Reflections

In the span of three months which I’ve spent writing on issues of document designing and posting them up on this blog, I have acquired a lot of experience and learnt many new things regarding new media.

Such as the proper designing for online versus print, the development of blogging communities, the classification of the different kinds of blogs as well as ethical issues relating to blogging.

A blogger should be aware of the Do’s and Don’ts of the online media as well as being alert and open to constant change and updates of the Web 2.0.

Some important points to remember as a good document designer and web user:

• Keep it short and simple (Nielsen 1995)
• Visuals are very important! (Putnis & Petelin 1996, p. 241)
• Respect others on the web; an anonymous alias would not keep or hide you from the persecution of the law.

Finally I’d like to thank all of my blog readers for all the kind comments and useful critiques, it has been an experience!

Image Source: Rman

References

Nielsen, J. 2005, Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes, viewed November 12 2009, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/weblogs.html

Putnis, P. & Petelin, R. 1996, ‘Writing to communicate’, in Professional communication: principles and applications, Prentice Hall, Sydney, pp. 223-263.

Blogging and freedom of speech

Image Source: Free Speech Cartoon

Journalist and author Antony Loewenstein discusses in the Blogging Revolution book review interview the issue of the freedom of speech in relation to blogging, especially in countries of a repressive regime like China, Iraq and Egypt. However with modern technology and the emergence of the blogging movement, those citizens are able to express their freedom of speech.

In China, many of the greatest increasing penetration of the web in China are actually in rural areas. Web courses are also held to allow people to articulate previously taboo subjects such as corruption. As for Iraq and Egypt, their massive government support allows the Internet to exist even in the poorest communities as a way to try and build economic development (Loewenstein 2007).

But does blogging really pave the way for a wider allowance of freedom of speech?

“It is our belief that censoring this content is contrary to a service that bases itself on freedom of expression.”
Blog host Blogger 2009

Image Source: kowsar

First we have to probe a little deeper into what blogging is and what it provides for the masses.

The Internet and the blogging service is available to almost anyone with access to the Internet, and can be you, me or even the sitting beside you, regardless of age, gender and culture.

Many people blog because of the advantages such as earning money through blog advertising like popular Singaporean blogger Xiaxue who is paid up to SG$500 an hour for blogging (from advertisements placed in her blog and paid reviews)!

The most popular form of blogging is personal and diary-like (Wikipedia 2009), but when a particular blogger blogs issues that surpasses sensitive political and racial issues, it is when most trouble comes a-knocking.

Image Source: Free Speech Cartoon

Are all citizens guaranteed full freedom of speech?

In Malaysia, there have been several cases where bloggers were put in the media limelight for alleged controversial issues. In 2007, Raja Petra Kamarudin was interrogated by police for allegedly insulting the King, degrading Islam and inciting ethnic hatred and violence on alternative media site Malaysia Today.

Also in the same year, Namewee did a rap version of the national anthem, criticizing Malaysian government policies and the Malay community. Both bloggers were not formally charged as the police could not find any legal terms that affirm their doings as against the law (Reporters Without Borders 2008).

Bloggers have freedom of expression based on Article 10 of the country’s constitution (Harr 2008), and although there is the Printing Presses and Publications Act, the Internet is technically a free and non-restrictive platform for expression. It is also sometimes used to counter the distortions of mainstream media used by government to propagate their ideas (Nain 2007).

And although Habermas’ theory of the public sphere describes it as an area for people to gather and freely discuss and identify societal problems, and then influence political action, netizens’ self integrity would be relied on to consider Web ethics when posting something on the Net.

References
Blogger 2009, Blogger Content Policy, viewed November 15 2009, http://www.blogger.com/content.g

Habermas, J. 1989, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, Cambridge Massachusetts.

Harr, H. 2008, 'Tongue-tied tiger', Amnesty International, vol. 6, pp. 1-8.

Loewenstein, A. 2007, The Blogging Revolution, Media Report, viewed November 15 2009, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2351985.htm

Nain, Z. 2007, ‘Blogging the bullies and bullying the bloggers’, Malaysian Today, 16 November.

Ng, L.F. 200, 'Namewee: I'm no traitor', Malaysia Kini, viewed November 15 2009, http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/106134

Reporters Without Borders 2008, Leading blogger Raja Petra Kamaruddin released, viewed November 15 2009, http://www.ifex.org/malaysia/2008/11
/07/leading_blogger_raja_petra_kamaruddin/

Wikipedia 2009, Blog, viewed November 10 2009, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

New forms of media publishing

The Internet and Web 2.0 has made possible the wide sharing of information of everything imaginable from anyone to everyone in the world, in just a few clicks.

This includes anything from hard news to social communication between family and friends as the Internet is a fast and wide-spread platform for heavy information-sharing. It is boosted by the availability of Web 2.0 applications such as Twitter, used to share on-the-spot news and pictures without having to go through a gatekeeper.

Image Source: Twitter-Logo
Twitter networks millions of people globally;
can you imagine the spread and impact of a major global rumour?

Therefore it enables the Internet to become one of the most common media outlets for journalism as publishing becomes almost free.

Online journalism are constantly bettering their standards as expectations from the audience grow; it has to be fast and credible as it becomes the top choice for news-searching and news-gathering as compared to traditional media which takes up to a day (for newspapers) or hours (for television) to report (Anderson 2009).

As in the recent case of Michael Jackson’s death in June 2009, Twitter and even Google experienced a crash due to heavy usage of information-searchers (Schofield 2009)! This shows how popular the Internet is as a search engine.

Image source: google_layered
Google experienced a major crash on the day
the world first heard rumours of Michael Jackson's death

As more and more information are put on the Web every day, there is no doubt that the issue of private data sharing would be brought up sooner or later. As netizens, we all want to keep our private data private, choose what we want to publish, and also retain the right to delete any information about us whenever we want.

But the rules of new media do not play like that.

According to author and Professor Yochai Benkler as quoted in Naughton (2006, p. 1), the output of new media is not exclusive property. Rather, it is “subjected to an increasingly robust ethic of open sharing, open for all others to build on, extend and make their own.”

But Facebook, worried about the legal issues it might face one day, has come out with several updates of their ‘Terms and Conditions’, including a clause to ‘being able to retain (our) data forever’ (Facebook: We own your content forever, and ever 2009).

Image Source: Facebook-logo
Facebook prepares for future legal issues by including tight clauses

And although a T&C of Twitter state that we can delete our text and images forever when we delete our account, there is also a final clause of ‘reserving the right…to refuse service to anyone for any reason at any time’ (Bennett 2009).

Therefore, Net users must always be constantly aware of the blurring grey areas of the Internet before clicking Enter.

References
Anderson, K. 2009, ‘@media140: How Twitter is challenging the news gatherers’, Guardian, UK, viewed November 13 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/may/20/media140-twitter-journalism

Bennett, S. 2009, 'Who Owns Your Tweets – Twitter, You Or Anyone?', Blog of Mr. Tweet, viewed November 13 2009, http://blog.mrtweet.net/who-owns-your-tweets-twitter-you-or-anyone

Facebook: We own your content forever, and ever 2009, Neowin.net, viewed November 13 2009, http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/02/16/facebook-we-own-your-content-forever-and-ever

Naughton, J. 2006, Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem, University of Oxford, viewed November 13 2009, http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/discussion/blogging.pdf

Schofield, J. 2009, ‘Michael Jackson, the Twitter effect, and the 'science' of reporting’, Guardian UK, viewed November 13 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jun/26/michaeljackson-twitter-blogs-reporting

Designing for print versus online

"On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely."
- Jakob Nielsen 2008

This shows that there has to be a significant change in the designing for an online page as compared to a print document.

Early printed pages treat text as visual material without regard for syllable boundaries to create pleasing visual patterns, which results in dense printed pages (Kress & Van Leeuwan 2006).

This equation would not work for online pages therefore Nielsen's advice is to place importance in the factors below:

• The use of highlight keywords
• Meaningful sub-headings
• Bulleted lists
  
• Half the word count (or less)

(Nielsen 1995)

In an online page, graphics, good writing and outbound hypertext links should also be used to increase credibility.

Below is a comparison of a print layout and an effective blog layout.

A text-heavy magazine layout

This magazine layout has several visuals to attract readers but there is much space dedicated to text.

A well-designed website layout

This blog layout has many captioned high-quality visuals and outbound links to create interest in the viewer. The text are much shortened and condensed to avoid wordy paragraphs which may put netizens off.

A good web designers should know the Do's and Don'ts of creating a layout that appeals to web users.

References
Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. 2006, ‘Chapter 6: The meaning of composition’ in Reading image, Routledge, London.

Nielsen, J. 2008, How Little Do Users Read, viewed November 12 2009, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/percent-text-read.html

Nielsen, J. 1997, How Users Read on the Web, viewed November 12 2009, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html

Nielsen, J. 2005, Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes, viewed November 12 2009, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/weblogs.html

Blogging Communities: Methods & Structures

A blogging community basically exists to connect people to blogs and bloggers to other bloggers (Wikipedia 2009). There are also interest-specific blogging platforms such as Blogster that connects a good amount of political bloggers.

This form of new media community is created and sustained through maintaining connections and links with other bloggers. But how do they do it?

Nuffnang, a global blog advertising community which is based in Malaysia keeps its community active through blogger outings. They constantly carry out movie premieres and paintballing activities as social gatherings for their members. This helps keep one connected with others of similar interests, making them easier to relate to and more familiar with others who are in the same ‘group’.

Once a blogger registers in Nuffnang, the 'Nuffnanger' is able to use social networking tools available in Innit, a community-based feature.

Nuffnang's Web 2.0-heavy Innit interface

Bloggers can chat with each other using the chat box on the right, as well keep updated with the latest and most popular blog post updates, as see in the center of the page.

White (2006) shares that in a ‘Boundaried’ community, there is heavy usage of Web 2.0 tools and yet less emphasis on cross-linking because these features are available through another host. In Nuffnang case, those features are made available by blog hosts such as Blogger.

Nuffnang is only responsible for being the middle person between the advertiser and the blogger, as well as connecting all the bloggers who are hosted under them.

Image Source: Boundaried Communities

Blogging communities make for denser and faster internal connections.

Reference List
Nuffnang 2009, What is Nuffnang, viewed November 11 2009, http://www.nuffnang.com.my

White, N. 2006, ‘Blogs and Community – launching a new paradigm for online community?’, Knowledge Tree, viewed November 11 2009, http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community

Wikipedia 2009, Blog: Community and cataloging, viewed November 11 2009, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog#cite_note-13

Classification of blogs

There are many ways of classifying blogs, and this enables readers to easily find a blog that are relevant to what they want to find, and they also know what to expect. Wikipedia (2009) divides classification of blogs into several types, differing in the type of content and also in the way that content is delivered or written. Such as:

a) Personal blogs - the most traditional and common type.

c) By genre, focusing on a particular subject.

d) By media type such as vlog, photoblog and sketchblog.

Author and media analyst Margaret Simons (ABC Radio National 2008) divides blogs into types such as Advocacy blogs (a group or organisation that actively pushes in a fairly informative fashion), Diary (personal blog) and Exhibition (by artists, writers).

As surmised from above, blogs are divided according to topic and style of blogging (which would provide genre type) as well as format (media type). Each particular blog would attract a certain demographic audience, such as young female readers who would flock to a fashion blog.

I find that dividing blogs by genre is the most useful as blogs are created on a particular theme and the blogger would blog relevant materials that are of similar interest to the blog’s demographic. According to Wikipedia (2009), there are travel, fashion, political, and education blogs among others.

However many blogs are not ‘stuck’ on just one classification type. Rather, they are a mixture of many. This does not create confusion; instead, it promotes ‘highly desirable’ interactivity by providing more reading choices to readers (Li 2006, p. 78).

References

ABC Radio National 2008, A taxonomy of blogs, viewed November 10 2009, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript

Li, X. (eds) 2006, Internet Newspapers: The Making of a Mainstream Medium, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, USA.

Wikipedia 2009, Blog, viewed November 10 2009, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

Blogs as current phenomenon & benefits of blogging to the community

Image by: Geek Culture

With the massive number of over 70 million blogs and growing by 120, 000 everyday, blogs are one of the biggest web phenomenon ever to hit the globe, affecting people of every race, gender, age and citizenship. However there are stark differences in the bloggers and the way they blog, according to Technorati (2007).

European blogging is not as active as in Asia, which reportedly had 30% of the British who had ‘never heard of blogs’ (Brook 2006). Mackenzie (2006) says European bloggers prefer writing journal-like blogs with topics on technology, business and politics, lesser on personal, lifestyle and religious issues. Whereas one in five Asian bloggers are students, and they blog mostly about music and less about politics (Technorati 2008).

In a recent Microsoft survey done, it showed that Malaysia has younger bloggers - up to 74% who are below 25 years old and another 21% for the next age group which is 25 to 34 years old. Malaysian bloggers mostly write personal stuff such as about their perception of the ‘world around them’ (Microsoft 2008).

The Microsoft article also shared the blogging benefits for Malaysian bloggers; that they are an increasingly attractive platform for advertisers as bloggers create higher quality content and attract growing and loyal audiences. Blogs are also used for people to stay in touch with family and friends.

References
Brook, S. 2006, ‘Blogs struggle to impress in UK’, Guardian, viewed November 9 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/jun/20/pressandpublishing.newmedia

Mackenzie, K. 2006, ‘European bloggers find their voice’, Financial Times, viewed November 9 2009, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/877064e-57be-11db-be9f-0000779e2340.html

Microsoft 2008, Women Rule in Malaysian Blogosphere, viewed November 9 2009, http://www.microsoft.com/malaysia/press/archive2006/linkpage4337.mspx

Technorati 2007, The State of the Live Web, viewed November 9 2009, http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere

Technorati 2008, Technorati: State of blogosphere 2008, viewed November 9 2009, http://technorati.com/blogging/feature/state-of-the-blogosphere-2008