 1 May 2011,
http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community.

Blog Classification

With the emergence of blogging, bloggers have created diverse content for many reasons, such as to increase the uniqueness of their blogs, or to attract more readers. As such, many different types of blogs have emerged the different purpose of use. (Libray.Think Quest)
Some are business purpose, some are reviews, some are updates, personal topics and so on.
Some examples of the classification types of blogs include:

Subject matter:
1. Politics, e.g. Malaysia Digest
2. Fashion, e.g. Black Milk Project
3. History, e.g. Blog 4 History: American & Civil War History
4. Law, e.g. Law Eddie.com

Device:
Moblog or mobile blogging, e.g. Dan's Blog (2.0)

Media type:
1. Vlog or video logging, e.g. Dhiya Faris
2. Linklog is URLs (hyperlinks) blogging, e.g. iamcal.com
3. Sketchlog, e.g. Christine's sketch log
4. Tumblelog is similar to link log but with more variations of posts, e.g. Zeo's tumblerlog

Status of publishers:
1. Business blog, e.g. Business Blog
2. Corporate blogs, e.g. Linked in Blog

In my opinion, subject matter is one of the method that I will considering. Is easier for readers to understand the specific topic and keywords that relates matters that they concern.

Reference:
Library.Think Quest, n.d., Blogging the Phenomenon, viewed 28 April 2011, http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/01130/typesofblogs.html

New forms of Media Publishing

Social networking is going to change the way we relate to each other in pretty far-reaching ways. In fact, the new media driving change across our cultural, our social and even our political landscapes. For instance, common interest groups can help users coordinate for collective action. Social network sites may fulfill many of the promises of civic journalism, such as delivering shared, relevant information to its users and providing a place for exchanging ideas where audiences have become coauthors on interactive websites. (Sebastián Valenzuela, 2008)

The five impact of new media :
• Experts coming under pressure from new voices who are early adopters of new technology
• New organisations emerging to deal with the social, cultural and political changes
• There is a struggle to revise the social and legal norms -- especially in relation to intellectual property
• The concepts of identity and community are transformed
• Educators are pressured to prepare their students for the newly emerging world (Gavin, 2008)

However, Facebook is a social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. (Flixya.com, 2009)

The growth of Facebook user within few weeks.
Image Source:http://www.malaysiacrunch.com/2008/12/how-many-facebook-users-in-malaysia.htm

Facebook is a great way to connect with your old high school and college classmates. This is the biggest selling point to facebook because it really does allow you to reconnect with a lot of old friends and to make new friends.

Nowadays there are many people using the tools of facebook for business purpose due to the cost of online advertising on portals like Facebook is lower than conventional methods, and also provides a wider audience and greater visibility.

Due to the fabulous growth of social networking such as Youtube, twitter, blogger, Facebook and so on, people now are more updated in such way of networking rather than a hardcopy newspaper or live TV news. People are more concern the comments, status in the social media which are even more up-to-date to the reporter. A sharing of feeling, pictures and video is part of the lifestyle to them.

Reference:
Flixya.com, 2009, Introduction to Facebook, viewed 5 May 2011, http://www.flixya.com/blog/1671957/INTRODUCTION-TO-FACEBOOK

Gavin, 2008, Servant of Chaos, Five impacts of New media, viewed 2 May 2011, http://www.servantofchaos.com/2008/02/five-impacts-of.html

Valenzuela. S, Park. N, Kee. Kerk, 2008, Lessons from Facebook: The Effect of Social Network, Submitted to the 9th International Symposium on Online Journalism, Austin, Texas, viewed 5 May 2011,
http://online.journalism.utexas.edu/2008/papers/Valenzuela.pdf

Surfthenetwithkids.com, n.d., Surf the net with the Kids, Internet Safety Pro and Cons, viewed 5 May 2011 http://www.surfnetkids.com/go/safety/752/pros-and-cons-of-facebook/

Blogs as current phenomenon & benefits to the community

Blogging gives you the power to connect, change, communicate, relate, inform, learn, grow, share, explore, nurture, help, transform and earn, across the globe, all at the touch of a keypad. Blog simple a website that allows you to upload a stream of information through text, audio and video, but it is how to blog and why that makes the differences. (Whyyoumustblog.com)

The blogging phenomenon has great potential through its power to create social cohesion and to elicit support for members of a community. Blogs are personal platforms where individual broadcast their perspectives on current events, the media, our culture and anything else that strikes their raw material available over the web based on the personal interests. (James. M Branum 2001)

Says David Sirfy, for nearly four years, we have been tracking and enabling the growth of this phenomenon and theirs is much in our data to indicate that the medium is “growing up.” There are too large of amount of people blogging where could not even make a count on that. That is why there are no reports shown of the number of blogger 2007.

Another great benefit of blogging is that posts can also be used as a free advertising vehicle. (David Fisherman) This is what happening in Malaysia where blog is a free advertising vehicle, and recent years has been encounter many fashion blog can be found. If you have something you are trying to promote on a limited budget, what better way to achieve this than to write a post others can instantly read and does not cost the marketer a single penny

On the other hand, politicians nowadayds in Malaysia are blogging as well (figure 1)such as the Prime Minister Najib, DAP Chairman Lim Kit Siang, ex-Prime Minister Dr.Mahathir Mohamad and so on. As mentioned blog is an online diary, the leaders whose carry high reputation will definitely bring an impact to society as well!image source: http://malaysiadigest.blogspot.com/2008/04/list-of-malaysia-politicians-blog.html

However, the state of the blog is strong, and is maturing as an influential and important part of the web and social networking. It has been building up for many years and it does really work to the community as well.

References:

Blogherald.com, 2011, The Blog Herald, How many blogs are there is someone still counting, viewed 21 April 2011, http://www.blogherald.com/2008/02/11/how-many-blogs-are-there-is-someone-still-counting/

David Fisherman, n.d., Ezine @rticles, Why Do People Use Blogs, viewed 21 April 2011,
http://ezinearticles.com/?Why-Do-People-Use-Blogs&id=332394

James.M, 2001, JMBzine.com, The blogging Phenomenon, viewed 21 April 2011, http://www.ajy.net/jmb/blogphenomenon.htm

Whyyoumustblog, n.d., How to blog and why, viewed 21 April 2011, http://www.whyyoumustblog.com

Document Design

Based on the presentation slides that me and my course mate was done with a presentation last week, my opinion was very good overall but the color background of the presentation slides look dull (figure 1). The color was not so attractive that grabs the attention from the audience. According to Wendy Russell, choose one that is appropriate for the audience. A clean, straightforward layout is best if you are presenting to business clientele. Select one that is full of color and contains a variety of shapes if your presentation is aimed at young children.

Figure 1

A good powerpoint slides include consistency. According to the figure 2, the slide was posted the citation on the top right, but other slides was pasted on the bottom. It might be confusing the readers to read the citation first instead of images that given. Hence, layout is important.The consistency of readings is always from top to bottom (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1998).

Figure 2

Besides that, Shriver (1997) states the effective mean readable and legible, the appearance of text, headings and paragraphs affects the way reader approach and understand the content.

Another trick to improve good presentation is to communicate with the audience. If possible take the time provide the opportunity for audience to ask question the things that they do not understood fromt the presentation that you convey. (Zane L Marquez, 2010)

Last but not least, to improve a good presentation will be presented in correct grammar and possitive issue. According to Anderson, a good documents will help readers to narrow down the main point of the documents to the readers. Besides, a good document might help readers to think positively and encourage readers to read. (Anderson, 1987)

References:

Anderson, P 1987, " Technical Writing: A reader centered approach." 2nd edn, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Orlando, Florida.

Kress, Gunther & van Leeuwen, 1998, Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Arts, p.196.

Shriver. KA. 1997, Chapter 6: Dynamics in document design creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Pub, New York.

Wendy Russell, About.com Guide, 10 Tips for Creating Successful Business Presentations, <http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Make-a-Good-PowerPoint-Presentation&id=4313178>

Zane L Marquez, 2010, How to Make a Good PowerPoint Presentation, viewed May 18 2010, <http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Make-a-Good-PowerPoint-Presentation&id=4313178>

Purpose of Blog

The purpose of this blog is talking about the issues that related to media publication and design. My target audience is my course mates undertaking the subject COMM 1043 and my lecturer Ms. Jenny. Through this blog, it will be discussing about how the powerful media affected our daily life.