Reflection

At the end of all the postings, blogging is not just as simple as it looks. One has to be ethical, tactful and careful before splilling out those controversial messages, or any form of racism targeted towards a particular group. Besides being informative in writing a blog, the designing of the layout of the blog is quintessential as Walsh (2006) stated that documents these days work in multimodal form and no longer just based on texts. Reep (2006) also noted that there are many factors to be considered while designing a document, in this case a blog.

After completing this weblog, there is no denial that the introduction of blogs has transform the way of journalism, as it has been used widely as an alternative source to the mainstream media. However, as Zahiid (2010) stated that the rise of social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook has declined the usage of blogs. Anyway, blogs is the solution for alternative information and one’s point of view on that issue.

Much thanks to Miss Jenny and her guidance, teachings and advises.

Reference

Reep, D 2006, ‘Chapter 6: document design’ in Technical Writing, 6th edn, Pearson/Longman, New York, pp. 133-172.

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.

Zahiid, SJ 2010, Blogging is so yesterday, politicians turn to Twitter, The Malaysian Insider, viewed 10 November 2010, <http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/Blogging-is-so-yesterday-politicians-turn-to-Twitter/>.

Twitter: A New Channel for Politicians

Politicians have definitely been well-known in making full-use of the new media to receive votes during the election campaign or to communicate with the citizens more effectively. In this modern time, leaders or future leaders of their respective countries no longer just use speeches or the newspaper as their only medium to channel the message to the public. With the ‘invention’ of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, blogs and Youtube which all are under the category of new media, the politicians are able to transmit their message to the public easily, efficiently and quicker. Perlmutter (2008) have also stated that many political campaigns have been using YouTube, Twitter and Facebook for experimentation.

                                    

                                                     Source: (aperture.org, 2009)

The most well-known politicians to make full use of the new media or social networking sites are the current president of America, Barack Obama. During his election campaign for the election of presidency, Barack Obama not only made his campaigning speech in almost each state in America but also uploaded the videos of his speech to Youtube in order for others who was unable to be present during his speech would get to know the message (May, 2010).

                                    

                                               Source: (darmano.typepad.com, 2008)

After being elected as President of United States of America over Republican’s John McClain, Obama made sure he is able to communicate with the American citizens instantly and efficiently by being a user of the Facebook and Twitter community (Nations, n.d.). Besides, after being elected as the forty-fourth president of America, the president decided to make full use of technology and the new media by having set up the Obama Administration which is to accomplish Obama’s vision of open-source democracy (Merritt, 2009)). The administration would decide to again make full use of YouTube by publishing any messages or speeches to reach a wider range of citizens. 

In Malaysia, many politicians regardless from the ruling or opposition party uses Twitter as a channel to communicate with the Malaysian citizens (Zahiid, 2010). There are several politicians who have been active in Twitter such as Anwar Ibrahim, DAP Lim Kit Siang, UMNO Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah and of course the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak (Zahiid, 2010). Jonson Chong who is a communications director stated that although blogs would provide readers with in-depth information, it does not create an instant and effective communication with the readers or followers compared to Twitter (Zahiid, 2010).

Reference

May, AL 2010, ‘Who tube? How YouTube’s news and politics space is going mainstream’, The International Journal of Press/Politics, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 499-511.

Merritt, K 2009, How Obama will use web technology, Tech Crunch, viewed 10 November 2010, <http://techcrunch.com/2009/01/24/how-obama-will-use-web-technology/>.

Nations, D n.d., How Barack Obama is using Web 2.0  to run for president, About.com, viewed 10 November 2010, <http://webtrends.about.com/od/web20/a/obama-web.htm>.

Perlmutter, DD 2008, ‘Political blogging and campaign 2008: a roundtable’, The International Journal of Press/Politics, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 160-170.

Zahiid, SJ 2010, Blogging is so yesterday, politicians turn to Twitter, The Malaysian Insider, viewed 10 November 2010, <http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/Blogging-is-so-yesterday-politicians-turn-to-Twitter/>.

Imposter Celebrities: The Question of Twitter's Credibility

The introduction of the new media with great micro-blogging platforms such as Twitter and Facebook has provide an alternate option for people to communicate with others quicker and more effective. Back then, most would be able to communicate with their favourite celebrities through the celebrities’ blogs but with the introduction of Twitter, followers are now able to communicate instantly and efficiently with the celebrities. Most of the people have acknowledged the dramatic growth of Twitter through the numbers of celebrities that have been users of this micro-blogging website (Sciretta, 2009). However, this amazing communication tool has made a drastic turn as there are several celebrity imposters that hack into the celebrities account and send out messages or tweets, on such a way that the followers would believe (Owens, 2009).

                     

                                           Source: (gossipteen.com, 2009)

Due to this, followers would have several question marks and scratching their heads in figuring out whether the message is valid or fake, in some extent followers would also question whether the celebrity is real of fake. In a case, an attacker was able to hack into Disney’s teenage star Miley Cyrus’ Twitter account in which stating and post up a message in which it states that “Miley” hates little kids and she did the acting role for the Disney drama series Hannah Montana for the sake of money (Constantin, 2009; Owens, 2009). This message caused an outburst especially among the Hannah Montana series fans and due to the controversial message being posted on Twitter, Miley Cyrus’ Twitter account was temporarily suspended in which the officials stated that the account was suspended due to ‘strange activity’ (Constantin, 2009).

In an interview with David Letterman, actor Jonah Hill revealed that he did not possess any Twitter account and claimed that the account @OfficialJonah was a fluke (Ostrow, 2009). Jonah Hill also stated that the user of the particular account is an imposter and the user would later claimed that the blog was indeed a fluke and it is not Jonah Hill’s valid account (Ostrow, 2009).

In order to curb these imposters from hacking into the real celebrities account, the Twitter company decided to reduced or somewhat prevent any signs of celebrity imposters with the introduction of ‘verified account’ service (Leyden, 2009). The service is used as a virtual seal to provide verification that the account belongs to the person or a company in order to inform the followers that the person or the particular is valid and not an imposter (Leyden, 2009).

                  

                                           Source: (techshali.com, 2009)

References

Constantin, L 2009, Miley Cyrus’ Twitter account hacked, Softpedia, viewed 9 November 2010, <http://news.softpedia.com/news/Miley-Cyrus-039-Twitter-Account-Hacked-104817.shtml>.

Leyden, J 2009, Twitter fights celeb imposters with Verified Account scheme, The Register, viewed 9 November 2010, <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/08/trusted_twitter/>.

Ostrow, A 2009, Actor Jonah Hill tells David Letterman he has a Twitter Imposter, Mashable, viewed 9 November 2010, <http://mashable.com/2009/07/14/jonah-hill-twitter/>.

Owens, S 2009, How celebrity imposters hurt Twitter’s credibility, Media Shift, viewed 9 November 2010, <http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2009/02/how-celebrity-imposters-hurt-twitters-credibility051.html>.

Sciretta, P 2009, The growing problem of celebrity imposters on Twitter, Slash Film, 9 November 2010, <http://www.slashfilm.com/the-growing-problem-of-celebrity-imposters-on-twitter/>.

Controversial Cartoon Publishing: Danish cartoons and The New York Post

Cartoon publishing has existed since a long time ago. It was later revolutionalised by comic book artists such as Bob Kane and in Malaysia, the most well-known cartoon publisher is Datuk Mohammad Nor Khalid. The purpose of cartoon publishing back then functions like a modern newspaper in which to inform the people about a particular thing. Then, it was used for leisure and entertainment purposes. The social communication and the social discourse can be set in the form or humour or joke, which under the category of cartoon (Giarelli & Tulman, 2003)

With well-known cartoon publishing such as comic books and mangas, it is known for providing people some laughs and entertainment purposes. However, there was controversy surrounding a particular cartoon publishing company after it published an image of Prophet Muhammad. It was a worldwide outburst as there was sort of a war between the East and the West in which the East claimed it is the freedom of speech whereas the West argued that it is disgracing the religion (Hussain, 2007) A Danish cartoon publishing company published two form of Prophet Muhammad which infuriated the Muslim community (Hussain, 2007). One of the cartoons that illustrated Prophet Muhammad portrays that He had a messy moustache and beard, seemingly half-dressed, wearing a sheathed sword around his waist, along with an outer vest over one of the shoulders (Hussain, 2007).

The other is regarding a cartoon published by The New York Times in which there were two policemen standing over a corpse of an ape in which some American critics claimed the ape is a cross-reference to Barack Obama (Hines, 2009). After the cartoon was published in the newspaper, numerous civil rights leaders and politicians were furious and quickly demanded a sincere apology from The New York Times publication company and Rupert Murdoch (Hines, 2010). In actual fact, the executives wanted to ‘borrow’ the ape as a cross-reference to Al Sharpton, who the executives view Al Sharpton as a public opportunist (Hines, 2009). Due to this incident, Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and the chief executive of News Corporation wrote an apologetic article to apologize for the controversial carton that was published (Hines, 2009).

                    

                               Source: (sanfranciscosentinel.com, 2009)

Cartoon publishing according to Giarelli and Tulman (2003) have claimed the truth and to some extent try to represent reality, however, there are several controversies surround the use of cartoon publishing and therefore one has to be rational and ethical while publishing.

Reference

Giarelli, E & Tulman, L 2003, ‘Methodological issues in the use of published cartoons as data’, Qualitative Health Research, vol. 13, no. 7, pp. 945-956.

Hines, N 2009, Rupert Murdoch apologizes for controversial chimpanzee cartoon, Times Online, viewed 8 November 2010, <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5797869.ece>.

Hussain, AJ 2007, ‘The media’s role in a clash of misconceptions: the case of the Danish Muhammad cartoons’, The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 112-130.

Facebook's Privacy at Stake

Facebook has been regarded by most as the greatest invention in modern times. It was a Harvard University student that created this social networking phenomenon and redefined the whole meaning of social networking (Geller, 2010). Mark Zuckerberg, was then at the age of nineteen wanted to create Facebook as a tool for communication and would later become a worldwide phenomenon by redefining social communication and the meaning of community (Geller, 2010). Zuckerberg quoted that he created Facebook is to create a more open world for the community (Geller, 2010).

                          

                                                Source: (winandmac.com, 2010)

With functions such as searching for friends or getting the ‘social’ mood to know new friends who have similar interests, or just spend the free time to play available game applications such as Restaurant City or Farmville. Facebook users are also able to upload their photos or videos for other friends or users to look and possibly provide feedback or in terms of Facebook, ‘like’ it.

However, everything has its pros and cons. For most, Facebook appears as though there is no fault at all for this particular ‘invention’. Little do people know that Facebook is now the greatest tool for voyeurism or well-known to others as stalking. With the high rates of breaching personal and private information in Facebook (ABC News, 2010), it is inevitable that most do not feel secured using Facebook. In The Wall Street Journal, it is found that some of the Facebook applications violate the privacy policy by giving out personal information in order for others to track them easily (ABC News, 2010).

                                                       Source: (thesecuritypub.com, 2010)

In the workplace, the rate of voyeurism is immensely high as most of the employees tend to watch what others are doing in Facebook (Star In-Tech, 2 November 2010, p. 11). According to an analysis report by Palo Alto Networks, a computer security firm, most would lurk and look at others’ activities in Facebook instead of playing the games applications that are available in Facebook (Star In-Tech, 2 November 2010, p. 11).  The report also stated that this action would cause a great loss in productivity and a high presence of malware (Star In-Tech, 2 November 2010, p. 11). Besides, in most companies, employers would monitor the employees’ activities  through Facebook (MyFox Tampa Bay, 2010) and that many people has either being fired or suspended due to controversial messages, photos or videos being posted in Facebook (Dash, 2010).

With personal information being breached through voyeurism, it would be common for people to hinder from Facebook. In order to gain trust, Facebook decided to introduce a new technology to prevent any actions of voyeurism (ABC News, 2010).

References

Companies monitor employees on Facebook 2010, MyFox Tampa Bay, viewed 12 November 2010, <http://www.myfoxtampabay.com/dpp/news/investigates/111-facebook-monitoring-at-work>.

Dash, R 2010, How to monitor your employees’ Facebook use, All Facebook, viewed 11 November 2010, <http://www.allfacebook.com/monitor-employees-facebook-2010-03>.

Facebook admits privacy breach 2010, ABC News, viewed 11 November 2010, <http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/10/19/3042594.htm>.

Geller, A 2010, ‘What’s behind this famous face’, Star In-Tech 26 October, p. 11.

Star In-Tech 2010, ‘Facebook voyeurism a part of workplace life’, 2 November, p. 11.

New Form of Media Publishing

Media is a form of communication and as stated by Naughton (2006), the communication environment has changed through time. The emergence of technology and global networking has caused an alteration to the communication sector (Naughton, 2006). The existence of video uploading sites such as Youtube and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter is a new form of media publishing nowadays.

Alternate Media

Besides, the role of communication and journalism has change due to the existence of alternate online newspaper and social networking sites. Global alternate online newspaper such as UK Watch, Adbusters and Dissident Voice (world-newspapers.com, 2010) enable the society to obtain alternate information besides depending on the mainstream media for information and news.

New Trends in New Media

Nowadays, it is a trend to use social networking sites as a form of communication in the political sector which was made famous by the President of USA, Barack Obama. According to Nations (n.d.), Obama has used social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to convey his message to the public quicker and efficient. Besides, Obama made full use of Youtube during his election campaign by uploading the entire campaign speech to viewers rather than viewing a short clip of the speech in the news (Nations, n.d.).

Reference

Nations, D n.d., How Barack Obama is using Web 2.0 to run for president, About.com, viewed 20 September 2010, <http://webtrends.about.com/od/web20/a/obama-web.htm>.

Naughton, J 2006, Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem, Reuteurs Institute, viewed 19 September 2010, <http://reuteursinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/about/discussion/blogging.html>.

World-newspapers.com 2010, Alternate news, viewed 21 September 2010, <http://www.world-newspapers.com/alternative-news.html>.

Blogging Community

The word ‘community’ is defined as a group of people in where the people share a common interest and would often share a common cultural heritage (Dictionary.com, 2010). In the ‘blogging community’, the community consist of bloggers which share a common interest which is to write blogs to speak out or share their interest with others.

Create a Blogging Community

In order to build a solid and strong blogging community, there are various methods and approaches to build a blogging community. As suggested by Acollins (2010), it is necessary for the blogger to insert the “share” option, in order for the audience to be able to “like” a certain post or comment. Besides, Acollins (2010) suggested that the blogger should spent some time reading other followers’ blog in order to increase audiences

Types of Blogging Communities

According to White (2006), the blogging community consists of three categories - single centric blogging community, boundaried blogging community and topic centric blogging community. The single centric blog is normally managed by a single blogger and the community centralised around that particular blogger (White, 2006) whereas the topic centric blog is linked by a common interest or topic among the bloggers such as movie blogs and food blogs (White, 2006). Boundaried communities blog as noted by White (2006) is a collection of blogs and readers based on a single platform, such as MySpace.com.

Reference

Acollins 2010, Build a stronger blog community by sharing and collaborating, Astonish Result News, viewed 19 September 2010, <http://www.astonishresultsnews.com/2010/07/30/astonish-bloggers-uniting/>.

Dictionary.com 2010, Community, viewed 16 September 2010, <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/community>.

White, N 2006, Blogs and community – launching a new paradigm for online community?, Australian Flexible Learning Framework, viewed 19 September 2010, <http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community>.