Reflective

Throughout this period of assignment, there are several important values that I’ve learned that could help me improve in writing and blogging. Blogging can look easy as it seems but there are a techniques and regulations to writing to follow from the design, the content and the layout of the blog itself.

 Karen Marcus (2009) mentioned that the content of the blog is the core to the information therefore; one must practice ethical writing to ensure there is any misleading information. It is taught that we should check our facts and be sure to cite the source of information to ensure the credibility of our writing is proven and also to avoid plagiarism. We should also write accordingly as we alter to different culture so we have to be sure of our language and our choice of words (Rich 2010, p.50).  Martinec and van Leeuwen (2008) did also provide information on how to create an effective and interactive layout for the readers to read.

With all these techniques applied, I have learned blog writing and also create an effective communication tool.

Martinec & van Leeuwen 2008, ‘Simple non-linear models’ in The language of new media design.

Rich, JR 2010, Start your own blogging business, Entrepreneur Press, Canada.

Marcus, K 2009, ‘Ethical Writing: What you need to know’, Final Draft Communications, viewed on 7^th June 2012, from http://www.finaldraftcommunications.com/ethical-writing/

Sex Advertising ?

Fragrance is part of the fashion line that can be considered quite exclusive but it has quite a different approach to advertising and promoting its’ product as compared to clothing lines. According to Sarah Oaks (2012), advertising perfumes in this competitive world nowadays isn’t easy because they are advertising a product that can’t be decided through the naked eye. Due to the fact that of all products that rely on sex to sell themselves, perfume is one of the product out there that relies heavily on sex advertising as scent is intrinsically linked to desire and sexual attraction. Out there today, most of the perfumes out there rely heavily on sexual attraction on the advertisement to promote and it is actually showing positive results in sales (Pearson 2008).

The reason that this is happening is because sex sells. According to an article by Bridgette Desmond (2008), the average person sees 1,500 advertisements a day on average and for an advertisement to stand out; it has to create an image for the viewers to not forget. This approach of advertising does provide a promising outcome to the business but it also brings negative outcomes not to the business, but to the culture. Products mostly uses sexy female contents such as half naked body or so to promote but this has eventually created a cultural difference and it harms the image of women nowadays. A report shows that the highly promoted of sexual values in advertisements shows degrading portrayal of women with overtones of violence, sexual domination and bestiality (Onyejekwe 2005). It is slowly damaging the value and the image of women today by degrading them for profit purposes and it is not a very wise thing to do. It is very common to see a women half nude to almost nothing in an advertisement promoting a product with a sexual touch on it. One of the reasons why would women or the community agree to do so still is probably due to the promising pay they received and also the brand that will carry their image around in the fashion world.

Desmond, B 2008, Sex in Magazine Advertising: Examining the past 15 Years, viewed on 5^th June 2012, fromr http://www.unh.edu/sociology/media/pdfs-journal2008/DesmondEDITED.pdf

Onyejekwe, CJ 2005, Advertising and Exploitation of Female Sexuality, viewed on 7^th June 2012, from http://www.quietmountainessays.org/Onyejekwe.html

Pearson, A 2008, ‘Perfume on Trial: The Truth About Our Scent Industry’, Daily Mail, viewed on 5^th June 2012, from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-550511/Perfumes-trial-The-truth-scent-industry.html

Sarah, O 2012, ‘The Highly Sexual Art of Selling Perfume’, Daily Life, viewed on 5^th June 2012, from http://www.dailylife.com.au/dl-beauty/the-highly-sexual-art-of-selling-perfume-20120518-1yvd4.html

Stop Kony 2012 - It just wouldn't stop spreading

A video of a campaign to stop the warlord, Joseph Kony had gone viral through the internet on Youtube and Vimeo. Joseph Kony is one of the most wanted warlords in the world who believed to have kidnapped 591 children in the past three years to recruit as his fighters, human shields and spies to build his army (Smith 2012). This video that is viral on the internet can be found easily on Youtube and Vimeo that had gotten a few million views and in the video, it gives a brief summary about Joseph Kony and his activity. It then further explain how serious the issue is becoming and later on the campaign ‘Stop Kony’ is introduced to gather funds and make Kony ‘famous’ so the US Government will continue the hunt for Joseph Kony.

The campaign ‘Stop Kony 2012' had gone viral since it was published on youtube and vimeo and transmitted through the internet and it just wouldn’t stop. This has also caused a misinformation and the credibility had been doubted since it hasn’t included any reliable sources. According to Silverman (2012), it is proven that incorrect information travels further and faster on social networking sites such as Twitter than corrections. Twitter is not one of the top-10 tools of communication to share information on the internet due to the vast amount of users in the world today (Norton 2012).

 People tend to perceive that the information on the internet is credible especially if it is in a form of a video, because people would assume that film makers would have invested the same effort in reassuring the credibility of the information just as much effort as they invest in making the film (Flanagin & Metzger 2000). In another words, with the technology nowadays will not stop passing from one to another when it hits the internet in fact it might even multiply by numbers which also is prune to misleading information or incredible sources.

Flanagin, AJ & Metzger, MJ 2000, ‘Internet-Based Information Retrieval and Evaluation’, Perception of Internet Information Credibility, Vol. 77, No, 3, viewed on 7^th June 2012, from http://www.jasonmorrison.net/iakm/4006074.pdf

Norton, C 2012, ‘Twitter stats and analytics tools - top 10’, Socialmediatoday, viewed on 7^th June 2012, from http://socialmediatoday.com/index.php?q=SMC/165191

Silverman, C 2012, ‘Visualized: Incorrect information travels farther, faster on Twitter than corrections’, Poynter, viewed on 7^th June 2012, from http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/regret-the-error/165654/visualized-incorrect-information-travels-farther-faster-on-twitter-than-corrections/

Smith, D 2012, ‘Joseph Kony kidnapped 591 children in past three years, UN report reveals’, The Guardian, viewed on 7^th June 2012, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/07/joseph-kony-united-nations-report

Peter Mayle's Sex Education Book Banned in Malaysia ?

Peter Mayle’s book titled, ‘Where Did I Come From’ is a book that includes the fundamentals of sex and sex education that is sold worldwide. However, the Home Ministry and Malaysian officials strictly ruled out the immediate action to stop the book ‘Where Did I Come From’ to be on sale in Malaysia (BBC 2012). The Ministry Deputy Education Secretary General Datuk Abdul Rahim Mohd Radzi said the sale of the book had to stop until a decision is made after they have properly studied the content of the book.

Abdul Rahim mentioned in a conference that the ministry was taking actions under Section 7, Subsection 1 of the Printing Presses and Publishing Act 1984 (Ahmad & Rahim 2012). He also mentioned that the content of the book has content that is too explicit and it might be educational to children from other countries but not ‘us’. The content include cartoon and illustration on love making and sexual intercourse information as well as how a male and female genitalia function.

I believe many are still confuse even myself because of the culture in Malaysia, which is a Muslim country and sex had been a sensitive or taboo topic especially in the eyes of the public. Sex education was also introduced indirectly to Malaysian Secondary School and Primary School in 1989 and 1994 consecutively (Jaafar & Chan 2008). This shows that the government is having the idea of exposing the younger generations to sex education at a younger age. Publishing this book is basically a stepping stone to sex education because it helps parents to educate their children in a safer form. Malaysian officials would need to go easy on sensitive topics such as sex because it affects the learning process and progress of the education system. It is wrong to ban a book which is so informative and educational but to compromise with the Malaysian culture, government can implement a law to bookshops to sell the books to only adults. Doing so would also help ensure that the information is delivered to the child properly with guidance since the concern of the government is that the content of the book might be misleading to children in Malaysia.

BBC 2012, ‘Malaysia ‘bans’ Peter Mayle book Where Did I Come From?’, BBC, viewed on 3^rd June 2012, from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17112635

Ahmad, ZA & Rahim, R 2012, ‘Home Ministry stops sale of 'Where Did I Come From' book by Peter Mayle’, The Star, viewed on 3^rd June 2012, from http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2012/2/21/nation/20120221175525&sec=nation

Jaafar, A & Chan, SL 2008, ‘Design Approach of Malaysian Sexual Educational Courseware (MSE) for Secondary Schools’, University Kebangsaan Malaysia, Malaysia, viewed on 3^rd June 2012, from http://www.wseas.us/e-library/conferences/2008/istanbul-meta/istanbul-meta/istanbul-meta-06.pdf

Kim Jon-Il's Funeral Photoshoped ?

Photojournalism has carried an image of truthfulness for a long time as the impact of visual image on a viewer tells them that a ‘camera never lies’. As a tool, the camera faithfully and unemotionally captures the moment in time (Lester 1999). The camera as a machine, it is only faithful in the hands of an ethical person. In the case of Kim Jong- Il’s funeral procession, there was an issue on the photograph released by the North Korea’s state news agency. An Image from ABC News shows the two different version of a photograph that can be found taken on Kim Jong-Il’s funeral ceremony (Mooney 2011). It has been discovered that the photo released by the North Korean state news agency was doctored.

The ‘mess’ which is the camera crew which wasn’t in formation was digitally removed with Photoshop. The reason for doing so is still unclear of but there was an issue about the right and wrong, and if it is ethical or not to do so. According to Lester (1995), words are vital in reassuring the credibility of a photo which means a photojournalist or art director should acknowledge the changes made on a photo if intended because the readers have the rights to know the truth and it is unethical to ‘lie’ to the public.

The reason of doctoring the photo was maybe to keep up the appearance of the image of the event (Seidl 2011). Personally I find it quite unethical to alter such modification to a photograph just to uphold the image of the profound status of Kim Jong-Il’s and the country’s ruling family that they remain in tight control. If they alter the photo for such reason, it creates a false image of the family and the perception of the public which in a away they are lying about themselves. According to the Society of Professional Journalist (1996), it is a journalist’s responsible to be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information. Therefore lying to the nation and the world would also mean it’s breaking the code of ethics for journalism.

Lester, PM 1999, ‘Picture Manipulation’, Photojournalism An Ethical Approach, viewed on 1^st June 2012, from http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/lester/writings/chapter6.html

Lester, PM 1995, ‘Photojournalism Ethics Timeless Issues’, in Emery, M & Smythe, TC , Readings in Mass Communication, viewed on 1^st June 2012, from http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/lester/writings/photoethics.html

Mooney, M 2011, ‘North Korea Restores Order to Kim Funeral with Photoshop’, ABC News, viewed on 1^st June 2012, from http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2011/12/north-korea-restores-order-to-kim-funeral-with-photoshop/

Screen vs Print Document Design

Before technology revolve around the society nowadays, print media used to be the main hard media to convey messages, news and updates spread around the world. It didn’t take too long for technology to play such a big role nowadays with screen media such as blogs, online newspapers and websites that provides the same content as print media today. One of the biggest differences would be the credibility of an article comparing screen and print media today as screen media can be accessed by anyone on the internet and credibility of information or a finding can then decrease as it is hard to find the correct source of editor (Nielsen, 1997). There are a few significant differences between the degree of screen and print media.

Kress and van Leeuwen (1998) did stress on the layout of the importance of a front page and his theory involves several elements that are combined to create an impactful front page layout. Saliency which is part of his theory states that when an element is placed on different part of the page it carries a different value of importance that helps sustains the reader’s attention. Linking it to Neilsen’s theory, print document design places more emphasis on visualization because it intends to capture the attention and maintain the reader’s interest to continue reading. The image beside shows an example of saliency being applied on the front page of a magazine.

Morkes and Neilsen  (1997) states that internet consumers who reads from the web usually scan through appealing and important content on a page on a website and information are often ripped off the first line of every paragraph. Martinec and van Leeuwen (2008) did mention that how the information value is more important when it comes to designing a website. Layouts are divided into Given & New, Real & Ideal to ensure that readers maintain their attention on the page due to the position of individual element on the front page. Such as where an Image should be on top to tackle the human mind that helps resembles the perception of their experience towards the image then given the facts at the bottom. The image beside shows an example of how a layout of a web design would defer from a news print.

Sources :

Neilsen, J 1999, Print vs Web design, viewed 8 April 2012, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990124.html>.

Martinec & van Leeuwen 2008, ‘Simple non-linear models’ in The language of new media design.

Morkes, J & Neilsen, J 1997, Concise, SCANNABLE, and Objective: How to Write for the Web, viewed 12 April 2012, <http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/writing.html>.

Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. 1998. “Front pages: The critical analysis of newspaper layout”, in COMM 1033. (UNISA electronic library)

New forms of Media Publishing

In the graph below, the summary of the social media ecosystem is illustrated and Cavazza (2012) mentioned that for the past 7 years, users took over control of the web and shifted to a click-based engagement model to a fan-based engagement model which means clicks are no longer the main thing for advisers. Naughton (2006) also mentioned that the old media (tv, newspapers, radios) acts as a push medium where we accept the information that is provided and the new media (wikis, blogs, online news ) which acts as a pull medium where we choose to use the source of information.

Twitter is a micro-blogging service and a social networking site that allows users to share updates anywhere they go with internet (Mashable, 2012). Twitter allows users to share links and images as desired and also search for the trending topics with a simple click to ensure people receive updates instantly.

Walsh (2006) mentioned that every form of media have their significant way of conveying a message to the readers. In this case Twitter which uses the communication tool to approach it’s users is an implication of the shift from old to new media that consumers choose to follow due to being passive and uncreative because of convenience. Walsh also stated that internet sites allows users to choose from a variety of navigation icons and is complex with logos and hyperlinks. Consumer of twitter now benefits from obtaining more information with a wider range of topic compared to the traditional old media such as the printed media.

Sources :

Cavazza, F 2012, ‘An overview of the social media ecosystem’, Forbes, retrieved on 3^rd April, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/fredcavazza/2012/03/12/an-overview-of-the-social-media-ecosystem/

Mashable 2012, ‘Twitter’, Mashable, retrieved on 3^rd April, from http://mashable.com/category/twitter/

Naughton, J 2006, 'Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem', Reuters Institute, viewed on 4th April 2012, http://reutersintitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/discussion/blogging.pdf

A Blogging Community

According to Owyang 2007, online community can be simply understood as a group of people who connects with each other using the web tools and the internet by exchanging similar goals or interests. Blog communities usually consist of two layers of elements where the first layer, readers and users aggregates the content after finding a homepage such as new posts from various individual blogs and so on. On the second layer, readers will find individual blogs of all the users which help them reflect on their individual concept or ideas. The community homepage also serves as a platform to ease communication among members (Kinkeldei 2007).

Nancy White who is a well known e-facilitation and e-community specialist based in Seattle, USA, worked out on a theory and mentioned that there are three types of blogging community that includes the One Blog Centric Community, the Topic Centric  Community and the Boundaried Community.

One Blog Centric Community

One Blog Centric Community is owned by an individual owner or organization but it encourages group interaction between the blogger and the commentors as well as among the commentors themselves (White, 2006).

Topic Centric Community

Topic Centric Community is formed by a network consisting of readers and bloggers who are linked closely by the similar topic and the boundaries of the network is between the members and the subject (White, 2006).

Boundaried Community

Boundaried Community is whereby a group of people who are interested will be asked to ‘join’ and register with the community and is offered a chance to kick-start a blog or a forum which helps to connect people more closely within the community by encouraging active involvement and communication between everyone (White, 2006)

One of the examples of Boundaried Community would be the Photomalaysia.com where it unites people with the interest in photography or camera gear together.

 It is a forum based community where everyone is welcomed to join and exchange their ideas, opinions and discussion in the forum that are related to camera and photography. People will have the opportunity to learn from the experienced ones and also expose themselves with different stuffs out there across the nation.

Sources :

Kinkeldei, B 2007, ‘Forging Connections and Promoting Growth Through Blog Communities’ Whitepaper Blog Communities, retrieved on 2^nd April 2012, from http://www.21publish.com/pub/21publish/blogging-whitepaper.pdf

Owyang, J 2007, ‘Defining the term: “Online Community”’, Web Strategy, retrieved on 2^nd April 2012, from http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/12/28/defining-the-term-community/

White, N 2006, Blogs and Community-launching a new paradigm for online community?, The Knowledge Tree, viewed 10 April 2012, <http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community>.

Classifications of Blogs

The term taxonomy can be expressed as the technique or science of classification (Dictionary.com 2012). Blog-taxonomy would then mean the technique of classifying blogs based on their categories and helps to ensure the genre or the content of the blog is consistent. It also helps readers to find the most related information in convenience based on different topic, interest and understanding. Blog-taxonomy is the study of how to the classification or organization of your blog can increase the site’s traffic and repeat visitors significantly by targeting the two types of readers that are available on the internet which are the ‘humans’ and the ‘search engines’ (brainshrub 2006).

Margaret Simmons	John Saddington
Pamphleteering	Best of blog posts	Giveaways	Off Colour, Off Topic
Digest	Video, Audio Interviews	Community Powered	Big Resource Post
Popular Mechanic	Question & Answers	Contests & Competition	One Time Announcement
Gatewatcher	Incredible Headliner	Charity, Awareness Post	Humor
Diary	Dogmatic Perspective	Guest Post	Testimonials
Advertisement	Practical Advice	News Flash Boiler Plate	Research, Presentations, Infographics
News	List Post	Screen cast	Compare Contrast
Exhibition	Review Post	Video Blog Post	Long Form, Editorial, Journalism
	How to Blog Posts	Images

Pamphleteering	Groups of individual arguing a point or expressing a strong point of view
Digest	Guides and summaries to information you can access elsewhere
Popular Mechanic	How things works
Gatewatcher	Gatekeeper looks into media frequently, updating information on how it works
Diary	Personal lives
Advertisement	Promoting products through blogging
News	Updating people with  current news  or information
Exhibition	Formed by  craftspeople, artists, writers to share and showcase their work of art

 Margaret Simmons's Classification 

Best of blog posts	Content includes top posts in a category or a particular time limit
Video, Audio Interviews	Interviews with celebrities or a public figures that is interesting
Question & Answers	Providing information for questions and answers for the public
Incredible Headliner	Blog posts that grabs the attention of their readers with their headline
Dogmatic Perspective	Posts with a firm stand from the writer about issues
Practical Advice	Giving advice  in a particular field of your specialty
List Post	Posts that are listed out in point forms using bullets and ordered list
Review Post	Reviewing products or items of a particular genre based on interest
How to Blog Posts	Share information on ‘how-to’ do or work on something particular or in general
Giveaways	Blogs that offers gives-away
Community Powered	Blogs that communicate with the readers and decisions can be affected by the community’s opinions.
Contests & Competition	A Blog post that contains contest-related blog posts and it does not necessarily offer a prize.
Charity, Awareness Post	Post by request of others with topics that might not interest the blogger
Guest Post	Posts by different authors that are posted by well known bloggers or websites
News Flash Boiler Plate	Boilerplate news and hotplate items that updates news instantly
Screen cast	A mix of how-to and videos to share information
Video Blog Post	Blogs that heavily rely on videos to express
Images	Blogs that heavily rely on images to express
Off Colour, Off Topic	Content that is sometimes outside of the typical content focus
Big Resource Post	Links or information of resources to a finding / research
One Time Announcement	Events or an occasion or something that happened that is shared to the public
Humor	Jokes or contents that is humorous
Testimonials	Blogs covering products and reviews
Research, Presentations, Infographics	Blogs that provides good research and presentation-related blog posts with some credible sources
Compare Contrast	Comparing between products or an issue
Long Form, Editorial, Journalism	Editorial and journalism-related blog post in a long form, up to 1500-3000 words

John Saddington's Classification

As shown above we can see the comparison between the blog taxonomy or also known as blog classification by Simmons and John Saddington. Both authors have different approach towards the classification of blogs and form the table above, we could see that John’s technique of organizing the categories are more diverse and more detailed where the differences of each can be seen easily. Therefore, John Saddington’s technique of classification would be more helpful and more convenient especially when it comes to precision of categories.

Sources :

Brainshrub 2006, ‘Blog taxonomy in a nutshell. Theimportance of tags and categories’, Democratic Underground.com, retrieved on 1^st April 2012, from http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1657266

Dictionary.com 2012, ‘taxonomy’, Dictionary.com, retrieved on 1^st April 2012, from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/taxonomy

Saddington, J 2011, ’25 blog posts that people love to click and read’, Tentblogger, retrieved on 1^st April 2012, from http://tentblogger.com/blog-post-types/

Blogging Phenomenon

The blogosphere has been constantly changing and evolving, growing in numbers of people who blogs since the start. According to an article by David Sifry (2006), a research by Technorati shows that the blogosphere has been doubling in size every 6 months or so for the past 3 years during June 2006.

According to (Technorati, n.d), some of the popular topics covered in the top 100 blogs were such as politics, news, business, entertainments, sports, fashion and so on.  

Different countries have different trends in culture, so is the media. The trend varies depending on country or culture and some prevalent blogs may talk about business, market, sports or fashion. Unlike the Middle Eastern countries who are politically driven even in their media industry, Malaysia has a 28% of bloggers who writes about their personal stuff, (Gaman 2007).

Some might not have the idea on how bloggers who write up on personal stuff can benefit the community. Basically it serves as a purpose to relay messages to the public and it sometimes help by establishing a connection between readers (Austin 2012). It could build a relationship and also helps widen the network of a person. Bloggers who publish personal stuff can contribute to the community by sharing their information or knowledge.

 Reference List :


Austin, B 2012, 'Understanding The Benefits of Social Media', SeoPositive, retrieved from http://www.seopositiveltd.com/blog/understanding-the-benefits-of-social-media/


Gaman 2006, ’50 Most Influential Blogs in Malaysia’, Sabahan, retrieved from http://www.sabahan.com/2007/02/06/50-most-influential-blogs-in-malaysia/ 

Sifry, D 2006, ‘State of the Blogosphere, August 2006’, Sifry’s Alerts, Retrieved from http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000436.html

Technorati, n.d. Technorati Top 100. [online] Available at: <http://technorati.com/blogs/top100> [Accessed 17 March 2012].

Blog Purpose

This blog is created with no other intentions but to share my opinions and to discuss the publishing and media issues with my fellow UNISA classmates and anyone who stumbles upon this blog. It will give a rough idea to my readers what the media is all about and a more in-depth view on the current media and the issues inflicted.