New Form of Media Publishing

There are many new form of media in term of publishing as the technology advancement constantly evolving. In today's society, communication has changed immensely through the new media publishing such as Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, weblog, online news, online libraries and so on. These media publishing allow users to get informed and updated in animated graphics and texts electronically in a creative and interactive way (Lickerman, 2010). 


Walsh (2006) stated that these types of media allow users to take the cues from a homepage to navigate to multiple sites with non-linear pathway. It has altered the traditional form of writing media publishing which stated by Naughton (2006) as 'all "old" media were new media once'.  

(Source: http://www.charlesheflin.com)
The new form of media publishing

The new form of media publishing like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are used widely in the social community to convey or deliver message effectively as they can be easily accessible on the internet. Meanwhile, these new media also allow users to allocate things that they are looking for and filter the unwanted things (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006).


Among these new form of media publishing, I prefer micro blogging like Facebook and Twitter as I can connect to the world immediately and getting the news from the community quickly even in a second. According to Macmillan Dictionary, information and be updated by sending and receiving in a variety ways including mobile phone with the immediacy and portability of micro blogging. 


Nowadays, people use Twitter as a micro blogging tool and also a channel of social network enhance relationship among their community, and get updates immediately. According to Diana (2011), as the horror of Japan's earthquake and tsunami began to unfold, there were 177 million tweets in one day. The record of 6,939 tweets per second was set as 2011 dawned in Japan.


Reference


Diana, A, 2011, Twitter Handles One Billion Tweets per Week, Information Week, viewed on 30 April 2011, <http://www.informationweek.com/thebrainyard/news/229301003/twitter-handles-1-billion-tweets-per-week>

Kress G, Van Leeuwen, T 2006, "The semiotic landscape: language and visual communication", Reading Images, Chapter 1, (UNISA Electronic Library)


Lickerman, A 2010, Costs of communication on email, Facebook and Twitter, Kevinmd, viewed 30 April 2011,<http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2010/07/costs-communication-email-facebook-twitter.html>


Naughton, J 2006, Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem, viewed 30 April 2011,<http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/discussion/blogging.pdf> 


Walsh, M., 2006, The "Textual Shift" Examining the Reading Process with Print, Visuals and Multimodal Texts, Australian Journal of Labguage and Literacy, vol 29, no.1, pg 24-37.

Blogging Communities

Types of Blogging Communities 


According to White (2006), the term ‘online community’ signifies to a community who interact online with some bounded set of technologies. The blogging communities can be those bloggers;s blogs that are interacted and have interconnections to form a social network. The communities can be public or private and visible only to those who joined. 


According to Arren (2009) in Webbusinesswiz, blogging communities can be differentiated in 3 types such as Blogosphere, Search Engine and Directory. 

• Blogosphere blogging community: interconnected through social plugins, blogrolls, post comments, backlinks and linkbacks (Trackback)
• Search engine blogging community: search/ browse of others blogs in the blogosphere in order to establish physical connection or create interest on findings and discussion.
• Directory blogging community: engage in blog directories as a social means to get a connection with people to blogs in order to promote their blogs to others.

Methods to Build Blogging Communities


There are many ways that bloggers can build blogging community. After reading the articles, I would like to suggest a guideline on how to create communities as following: 

• Comments: Leaving a comment on others' blog can be the first step to start building your blogging community by interacting with other bloggers (Rowse, 2009). You can ask a question or give your opinion to others. 
• Newsletters subscription: By publishing newsletters on your blog, you can expand your community. By using your blog post to introduce your newsletter to get attention from people and subscribe your newsletter. (Griffiths, 2011, Blog For Profit)
• Directory: As I mention above, you can list your blog in directory that can be found by readers easily. A simple Google search of 'Blog Directories' will bring thousands of results. For example : Technorati.com
• Links: Linking to other blogs is critical to help in building a community for your blog (Bauer, 2006). This to attract the readers from other blogs to return to your blog in favour. 
• Social network: As the social network like Facebook and Twitter are becoming a norm on the internet, you can integrate them into your blog by adding a 'like' badge. This will allow people in the social network to aware of your blog. This is also a excellent way to build community for you blog. (webstart.com, 2011)

Example


Here is a weblog that I want to introduce. www.tianchad.com. This blog is considered as a directory blog as I mentioned in my previous post. The blogger always keep an eye on media by blogging about the reviews of events, photography of events, advertorial, travel and even business blogging. 


The way that the blogger use to build community is by social network. He publishes links on Facebook and create a Fans page on Facebook to attract the audiences' interest. It has a 'subscribe' button on the blog that can let the audience to keep track on it when there is a new posting. 


By clicking on the contact button, you can see the contact of the blogger. This is one of the way that he build up the community on his blog. 

(Source: www.tianchad.com)

In my opinion, to build blogging community, we at least have to do things above in order to attract more readers. 

Reference


Arren, 2009, Types of Blogging Community, Web Business Wiz, viewed on 29 April 2011, <http://www.webbusinesswiz.com/blogging/types-of-blogging-communities/>


Bauer, E 2006, How to build blog traffic – community, BlogHer, 25 July, viewed 30 September 2010,<http://www.blogher.com/node/8128>


Griffiths, G, 2011, Using a Newsletter to build your Blog's Community, Blog For Profit, viewed on 29 April 2011, <http://blogforprofit.com/blogging-tips/using-a-newsletter-to-build-your-blogs-community/>

Rowse, D 2009, 8 Tips for building community on your blog, Problogger, 28 February, viewed 29 April 2011,<http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/02/28/8-tips-for-building-community-on-your-blog/>


Webstart.com, Add a Facebook 'like' badge to your website, Webstart, viewed on 29 April 2011, <http://blog.webstarts.com/2010/06/add-a-facebook-like-badge-to-your-website/>

White, N 2006, Blogs and community – launching a new paradigm for online community?, The knowledge tree, viewed 29 April 2011, <http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community>

Blog taxonomy : classifications and opinions

There are many reasons and purposes that an individual or organisation creating blogs. To cater different audiences' needs, there are millions blogs that are classified in different types and genre to help them search blogs easily. 


In my opinion, the blog classification that I know is based on the content of the blogs as anyone does. Blogs can be classified in the following categories:

1. By subject method: Politics, Fashion, History, Law, Sports
2. By device: Moblog (Blogs by using mobile or PDA)
3. By media type: Vlog (blog of videos), LinkLog (collections of links), SketchLog (Blog of Sketches), TumbleLogs (Blog of mix media)
4. By status of publisher: Business and Corporate Blogs.

In order to attract more audiences by differentiating the blogs, Margaret Simons (cited in Funnel, 2008) has come up with 9 new types of blog classifications that are shown below:

1. Pamphleteering blog - point of views on current issues/politics
2. Digest blog - blogs that analyse the collection of facts from other resources
3. Advocacy blog - pushes particular point of view on particular issue
4. Popular Mechanics blog - how-to Blog/tutorial blog
5. Exhibition blog - blogs that bring out one's work to an audience
6. Gatewatcher blog - blogs which keep an eye on the media
7. Diary - personal blogs
8. Advertisement -  blogs for advertising purposes
9. News blog - news/information surveillance blog

Smich (2010) argues that there are many blogs vary from personal diary types to information and news type that are obtainable easily. In addition, She classified blogs into 10 different types that are similar but a little different with Margaret Simons as follow:

1. Cultural Blog: Discuss issue about popular cultural or arts and musics.
2. Business Blog: Business related topics and stock markets.
3. Personal Blog: Personal diary (majority used of generating income or drive traffic to other website)
4. Topic Blog: Focus on the function such as few of the search engines present currently.
5. Collaborative Blog: Blogs that managed or written by two or more authors.
6. Science Blog: Used to disseminate data and information.
7. Eclectic Blog: Focuses on niches collaboratively or individual made
8. Directory Blog: focuses on specific evens and news.
9. Educational Blog: Used by students for research and findings.
10. Forum Blog: Permits two or more bloggers for posting discussion on the net.

It is no doubt that Simons' classifications are more specified than Smich's by looking into the aspect of blogging with deeper insight to attract audiences' interest. In my opinion, the classification of blogs is critical to help audiences to search for information quickly as people are busy on many things. 

Reference
Funnell, A 2008, A taxonomy of blogs, The media report, viewed 29 April 2011,<http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript>


Smich, M 2010, Different types of blogs, myhosting, 8 April, viewed 29 April 2011,<http://myhosting.com/blog/2010/04/types-blogs-2/>

Blogs: Current Phenomenon & Community's Benefit

Blogging has become part of our lives as it is available to everyone for free and it manages the change in ways of publishing. On the other hand, it has become a phenomenon for people to build relationship in the social media network. According to Sussman (2009) in Technorati, most bloggers were motivated to blog about their self-expression and sharing expertise.

According to BlogPulse, the Nielson Company's source of blogging statistic and trivial data, on April 26, 2011 there were over 160 millions identified blogs in existence (Blogpulse.com, 2011). Below is the data by Nielson Company.

Source: www.blogpulse.com on April 26, 2011

Technorati studies shown that, in year 2010, the significant growth of mobile blogging the key trend of blogging and it is moving vastly and rapidly (Sobel, 2010). The main blogging trend were personal musings, technology, business, news and politics. 

According to the State of Inbound Marketing survey 2011 in HubSpot, based on survey of 644 professionals that familiar with their business strategies, 57% of companies using blogs reported that they acquires customers from leads generated directly from their blogs. In addition, more and more businesses are blogging and they are aware that their blogs are highly valuable. 85% of businesses rated their companies blogs as 'useful', 'important' or 'critical'. Furthermore, it is stated that the percentage of the businesses that have blogs has grown from 48% to 65% from year 2009 to 2011 (HubSpot.com, 2011).

Source:
 http://www.hubspot.com/Portals/53/docs/ebooks/the2011stateofinboundmarketingfinal.pdf

The figures above shows that blog is the channel that most frequently reported as critical or important in both year 2009 and 2011.

The business blogging offers huge potential benefits from reduced cost and enhanced performance. To a certain extent, business have started to utilize blogs for the purpose for marketing, building brand, engaging customers, and knowledge sharing.


References


BlogPulse, 2011, Blogpulse Stats, viewed on April 26, 2011, http://www.blogpulse.com/


HubSpot, 2011, The 2011 State of inbound marketing , February 2011, viewed on April 26, 2011, http://www.hubspot.com/Portals/53/docs/ebooks/the2011stateofinboundmarketingfinal.pdf


Sobel, J, 2010, State of the Blogosphere 2010 Introduction, technorati.com, viewed on April 26, 2011, http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2010-introduction/

Sussman, M, 2009, Day 2 - The What and Why of Blogging - SOTB 2009, technorati.com, viewed on April 26, 2011, http://technorati.com/blogging/article/day-2-the-what-and-why2/

A Good Powerpoint Presentation

It is crucial to design a good document in attracting audiences or readers. A good document design helps reader to understand the context and visual easily in ways that serve their interest and needs. According to Reep (2006), direct text is important for design in presentation to increase interest of audiences and readers; so that they can remember the important information that reflects its designers.

Scriver (1997), on the other hand, stated that a good document design should incorporate both text and image that can be supported each other to convey message to the audiences and readers and grasp their attention effectively. Furthermore, as defined by Marquez (2010), speaking clearly and interactivity with the audience is critical to increasing audiences' interest and avoid mundane presentation. In addition, Putnis and Petelin (1996) stated that a good document should be maintaining a recognisable flow of information and creating balance between visuals and texts, which complement Reep's principle in good document design.

The picture below is one of my earlier group presentation slide which shows that we put pictures and texts together to create awareness of audiences and make the slide more interesting. When the audiences look at the slide, they will not feel boring and uninteresting.

   

Furthermore, Reeps (2006) stated that colors also play an important role in document design to reinforce the message to specify intended audience. However, it can bring a negative reactions to the audiences if it is going overboard. On the picture below, we create the table with different colors in different column to create audience attention on the differences. Therefore, they can see the different point clearly column by column.

The last point I want to identify here is, a good piece of writing must communicate specific information directly and literally which defined by Rothman (2005). The picture above is an example that shows a direct and literally information to the audiences. We are able to communicarte precise points in order to deliver the main mesage to the audiences.

Refertence:

Marquez ZL 2010, How to make a good powerpoint presentation, Ezinearticles, viewed 27 August 2010,

<http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Make-a-Good-PowerPoint-Presentation&id=4313178>

Putnis P & Petelin R 1996, ‘Writing to communicate’, in Professional communication, Prentice Hall, Sydney.

Reep D 2006, ‘Principles of document design’, in Technical writing, 6th edn, Pearson Edu, Inc., New York.

Rothman S 2005, What makes good scientific and technical writing?, Associated content, viewed 27 August 2010,

<http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/9447/error>

Schriver K.A 1997, Dynamic in Document Design: Creating Texts for Readers, Wiley Computer Pub., New York.

Introduction

(source:http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01431/welcome_mat_1431302c.jpg)

The purpose of the blog

This blog is created specifically for assignment base course work in Issue in Publication and Design subject. The main purpose is to provide an in-depth discussion towards current media issues in the field of publication. The target audiences are those who share the common interest in creating good design and students who are taking this subject. It aims to help readers in further understanding of the importance of document design.