New Forms of Media Publishing

It is so true that our media communication environment is changing rapidly. The world we are living is surrounded by digital and global networking in 21st century. The rise of "new media" is develop into our "needs" in our daily lifestyle. Back then, we were still waiting our Mr. Postman to deliver us a letter from friends and family. Today, we have various e-mail sources to choose, Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc... Our "old media' used to rule the society; we read newspaper everyday, we listen to radio to know the latest news and events. The world of Internet has become much better informed in terms of knowledgeable. In a study stated by John Naughton (2006), John Battelle also describes the extreme effects of search engines such as Google are dominating the advertising and marketing industries. The success of net also becomes a challenge for conventional PR nrews management to keep the companies from flaws and secrets due to the rapid spread through e-mail blog, or instant messaging. 

Look at the most known social media sites like Twitter are completely replacing traditional forms of public relations and adversiting (Girtz, 2011). No doubt, Twitter is the micro-blogging site that helped service-based businesses to grow their customers base and drive a loyal online followers. In fact, people don't call or even text their friends anymore, instead they tweet! The change of communication becomes so digitalized. 

However, the PR industry is changing for good. As Twitter's popularity increased, it reduced the space between social media and PR industry. Today, thousand of successful Twitter' PR stories are broadly defined as the best PR skill in the world of Web 2.0. Twitter becomes so useful especially in Marketing to monitor brand's reputation online. People tweet about what product they used, what product they love or even hate! According to Bill Gates once said, "If I was down to my last dollar, I'd spend it on public relationships". I'd rather say "If I was down to my last dollar, I'd spend it accessing Twitter to build public relations."

By looking at the Twitter main page of our own account, the combine words and images in complex structures with logos, menu bars, hyperlinks, etc. The way we interpret any new text, whether words or images, will then produce new interpretations, new responses, and new meanings (Walsh, 2006). The affordance in Twitter is about instant messaging that provide the most convenient service in social media. The micro-blogging feature makes the user to 'blog' and keep it sweet and simple due to there is a limitation of word count under Twitter.

Back then, the media ecosystem was dominated by broadcast media, now that we see the powerful of Internet especially social networking site as a role of Public Relation and Advertising. 

References:

Naughton, J 2006, 'Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem' viewed on 27 April, 2011, <http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/discussion/blogging.pdf>.

Girtz, B 2011, 'Twitter replacing traditional advertising and PR', viewed on 26 April, 2011, <http://www.travolution.co.uk/articles/2011/03/24/4515/twitter-replacing-traditional-advertising-and-pr.html>

Walsh, B 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.

Types of Blogging Communities & Methods to Build Blogging Communities

Online became part of the Internet as a community, in these recent years of rapid changes, blog has introduced as a new platform for online communities (White 2006).


What is a blogging community?
Personally, I believe blogging community does not define as one answer. Blogging community is based on the blogger own selves to build their own blog as a place to share ideas, socialize, connect with people through online. In another word, everyone can create their own blogging community, whether the community is large or small.


How do we create our own blogging community?
In that case, we as a blogger could always make use of the tools provided by the blogging agent such as Blogspot, Wordpress, etc. There are several ways to build up blogging communities:

1. Comment (Rowse 2009)
Before someone notice your blog, you should start notice someone's blog. Make use of the comment box when necessary, share your opinions, give some feedbacks, all these comments will be appreciated by the blog's owner and they would also interact with you.

(source: http://thedangthings.blogspot.com)

2. Share Link (Dalu, 2009)
Nowadays, everything is all about Facebook and Twitter. Why not share your blog post on Facebook or Twitter? Under every section of each blog post, there's a button to share on few social networking sites.

(source: http://thedangthings.blogspot.com)

3. Advertorial
Now that we have few blogging communities that makes blogging become a fun job to do. Nuffnang is one of the top blogging advertising community, they often pay top-viewed bloggers to write advertorials for certain clients of their own. This not only promote a product, but also giving a hand to the blogger to build up blog communities of their own.

Looking at all the blogging communities around us, we are globally connecting with each other.


References:

White, N 2006, 'Blogs and Community - launching a new paradigm for online community', online, viewed on 25 April, 2011, <http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community>.

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

Dalu, M 2009, 'Create a Community Blog with Facebook and Wordpress', online, viewed on 25 April, 2011, <http://inchoo.net/wordpress/create-a-community-blog-with-facebook-and-wordpress/>

Classification of blogs & opinion about the most appropriate classification approach.

Blog has been using as a tool of globalization in every areas. There are many classification of blogs:

In terms of subject matter, there are blogs classified as politics, entertainment, fashion, law, etc. For example, The Skinny is the fashion blog created by Forever 21 to share the latest clothing design.

There are also blog classified based on device which is moblog, stands for mobile blog. Moblog is camera photo mobile blogging tool for the convenience of bloggers to share photos instantly such as Plixi and yfrog.

Whereas under media type of blogs, there are vlog, linklog, sketchlog, tumblelog, etc. The most famous vlog blogging media is YouTube, many Youtuber became famous because of the video they made and share.

In fact, Margarent Simmons sorted out few types of blog classification during a recording of ABC programe (2008). To sum up her argues on classification of blogs are:

1. Pamphleteering Blog - also known as political blog, where one or group of people argue on the current issue.
2. Digest Blog - a collective information which also link to another site for more information.
3. Advocacy Blog - similar to pamphleteering blog, focus on a particular issue but mainly on-going basis.
4. Popular Mechanics Blog - a how to blog, could be a tutorial blog to educate the reader.
5. Exhibition Blog - Share the artistic creative work to the audience.
6. Gatewacher Blog - a group of people that follow the media's latest news.
7. Diary Blog - an everything blog about the writer, daily life report about themselves.
8. Advertisement Blog - commercial companies will pay the blogger to write an advertorial about their products.
9. News Blog - purely report the current news and events.


Personally, I think everyone is free to write everything they want. A good blog that based on their own style of writing is the creative thinking of what today's world need, not just by get stuck with the same old writing style (Rowse, 2005).


References:


Funnel, A 2008, A taxanomy of blogs, The Media Report, ABC Radio National, viewed 23 April 2011, <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm>.


Rowse, D 2005, 20 types of blog posts, Problogger, viewed 22 April 2011, <http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/11/29/20-types-of-blog-posts-battling-bloggers-block/>.

Blogs as current phenomenon & benefits to the community

Blogging has risen to an extreme high level in the world. The size of the current blogosphere is dominated by United States.

(Source: Technorati 2010)

The Star Newspaper even reported Malaysia current has around 500,000 active bloggers, as also ranking as the highest in the world after Indonesia and the European Union (2009). In Malaysia, there are over 74% of bloggers in Malaysia are below 25 years old, and almost 64% of the bloggers are female. What about the blogging trend in Malaysia? Interesting fact found that politician's blogs scored low in popularity chart across Asia except Malaysia (2006).

Whereas in Arab, the blogging trend over this country is mainly surrounding with politics, culture and dissent (Menassat, 2009). There are thousands of Arab blogs in the Middle East are widely emerging the blog trends on the online community. According to the findings (Menassat, 2009), the study found that majority of the Arab blogs are written in diary form, based on personal observations and encounters on everyday life. However, when it comes to politics issue, Arab bloggers truly gives a critical opinion on the particular issues. Besides that, most of them are young male.

www.360east.com is one of the world top Arab blog.

References:

Sobel, J 2010, State of the blogosphere, Technorati, viewed 20 April 2011, <http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2010-introduction/>.

The Star, 2008, Blogging in Malaysia ranks highest in the world, viewed 19 April 2011, <http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/4/3/nation/20827588&sec=nation%3E>.

Asian Correspondent, 2006, Microsoft: '64% of Malaysian bloggers are female', viewed 20 April 2011, <http://asiancorrespondent.com/6615/microsoft-64-of-malaysian-bloggers-are-female/>.

Menassat, 2009, "Politics, culture, and dissident:" New study maps out trends in Arab blogsphore, viewed 20 April 2011, <http://www.menassat.com/?q=en/news-articles/6705-politics-culture-and-dissident-new-study-maps-out-trends-arab-blogosphere>.

What makes a good presentation slides?

A good document design is also apply in power point slides. Power point slide is a handy tool to use it for the purpose of presentation, lecture, visual and etc. Making a good power point slide is easy, however, to make an effective power point slide require a basic design principles or rules in order to deliver the message to the audience. Diana Reep (2006) refers the general principles for all documents are balance, proportion, sequence, and consistency. As a designer, it is crucial to understand these principles and apply it. 

For example, consistency is important in a document design to present similar style to avoid confusion. First, consistent layout, using the fixed template in your slide does not mean it is a boring design, this is to help the reader recognize and remember your presentation. 

Firgure 1

Figure 2

The figure 1 and figure 2 shows the consistency of each slide by using the same template, the look and feel, and even the font. 

In addition to design an effective slide, adding extra graphic aids such as table or graf thoroughly is also for decorative purpose. Graphic aids are useful in helping the readers to understand the information given in a document. 

Figure 3

Figure 4

As these figures shown above, figure 3 created a table to show the three types of metafunction, whereas figure 4 did not apply the use of graphic aid by giving information of the respective subject. 

To sum up, a good document design is not just about the "design" in terms of creativity in arts. To practice makes perfect is to apply our general knowledge and experience on our document design. Think as a designer and reader.

References:

Reep, D 2006, Technical Writing, 6th edn, Pearson Edu Inc., New York.

The Purpose of This Blog

First of all, thank you for visiting LiHui Talks Design. On this blog, I'm going to discuss about publishing and media issues, for example, document designs, the techinical writing, features in design etc. This blog is going to deliever the up-to-date related issues to you especially to those who is into document designing, students from design programme, a need to get to know in detail about these issues.

Follow this blog and stay tune.

Cheers,

LH