Today's Forms of Media Publishing

Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) pointed out that communication modes have shifted from the "old literacy" to the "new literacy". Hence, our current learning environment are filled with multimodal texts, which incorporates a collective of modes, such as usages of images and sounds in delivering messages (Walsh 2006). 

Such changes of communication modes also exist in the field of media publishing. The existence of Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, as well as online news portals have altered the roles of the traditional media by creating a new trend for media publishing. As explained by Naughton (2006), such new media ecosystem exists due to digital convergence, personal computing and global networking.

For a better understanding, consider Twitter as an example. With the existence of Twitter, it changes the environment of news reporting as most newspaper outlets, such as The Star  and Berita Harian are using Twitter to inform the public about the latest local news headlines and updates.

(Image source : Twitter 2011)

Moreover, in a larger scale, Cashmore (2009) mentioned that Twitter is also proven to be very efficient in disseminating globally-significant news, such as the Japan's tsunami and earthquake crisis. Besides than The Star, CNN also uses its Twitter account to provide constant updates on the Japan's crisis to the public. According to CNN (2011), the Japan's crisis has contributed to a total of 314 tweets in their two Twitter accounts. Furthermore, it was also mentioned that posts concerning the coverage on the Japan's crisis were also being re-tweeted at 198% more than the total of the re-tweeted tweets for the Egyptian's crisis coverage.

At such, it clearly proves that the existence of Twitter has altered the communication pathway in the media ecosystem, specifically in news reporting, whereby news can be disseminated even faster and more efficient as compared to the traditional media.

References

Cashmore, P 2009, Michael Jackson Dies: Twitter Tributes Now 30% of Tweets, viewed 28^th April 2011, <http://mashable.com/2009/06/25/michael-jackson-twitter/>.

CNN 2011, CNN.com sets global records for Japan coverage, viewed 4th May 2011, <http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/04/cnn-com-sets-global-records-for-japan-coverage/>.

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, Reading images: the grammar of visual design, 2nd edn., Routledge, London.

Naughton, J 2006, Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem, viewed 28^th April 2011, <http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/discussion/blogging.pdf>.

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 Blogging Communities

Blogs also creates another dimension for the society through the creation of blogging communities, which can be defined as a platform for individuals that share similar interests to connect and exchange ideas through the usage of blogs (Owyang 2007).

A blogging community can be created by including comment tabs, integrating RSS-feeds, listing blogs in directories, as well as including blog tags (Kinkeldei 2007). Additionally, interactive elements such as weekly polls and quizzes can also help in creating a blogging community (Rowse 2009). 

According to White (2006), there are three types of blogging communities; One Blog Centric Community, Topic Centric Community and Boundaried Community. In the interest of Boundaried Community, this blogging community includes a collection of blogs and blog readers within a particular site (White 2006) (refer to image below).

(Image source : White 2006)

An example of such blogging community is Share Your Story, which is a site for parents with prematurely born babies and babies that are under the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit to share their experiences and supports among each others (Share Your Story 2011).

(Image source : Share Your Story 2011)

The blogs actually acts as a whole ecosystem for the members as internal communication pathways, such as community chats and live chats are available for the members to communicate among themselves. 

Additionally, the site also incorporates a discussion board, which is known as the "Parent to Parent" section. Furthermore, as the community members are within a defined boundary, they are also able to have free access to other members' blogs. Hence, RSS-feeds are being less emphasized within this community.

Share Your Story also exercised power of control of the site by imposing several rules and regulations, as well as guidelines in posting among the community members. As for the community members, they have the power to monitor the comments that are being posted on their blogs, as well as the power to decide their preferred posting habits.

References

Kinkeldei, B 2007, Whitepaper Blog Communities: Forging Connections and Promoting Growth Through Blog Communities, viewed 26^th April 2011, <http://www.21publish.com/pub/21publish/blogging-whitepaper.pdf>. 

Owyang, J 2007, Defining the term: Online Community”, viewed 26^th April 2011, <http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/12/28/defining-the-term-community/>.

Rowse, D 2009, 8 Tips for Building Community on Your Blog, viewed 26^th April 2011, <http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/02/28/8-tips-for-building-community-on-your-blog/>. 

Share Your Story 2011, About Share Your Story…, viewed 26^th April 2011, <http://www.shareyourstory.org/webx/Share%20Home/about.html>.

White, N 2006, Blogs and Community, viewed 26^th April 2011, <http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community>.

Ways to Classify Blogs

Undeniably, blogosphere is always at constant growth. With an approximately of 175, 000 blog posts being posted daily (Khandelwal n.d.), you can really expect a wide range of topics that were being discussed in the blogosphere. At such, classification of blogs is essential and useful for readers to search for blogs that are within their interest, without the need of going through each blogs that are available in the blogosphere.

Over the years, professionals have been trying to classify blogs into its respective categories. However, up until today, there are no exact and accurate ways to organize such blogs as most blogs incorporates a combination of styles. One of the basic ways to classify blogs in based on their subject of interest, such as food, politics, and sports.

Simons (2008) have made an attempt to invent new vocabularies to categorize blogs into its respective categories. Some of the terms that were proposed by her includes:

1. The Pamphleteering Blog
2. The Digest Blog
3. The Advocacy Blog
4. The Popular Mechanics Blog
5. The Exhibition Blog
6. The Gatewatcher Blog
7. The Diary
8. The Advertisement
9. The News Blog

Comparing with WordPress (n.d.), which is one of the well-known open source blog tool and publishing platform, blogs can be categorized into several categories based on its purposes, such as:

1. Personal
2. Business
3. Schools
4. Non-profits
5. Politics
6. Military
7. Private
8. Sports
9. How-to, tips and reviews

By comparing both classification of blogs proposed above, Simons (2008) classification of blogs seems to be more interesting as such new vocabularies are new and it will attract the readers’ attention. At such, it will further lead in arousing the curiosity among the readers. Consequently, readers will put in extra efforts to look into such categories to see what such categories are all about.

References

Khandelwal, H n.d., Blog Categorization, viewed 26^th April 2011, <http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/hkhande/projects/blog.pdf>.

WordPress n.d., Types of Blogs, viewed 26^th April 2011, <http://en.wordpress.com/types-of-blogs/>.

Simons, M 2008, Towards a taxonomy of blogs, viewed 26^th April 2011, <http://www.apo.org.au/commentary/towards-taxonomy-blogs-0>.

The Era of Blogosphere

Blogging is the current phenomenon that surrounds our daily life. With such popularity of blogging among the society, the era of blogosphere was created. Blogosphere can be simply defined as the world of weblogs, in which bloggers from all around the world communicate with each other as a community (Encarta.msn.com 2009).

According to Technorati, who is the leading expert in the studies of blogosphere, the size of the current blogosphere is 133 million blog records as indexed by them since 2002 (Technorati 2008) (refer to image below).

                                                                            (Image source : Technorati 2008)

Based on their State of the Blogosphere 2010 report, the key trend of blogosphere for 2010 is the significant growth of mobile blogging, as well as the influence of women and mom bloggers in the area of blogosphere, mainstream media and brands (Technorati 2010).

In local context, political blogs has been the most prevalent trend in the country (Ulicny 2008). Such trend exist is mainly because of the encouragement towards the use of Web technologies and the growth of Internet-based enterprise given by the Malaysian Government (Ulicny 2008). Hence, blogs has become an essential platform for the public to voice out their opinions, especially on political matters. 

Such prevalent blogs also brings further benefits to the community. As we are aware of, the local mainstream newspapers, such as The Star and Utusan Malaysia are owned by the Government. Hence, censorship will be imposed before any news is being published. With the existence of such political blogs, the public will be able to get further information regarding political matters, and not only relying solely on the mainstream media as their main source of information. 

References

Encartamsn.com 2009, Blogosphere, viewed 24^th April 2011, <http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_701704686/blogosphere.html>.

Technorati 2008, State of the Blogosphere: Introduction, viewed 24^th April 2011, <http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-introduction/>. 

Technorati 2010, State of the Blogosphere 2010 Introduction, viewed 24^th April 2011, <http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2010-introduction/>.

Ulicny, B 2008, Modeling Malaysian Public Opinion by Mining the Malaysian Blogosphere, viewed 24^th April 2011, <http://vistology.com/papers/VIS-SBP08%20.pdf>.

What Constitutes A Good Powerpoint Presentation?

Whether we realize it or not, a good powerpoint presentation plays a big role in enhancing, or even degrading our presentation (Exforsys.com 2008). Hence, I will be using my group's Powerpoint Presentation 1 as a sample to provide some insights on how to avoid certain mistakes that we always do in creating a powerpoint presentation.

For layout wise, Reep (2006) mentioned that we should always balance the white space and the black space of a document. Hence, in the case of powerpoint presentations, we should keep the text within a slide short and simple so that the slide will not look too crowded (Marquez n.d.). Adding on,  Russell (n.d.) also mentioned that we should not include more than 3 bullet points per slide.

Figure 1. Slide 14

As you can see, Slide 14 from my group's presentation slides seem to be too crowded for the audiences' eyes. Hence, for improvement wise, texts should be presented with key words only, rather than full sentences. 

Figure 2. Slide 4

Moreover, Ameen (2011) stated that besides using typefaces to distinguish the title of a slide from its texts, we should also use the elements of colors. Referring to the Figure 2 above, it would be better if we have used colors for the title of the slide so that it will help the audience to read our slide even better. 

Furthermore, Iasted.org (n.d.) proposed that we should provide an outline of the presentation as a part of our layout. However, for my group's presentation, we did not include an outline. So, for improvement wise, we should have included an outline for this presentation.

For writing wise, Putnis and Petelin (1996) stated that common errors such as grammatical, spelling, punctuations and problems in structuring sentences should be avoided in writing. However, for our slides wise, there were no such writing errors being detected.  

References

Ameen, S n.d., How To Make Attractive and Effective Powerpoint Presentation, viewed 3rd April 2011, <http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Make-Attractive-and-Effective-PowerPoint-Presentations&id=57598>.

Exforsys.com 2008, Improve Your Presentation Through Powerpoints, viewed 3rd April 2011, <http://www.exforsys.com/career-center/business-communication/improve-your-presentations-through-powerpoint/1.html>.

Iasted.org n.d., Making Powerpoint Slides, viewed 3rd April 2011, <www.iasted.org/conferences/formatting/Presentations-Tips.ppt>.

Marquez,  ZL n.d., How To Make A Good Powerpoint Presentation, viewed 3rd April 2011, <http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Make-a-Good-PowerPoint-Presentation&id=4313178>.

Putnis, P & Petelin, R 1996, Writing to Communicate, Prentice Hall, Sydney.

Reep, DC 2006, Technical Writing, 6th edn, Pearson, New York.

Rusell, W n.d., 10 Tips for Creating Successful Business Presentation, viewed 3rd April 2011, <http://presentationsoft.about.com/od/powerpointinbusiness/tp/bus_pres_tips.htm>.

The Purpose

Layouts in document designs have changed as compared to yesterdays (Walsh 2006). To highlight the importance of such changes in practice, this blog will act as a platform for my peers, the professionals and those who have interest in the design field to expand their current knowledge regarding this field. Moreover, other issues regarding publishing and media issues will also be highlighted. 

Reference

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.