Blogger Reflection

By creating this blog, it is mainly for me to perform the criteria of an undergraduate student. According to Robertson (2011), he declared that educational exertion of blogs offer opportunities for students in a supportive social environment to become better self-directed learners. Therefore, I have gotten the opportunity to gain broader range of understanding current news and issues and to as well have knowledge about the trending topics appropriately. As I see it, we should firstly understand and accept the rules and regulations of blogging before we become blogger. 

In my opinion, content is the most crucial element in a blog. However, the way a blog is design is in another way important because if a person clicked into a blog link, the design of a blog is the essential factor to attract audience in visual perspective. In general, a special designated blog will have more popularity as much as the values of content.

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References:

Robertson, J 2011, ‘The educational affordances of blogs for self-directed learning,’ Elsevier, vol.57, viewed 6 June 2012, <http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezlibproxy.unisa.edu.au/science/article/pii/S0360131511000649>.  

4) Velocity of News Spread through Social Networking

Kony2012: once information goes viral, there's no stopping it. 

Social networking has become one of the most popular reasons to connect to the Internet these days. Social media, particularly allowed users to take pictures and videos of the event and it is a very effective avenue for doing this. To this point, social networking sites are getting more publicity and its popularity is vigorously increasing. It is mainly due to this world full of people energetically spread news and the strong persuasion bond between one another. Personally, I think social networking sites are a very good way to connect people. According to Hughes (2008), "this unwieldy frontier for disaster activity as a matter of social convergence parallels geographical on-site behavior".

This video shows the dreadful devastation the army of child soldiers that turned slaves in Ugandan. It is a video that took roughly 30-minute-long, titled with ‘Invisible Children’. This video goes massively viral online with 14.4m views on Vimeo and more than 49m on YouTube at the time of writing in just a few days, which attracted a lot of attention from publics. The tool to spread the video is via Facebook and Twitter, where suddenly makes it a top trending topic. However, this video also received a lot of critics, arguments  and feedbacks from people who is concerned on this topic throughout the Internet. Interactivity and immediacy is the primary element that differentiates what social media and traditional media are. Users frequently browsing the Internet are inclined to rather trust unreliable news than proven facts.

In this article, the author mentioned that there is an article by Craig Silverman on Poynter pointed out that ‘misinformation spread faster and farther than the corrections, especially on social media. It’s what he calls “the law of incorrect tweets”, which says that “Initial, inaccurate information will be retweeted more than any subsequent correction.” According to Pring (2012) research stating that social networking is still the fastest-growing active social media behavious online, increasing from 36% of global internet users to 59% managing their profile on a monthly basis by the end of 2011.

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References:

Hughes, A, Palen, L., Sutton, J., Liu, S., & Vieweg, S. (2008). “Site-seeing” in disaster: An examination of on-line social convergence. In Conference Proceedings of the 5th International ISCRAM Conference, Washington, DC.

Pring, C 2012, 100 more social media statistics for 2012, viewed 5 June 2012, < http://thesocialskinny.com/100-more-social-media-statistics-for-2012/>.

3) The Watch Dog Role In Media

Malaysia 'bans' Peter Mayle’s book ‘where did I come from’? 

In personal, I believed that this book with the title ‘Where did I come from’ written by Peter Mayle was originally aimed to develop a clear picture of sex education to the younger generation and children who are concerned about sex and teenagers that is going through the growth process that would like to learn and absorb more knowledge about sex. Especially when parents are feeling embarrassed or do not know the way to educate their children about sex. By then, I assume this book could help teenagers and young adults to fulfill their curiosity about sex. Additionally, I think the enforcement of sex education should impose to the younger generation earlier in order to strengthen their knowledge about sex up to a point that it may reduce the probability of early pregnancy as well as child abortion.

 According to Coronel (2008), critics say that privately owned media, independent of the state but slave to the market, are at best, episodic and unreliable watchdogs. However, due to the indication of rules and regulations in Malaysia, the government cannot provide publicity towards people who had written news or items that reveals sensitive issues in the country. According to BBC News (2012), it is stated that the reason Malaysia banned this book was due to it contained elements that is harmful to public morals and will as well corrupt people’s mind. In order to ensure that Malaysia will not have ‘Where did I come from’, government had also reported that there is cooperation from every bookstore in the country to immediately stop the sales of this book. Otherwise, action will be taken towards anyone importing or selling it could face a jail sentence or fine up to MYR 20,000.

In Malaysia, the cultural context is based on the Islamic beliefs, which is dissimilar from other countries among the world. Today in Malaysia, whichever issues are connected to the revelation of immorality or sensitive issues are protected from publishing in order to preserve the citizen’s rights. Therefore, Mayle’s content of this book is considered offensive to the Malaysian law.

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References:

BBC News 2012, Malaysia ‘bans’ Peter Mayle book: Where did I come from?' viewed 5 June 2012, < http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17112635>.

Coronel, S, S 2008, The Media as Watchdog, viewed on 6th June 2012, <http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/pnorris/Conference/Conference%20papers/Coronel%20Watchdog.pdf>.                               

2) The Scope In Advertising Industry

The highly sexual art of selling perfume

"Perfume is subjective". What's heavy to one is light to another, what’s delightfully sweet to one can be excessively sweet to another. All these were probably because we have not truly agreed on which terms to apply. So, we have a codified language to describe scents, which is the term ‘Fragrance’. As far as I am concerned, the term fragrance signified beauty of a person through scent, it designated as a person’s image, reputation and their sense of belonging. However I believed that perfume does not mean just a scent, it is something that media has connected with lifestyle, love and sex, and towards the personality of a person. Besides that, I think fragrance can help people in creating personal trademark. Verma (2009) stated that advertising is a tool for marketing the goods and services to consumers. 

It is strange when selling perfume requires great deal of TV and print advertising when the audiences cannot even smell it in either case. According to Nielsen (2007), nowadays consumers strived to have good looks and willing to invest for that, perfume is one of the cosmetic products. This is completely strategic and every successful perfume campaign give rise to a successful fragrance.

In this article, it was about Madonna’s first fragrance called ‘Truth or Dare’ that brought up an issue concerning the intention of advertising perfumes through sexual images. Ad Week contributor Robert Klara argued that, ‘marketers have lost the whole meaning of why [people] wear fragrances and moved away from reality in fragrance ads. Today, cologne is positioned solely around beautiful, young people—and you only sell it with sex.” This reflects to the incomprehension of rights in feminism.

Reichert (2003) declares that the fragrance ads that involved sexual images contained attention-getting headlines relying on double entendre, references to sex, and explicit promises. Nevertheless, according to Blair, Stephenson, Hill & Green (2006), they claimed that the tendency for audiences to remember an advertisement is greater when it included elements that is sexy in nature compared to those that have not.

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References:

Blair, JD, Stephenson, JD, Hill, KL & Green, JS 2006, ‘Ethics in Advertising: Sex Sells, But Should It?’ ProQuest, Journal of Legal, Ethical and Regulatory Issues, vol. 9, viewed 5 June 2012, <http://search.proquest.com.ezlibproxy.unisa.edu.au/docview/216235041>.

Reichert, T 2003, The Erotic History of Advertising, viewed on 7th June 2012, <http://books.google.com.my/books?id=1OPtAAAAMAAJ&dq=Brand+Team+Leader+Durex&ie=ISO-8859-1&source=gbs_gdata&redir_esc=y>.

1) Audience's Role In Media

 We’re getting less friendly on Facebook (Social Media Website)?

In all likelihood I am probably one of the numerous people in world who spend my time a lot on social media to stuff my time when I am bored, especially Facebook which is now as well a trend for people to get connected in any part of the world. In this article, Pew did a survey where it shows that there are 62 percent of teens and 58 percent of adults’ restricted access to their profiles to friends only, which means Facebook has altered people due to its restriction of their privacy. Moreover, 56 percent of social media users aged 18 to 29 said they have deleted comments that others have made on their profile (Media Issues Org, 2012). 

In spite of people who do not care about their privacy online, but with advanced tools such as mobile devices, and other technologies that could track their privacy, people will try to control it. As showed in the report, it found no differences in controlling privacy of people by range of age. Therefore, young adults were likely to use privacy controls as older people. A phone survey of 2,277 adults did by Pew also shows that about two-thirds of Internet users use social networks, and a enormous percentage of them are getting more strict about letting others access their Facebook, Google+ and Twitter pages. Data about teens was come from a separate phone survey that Pew conducted with teenagers themselves as well as their parents. On top of that, this survey was conducted in April and May of year 2011.

 According to Rheingold (2002) ‘mobile informational technology are providing rapidly the structural elements for the existence of fresh kinds of highly-informed, autonomous communities that coalesce around local lifestyle choices, global political demands, and everything in- between.’ Due to the transformation of technology, people are being more prudent of their privacy protection.

  In conclusion, Jan (2006) stated ‘network society can be defined as a social formation with an infrastructure of social and media networks enabling its prime mode of organization at all levels’ such as individual, group or organizational and societal.

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References:

Khan, R, Kellner, D 2004, New Media and Internet Activism: From the ‘Battle of Seattle’ to Blogging, viewed on 5th June 2012, <http://webarchives.cdlib.org/wayback.public/NYUL_ag_6/20090329042805/http://nms.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/6/1/87.pdf>.

Rheingold, H 2002, Smart Mobs: the Next Social Revolution, Cambridge, MA: Perseus

Publishing.

Dijk, J, V 2006, The Network Society, viewed on 8th June 2012, <http://books.google.com.my/books?hl=en&lr=&id=b7ktTPViIYMC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=new+media+ecosystem+theory&ots=GGEMd4OrnQ&sig=AcZYsRUi11KOcU8lB6BP0Cdlffg#v=onepage&q&f=false>.

Ortutay, B 2012, Study: We're Getting Less Friendly On Facebook, viewed on 7th June 2012, <http://mediaissues.org/2012/02/25/study-were-getting-less-friendly-on-facebook/>.

2E. Screen VS Print Design

According to Walsh (2006), there is a great possibility of screen documents in combining words and images in a complex structure. However, readers are rather complex to jot down important points in notes with print documents. ‘Readers thus perceive, consciously or otherwise, the non-linear, spatial structure of the page, and are involved in the active, 'linear' process of traversing that structure, of “navigation” ‘(Kress& Leeuwan 1998).  

The pictures below are the examples of magazines page and website images:

Print document:

Screen document:

Fundamentally, Neilsen (1999) claimed that there are three main considerations of differences on designing screen and print documents involving layouts and written structure such as:

 2. Interactivity, multimedia and overlays

Fundamentally, relating to examples provided above,  there are three main considerations of differences on designing screen and print documents (Neilsen 1999) involving layouts and written structure, which are:

1. Main structure 

Print document consists of high impact graphics. Yet, user engagement of screen document is not intrude into design element. In contrast, screen document is achieving a current level of interactivity. 

3. Navigation

Leaf through the page is the only navigation for print documents nowadays. However, screen documents come with hypertext navigation which mixed with information architectures and visualization. So, it can attract finer impressions of the users.

In conclusion, readers are still reading both types of reading designs today. Despite that, screen designed documents presumed as the best choice because it fits the media technology by providing convenience and information to the readers.

References:

Nielsen, J 1999, Differences between print design and web design, Alert box, viewed on 6th April 2012, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990124.html>.

Kress, G & Leeuwan, VT 1997, Concise, SCANNABLE, and Objective: How to Write for the Web, viewed on 8th April 2012,  <http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/writing.html>.


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.

2D. New Forms of Media Publishing

Internet has refined the media in a great extend. According to Naughton (2006), the speed of development seems to be on the rise with the combination of personal computing, digital converge and global networking slides. The existence of new media trends such as Micro-blogging, Google+, Blogger, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and so forth have become a major commencement in the society at the moment.

V-blog

V-blog is generally known as video-blog. Owning to the fact that Youtube is the largest video site on the web, blogger often uses this site to share videos to all users subscribed to this website by uploading plenty of videos. Hence, the popularity of Youtube has changed the terms of communication in the media ecosystem nowadays. Therefore, people can re-watch videos, news or other types of videos that they had missed anytime.

In addition, Walsh (2006, p.30) has stated that Internet site have the ability to combine text into complex structures for operating. One of the examples will be micro-blogging.

According to Educause (2009), 'micro-blogging is the practice of posting small pieces of digital content—which could be text, pictures, links, short videos, or other media—on the Internet. A user used micro-blogging as a quick tool to update current news and issues to the public. An example of micro-blogging would be on @mainstreammedia. It is a twitter account created by a media organization, which is used to deliver the current news to Malaysian citizens about things happened nowadays.

source: Twitter

In conclusion, the appearance of the new media trends has make better usage and ability in easier ways of enabling convenience to the audiences. So, citizens in Malaysia will be able to get all the current updates anytime and anywhere. 

References:

Educause, 2009, 7 Things You Should Know About Microblogging, viewed 8th April 2012, <http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7051.pdf>.

Naughton, J 2006, ‘Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem’, http://reuteursinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/about/discussion/blogging.html