Reflection...

By creating this blog and contributing to its contents, I have gained new knowledge that would be beneficial to my future. I learned that readers do not read only the printed words on a page but they also read the visual presentation of the text (Reep, 2006). To create an effective document, the words and visuals will have to support each other. I also learned that as the writing practices change with time, the interplay between verbal and the visual changes too. Portrayal of meaning no longer stops at just texts. Information value, salience and framing are the three significant systems that has to be paid close attention to when bringing the various elements of a page together to create a coherent and meaningful whole (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1998). A blogger must not focus only on designing and creating an ethical article; he should also be sensitive to the culture of a nation.

As an ending note, I wish to thank my lecturer, Miss Jenny for constantly being patient with me throughout this semester. Her guidance leads me to the completion of this assignment.

Thank you.

Adelaine

Reference

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 1998, ‘Front pages: (the critical) analysis of newspaper layout’, in Bell, A & Garrett, P (eds), Approaches to Media Discourse, Blackwell, Oxford, pp.186-219.

Reep, DC 2006, ‘Document Design’, Technical Writing, Pearson/Longman, New York, pp. 133-172.

Media/Publishing Issue 4 (Media Prima Pulls Out ‘Racist’ Ramadan Ads)

(Source: advertising.aboutcrawler.com)

How many times do you see an advertisement when you switch on the television? Do you notice the billboard adverts when you go out for a drive? Are you frustrated by the advertisement that pops out along with your windows when you go onto the internet? Advertising is a major component of modern economics (Vivian, 2006). The essential role of advertising in economical term is to provide information and rationales to help the people decide how to spend their income. Advertising does not only function as a consumer product billboard; it also serves as a public service campaign, advertising for worthy causes. It educates the public and advises people to make the decisions.

Every country has an advertising code for the broadcasting of commercials and Malaysia is no exception. The Malaysian Advertising Code promotes cultural sensitivity in advertisements; it prohibits advertisements that contain statements or suggestions which may offend the religious, racial, political or sentimental susceptibilities of any section of the community (Waller, n.d.). Due to the largest religious group in Malaysia being Islam, the Malaysian Advertising Code also restricts national mass media that targets Malays from public promotion of liquor and alcohol beverages. The fact that Media Prima aired such controversial series of Ramadan commercials and an alcohol advertisement portrays the lack of self-regulation in the company. Media Prima’s Ramadan commercial that depicted a socially-inept Chinese girl conducting disapproving behavior during the fasting month raised many criticisms. The public service announcement may have the intention of urging the non-Muslims to understand and respect the significance of Ramadan, but the public sees this as racial stereotyping and this caused an uproar which leads to the series of commercial being taken down. The company was also inconsiderate for airing beer commercially despite knowing the religion in the country.

Religion affects people in many ways because it prescribes proper behavior and in Malaysia where culture and religion goes hand in hand, it is important to practice self-regulation to avoid social conflict among the people. Media Prima as a responsible marketer should abide the Advertising Code when creating commercials in the future.

Adelaine

(349 words)

Reference

Vivian, J 2006, The Media of Mass Communication, Pearson, Boston.

Waller, DS n.d., Cultural Values and Advertising in Malaysia: Views from the Industry, Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics.

Media/Publishing Issue 3 (85% Of Media Websites Now Use Online Video To Cover News)

(Source: blog.nielsen.com)

As a student who has to juggle between study and work, my time is very limited and therefore, I prefer news that is short. News in print can sometimes be lengthy and when time is limited, the attention span is immediately shorter. Attaining news from multimodal forms however, is a more enjoyable experience for me. Multimodal texts are texts that communicate meanings through a synchronization of modes (Walsh, 2006). They may incorporate spoken or written language, still or moving images, they may be produced on paper or electronic screen and may incorporate music and sound. In this case, we will be discussing about multimodal texts in non-print form.

As the broadband communication continues to increase their reliability and accessibility, the way people consume media, especially news media, continues to change. It is believed that video is the new text, and the Web is a primary accelerant of that trend. Online venues also provided tools for competing with the 24-hour news channels as they allow broadcast networks to keep information up-to-date and offer greater depth than possible when interrupting the regular TV broadcasting schedule (D. Lotz, 2009).

How long does it take you to change the TV channel if something does not catch your interest? As the attention span of the audience drew shorter, it is only expected that the popularity of videos grow. Consumers would rather watch a short news video than read a long news article. They prefer graphics over words. Images have other effects that are different from words, particularly at affective, aesthetic and imaginative levels (Walsh, 2006). They are more attractive and with the addition of sounds, they demand more attention than texts could. Studies of broadcast news show that viewers prefer to view news with as much ‘live footage’ as possible (Schriver, 1997). Another reason why online news video are becoming so increasingly popular is because it enables viewers to become their own news directors and select the stories of greatest interest to create personalized newscasts (D. Lotz, 2009). Viewing from computer screens and portable devices has also increased the audiences’ desire for timely news and the short form of its content. The blend of image, sound and the demand for timeliness is what made videos more desirable.

Adelaine

(372 words)

Reference

D. Lotz, A 2009, Beyond Prime Time: Television programming in the post-network era, Routledge, New York.

Schriver, K 1997, ‘The Interplay of Words and Pictures’, Dynamics in Document Design: Creating Texts for Readers, Wiley Computer Pub., New York, pp. 361-441.

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.

Media/Publishing Issue 2 (Copyrighted Material: Fair and Unfair Use)

(Source: macp.com)

The advancement of technologies can provide to be a disadvantage. Easy access to the internet offers people unparalleled opportunities to duplicate and to fabricate. Imagine; one click and you can access almost everything on the internet. The search engine Google simplifies the access to a great library of texts, increasing the opportunities of materials being harvest illegally. Websites such as Wikipedia, despite the wide range of information is user-generated and deemed untrustworthy, is still a popular site for rip offs. Academic journal databases such as JSTOR has become a victim of plagiarism, students or adults the like. The internet has now become a treasure trove for plagiarism.

The act of plagiarism is widespread and is affecting the academia and journalism field. According to Anderson (1998), defining plagiarism becomes murky and foggy when one tries to put exact boundaries on it however she defines plagiarism as the act of using the words of another without giving the originator credit. Just as how the article mentions it, it is so easy to collect, compile and modify information from the Internet searches that confusion concerning copyright is inevitable (Bruwelheide, 1995). Therefore, it is easier to remember if every work of others is credited and properly cited each time an essay is done. Avoid the practice of plagiarism as that act is against the law (McClain, 2011). Ethical practice should be encouraged and enforced on students and journalists. Originator should be credited whenever their work is taken and those who do not abide to the ethical rules should be punished. Unfortunately, there are users who believe that anything available over the Internet is fair game and public domain. They think that just because the information is there and easy to manipulate, it has no copyright protection. It is because of these people that plagiarism still continues and if not, is expanding.

Adelaine

(306 words)

Reference

Anderson, J 1998, Plagiarism, Copyright Violation, and Other Thefts of Intellectual Property: An Annotated Bibliography with a Lengthy Introduction, McFarland, United States of America.

Bruwelheide, JH 1995, Copyright Primer for Librarians and Educators, 2nd edn, ALA, Chicago.

McClain, S 2011, The Disadvantages of Plagiarism, viewed 15 November 2011, http://www.ehow.com/info_7874574_disadvantages-plagiarism.html.

Media/Publishing Issue 1 (How e-Textbooks, Online Modules Could Keep Journalism Education Current)

(Source: novinthen.com)

By the time the book reaches the hands of college students after the long wait between writing and publication, it has become outdated. Capeloto (2011) writes on how e-Textbooks, an online modules can help keep journalism education up to date. She mentions CourseSmart, a publisher that has already provided more than 90 percent of the e-textbooks in use today and Inkling, a San Francisco startup that has rolled out more than 100 higher education titles through the tablet. In her opinion, e-textbooks are more like software than online books. Just like an operating system, it has portable, interactive units that can be updated whenever necessary. She also points out that despite the whole book publishing process is moving towards a digital age, the editing and care that publishers take with book manuscripts should not change. Lecturers should not be flooded with updated content and students should not bear the costs of frequent needless updates.

All texts are multimodal however language always has to be realized though and comes in the company of other semiotic modes (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1998). Back then when words are monomodal, the most highly valued kind is the speech and writing. Illustration is not paid much attention to as it is believed that graphics destroy balance. The situation now however, is reversed. Layout of the text, pictures and other graphic elements on a page are the ones that matters now. Writing in this decade involves close attention to typeface choices and layouts. The advancement of technology now allows publishers to adapt chapters from print textbook into tablets and include interactive graphics, videos and web links into these modules. It is no longer just texts; now students can read the words with pictures to assist them at understanding the topic better. Multimodality is practiced along with the improvement of technologies.

However in my own opinion, digital textbooks can never replace print textbooks despite the latter may be outdated when it reaches the market. E-textbooks may offer quicker book updates but it can never offer the same print experience. The feeling of touching an actual book is nothing an electronic tablet can provide.

Adelaine

(355 words)

Reference

Capeloto, A 2011, How e-Textbooks, Online Modules Could Keep Journalism Education Current, MediaShift, viewed 15 November 2011, http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2011/08/how-e-textbooks-online-modules-could-keep-journalism-education-current237.html

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 1998, ‘Front pages: (the critical) analysis of newspaper layout’, in Bell, A & Garrett, P (eds), Approaches to Media Discourse, Blackwell, Oxford, pp.186-219.

e. Screen vs. Print Document Design

According to Hilligoss and Howard (2002), document design means all the ways that writers and readers interact through the look of pages and screens. It may also refer to matters of language. Readers will assume that the bold headings are more important than the italic headings because the bold takes up more space than the slender italic type (Hilligoss & Howard, 2002). To intensify that difference, the bold headings should be made even larger or heavier. However, unlike print documents, headings on screen documents do not have the same effect. While it is easier for our eyes to spot the difference and focus onto the difference of the headings in print documents, our eyes are not as sensitive to screen documents.

One of the important things we should take into deliberation is the grouping. Most common problems with documents are poor proximity (Hilligoss & Howard, 2002). Without proper grouping, texts could be confusing and the message would not be conveyed correctly. Proximity and similarity will make the intended message easier to be transferred.

Hilligoss and Howard (2002) also mentioned that color is powerful and complex. It attracts attention like no other visual feature. However, as much as it can attract viewers, it can also distract and overwhelm the readers. It is important to choose the colors wisely so that it is strong enough to gain attention but not distract the readers from your main aim. On screens where color is usually available, background choices become a very important aspect. Inappropriate backgrounds or overly complicated pictures at the back of the text can be overwhelming and distractive. On print documents however, black text on a white background is very common and in fact, is the most legible. To get a better picture, you can take my blog as the example.

Adelaine

(299 words)

Reference List

Hilligoss, S & Howard, T 2002, Visual Communication: A Writer’s Guide, viewed 24 August 2011, http://www.ablongman.com/mycomplab_content/pdf/long_hilligoss.pdf

d. New Forms of Media Publishing

The blend of digital convergence, personal computing and global networking has changed the way communication is in the new media ecosystem. The most obvious changes are the broadcast TV. Internet is slowly replacing the role of broadcast TV. Streaming of audio and videos across the net has altered the function of broadcast TV. The best example would be the website YouTube.

Source: ohinternet.com

People all around the world can view any uploaded audios or videos on the website without even having to turn on the TV. While broadcast TV is a ‘push’ medium: a media whose content is decided by a band of selected producers and push it down analogue or digital channels at audiences which are assumed to be majority passive recipients, the web is the complete opposite medium, a pull media: the audience has the power to choose the contents (Naughton, 2006). The audiences get to choose what is handled to them instead of the usual feed-to-the-lap media.

E-commerce altered the face of the media ecosystem. A study describes search engines such as Google are having dramatic effects on the advertising and marketing industries (Naughton, 2006).

Source: en.wikipedia.org

Now with the internet, it is easy for people to access detailed data on the desired products and compare the prices online. The internet also creates more informed consumers by providing them with formidable resources to become more knowledgeable.

Popular social networks such as Facebook and Twitter also contributed to the new media ecosystem.

Source: informationappliance.com

Communication is easier and faster, constantly evolving as the time passes. These social networks are also often used as a promoting tool, where advertising in this website is common. Clearly, this is a sign of a new media ecosystem.

Adelaine

(279 words)

Reference List

Naughton, J 2006, ‘Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem’, Reuters Fellowship, viewed 23 August 2011, http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/discussion/blogging.pdf