New Media Publishing

Walsh (2006) acknowledged that a textual shift is taking place from the monomodal to the multimodal that includes different modes of communication such as prose, graphics, video and audio. One of the reasons this shift has been harnessed is because repetition and reinforcement are important to change the public’s values effectively (Kruckeberg, Newsom, and Turk 2000). Advertising and the media are becoming increasingly multimodal in the modern world, where new forms of media publishing continue to emerge in order to enhance messages sent across to the public.

In the States...

The success of Barrack Obama's campaign can be attributed to new forms of media publishing made possible by Web 2.0. Obama made masterful use of social media such as Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, LinkedIn, Digg and MySpace to reach out to his voters on all possible fronts, and even harnessed the iPhone to update supporters on the latest happenings.

Figure 1: Example of Obama's Campaign extending to the iPhone

Image Source: http://zedomax.com/

One of the most powerful things Obama did was to create a section on his website MyBarackObama.com that enabled Americans to voice out their opinions on critical issues. This opened a door of communication between the White House and the people which created room for greater freedom of speech and democracy.

The success of Obama's use of new media can be seen through the five million supporters garnered in third party social networks (MacManus 2009). 3.2 million people signed up as his supporters on Facebook during election period, and a group called Students for Barack Obama was created in July 2007.

In Malaysia...
Closer to home, the benefits of new media can also be felt as alternative media such as MalaysiaKini and other political blogs gain prominence. Readers are gradually turning to these sites for credible news because of government censorship in the mainstream media. However, bloggers should be aware of their social responsibility as malicious content such as rumours, defamation and slander can be easily spread through uncensored media.

For example, the Singaporean student Wee Shu Min had to take down her blog in 2006 because of elitist remarks that were deemed offensive towards the Singaporean heartlanders. Her father, Singaporean Member of Parliament Wee Siew Kim, apologized and commented that her comments should have been "tempered with sensitivity".

Some have proposed greater regulation of the blogosphere such as the registration of bloggers (The Malaysian Insider 2009) to prevent inciting anger among different racial groups, yet others think it is a futile exercise which is against the principles of democracy and free speech. I believe ethical publishing in new media is an issue that should continue to be debated so that a balance between protecting freedom of speech and social stability can be achieved.



References:

1. Kruckeberg, D, Turk, JV & Newsom, D 2000, This is PR: The Realities of Public Relations, 7th Edn, Wadsworth, USA.

2. MacManus, R 2009, 'Presentation: Barack Obama's Internet Strategy', ReadWriteWeb, viewed 2 June 2009, <http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/barack_obama_internet_strategy_presentation.php>.

3. The Malaysian Insider 2009, 'Proposal to Register Bloggers Needs Careful Study--Rais', viewed 3 June 2009, <http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/malaysia/27291-proposal-to-register-bloggers-needs-careful-study-rais>.

4. Walsh, M. 2006, "‘Textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts", Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol.29, no.1, p.24-37.

Classification of Blogs and Blogging Communities

Continuation of my previous post: Introducing the Blogosphere.

Blogs are emerging as a new platform to form communities online.

Blogs can be classified simply according to media type such as sketchlogs, photoblogs, and vlogs, and subject matter such as politics, travel, and lifestyle. Media analyst Margaret Simons (Funnell 2008) classified blogs more elaborately into the ‘Digest’ blog, the ‘Popular Mechanic’ blog, the Exhibition blog, the Gatewatcher blog, the Diary, the News blog and the advocacy blog. However, there are bloggers who do not stick to a particular niche or even a particular format which makes categorizing blogs a difficult exercise.

According to White (2006), there are several ways blogging communities form. Most of the time, blogs are formed around a shared interest that develops into a passion. There is the Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community, the Central Connecting Topic Community and the Boundaried Community. The first form of blogging community is the Blogger Centric Community as illustrated in the diagram below.

Figure 1: Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community

The blog is owned by an A list blogger or an organization, and the community grows through the participation of interested or curious commentors in topics controlled by the blogger. Everything is mainly controlled by the blogger; he has the power to disable comments to control the desired level of interaction with his readers.

One of the examples of Blogger Centric communities can be found on kennysia.com.

Figure 2: Snapshot of kennysia.com

Kennysia.com was created on 5 January 2009 (Sia 2009). It started out as a personal blog, but evolved into something that is more lifestyle-oriented with doses of political parody. This is because as kennysia.com became more popular, blogging about personal relationships caused friction between himselves and his loved ones. His blog grew because it was entertaining and provoked response and interaction among readers. One of his posts actually received 742 comments (Sia, 2009).

Even as social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace threaten to dominate cyberspace, it is predicted that blogging will once again rise as an important platform to build online identities (Cunliffe 2009). Self-made blog templates are on the increase, as well as wider screen designs to enable displaying larger photos and widescreen videos. Social networking tools such as Twitter will also be increasingly incorporated into blogs (Cunliffe 2009).

Today, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and feedreaders are offering new possibilities about how we discover and read blogs (White 2006). Micro-blogging tools like Plurk and Plinky are becoming more and more dominant. It can be expected that as technology continues to evolve, blogging communities will become more diverse in their chosen genres, blogging platforms, and blogging or reading methods.

References:

1. Cunliffe, R 2009, 'Blog Design Trends in 2009', cre8d design, viewed 10 June 2009, <http://www.cre8d-design.com/2009/01/blog-design-trends-in-2009/>.

2. Funnell, A 2008, ‘A Taxonomy of Blogs’, The Media Report, viewed 29 May 2009, <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript>.

3. Sia, K 2009, kennysia.com Is Four Years Old, viewed 1 June 2009, <http://www.kennysia.com/>.

4. White, N 2006, 'Blogs and Community – launching a new paradigm for online community?', The Knowledge Tree, viewed 20 May 2009, <http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/>.

Introducing the Blogosphere

Figure 1: The Genesis of the Blogosphere
(Source: itmanagement.earthweb.com/.../3702326)

From 2002 to 2008, Technorati recorded 133 million blogs on the internet (Technorati 2008). Today, bloggers are collectively creating close to one million posts every day (Technorati 2008) and the blogosphere is still expanding. Asia is found to be driving the lead in social media such as blogs, with China, South Korea and Malaysia being the front-runners (Ooi 2007).

According to Brown (2006), top blogs usually focus on technology, a broad range of general issues, or politics, as illustrated below.

Figure 2: Popular Blogging Topics in the UK

(Source: http://modernl.com/article/leading-average-top-blog-trends)

Blogs and Politics

In the Malaysian context, blogs were a significant tool in raising political awareness in the country leading up to the 2008 March 8 elections. Raja Petra, editor of Malaysiakini, believed that blogs successfully reduced political apathy and roused the middle class to vote. It is said that cyberspace was where the 2008 elections were won and lost (Au Yong 2008).

Figure 3: Nuffnang, Malaysia's Blog Advertising Company
(Source: mohdhakim.com/2009/05/nuffnang-xchange/)

Blogs and Brands

Business and advertising have also benefited from the popularity of blogs. In Malaysia, blogs have been harnessed as an avenue for advertising. One of the reasons is due to the interactive and more personal nature of blogs, hence enhancing connections between brands and their customers. Nuffnang, Asia's first blog advertising community launched in February 2007, has now been expended to the Philippines and Australia (Nuffnang 2009). In other parts of the world, brands have also permeated the blogosphere and one third of bloggers have been approached by companies to blog about brands (Technorati 2008).

There is a lot of potential for the blogosphere to continue impacting new media. Citizen journalism, for example, is a growing trend. Who could have said it better than Richard MacManus, Founder/Editor of ReadWriteWeb:

“The future of blogs will have arrived when you check your favorite blog for
sports news in the morning, instead of your local paper.”

References:

1. Au Yong, J 2008, ‘Battle Lost in Cyberspace’, Malaysia Today, viewed 1 June 2009, <http://mt.m2day.org/2008/content/view/4201/84/>.

2. Brown, S 2006, 'Leading Average: Top Blog Trends', Modern Life, viewed 1 June 2009, <http://modernl.com/article/leading-average-top-blog-trends>.

3. Nuffnang 2009, Our Story, viewed 3 June 2009, <http://www.nuffnang.com.my/about-us>.

4. Ooi, YM 2007, 'Blogging Thrives in Malaysia', Communication World, viewed 3 June 2009, <http://www.box.net/shared/8csyz6qg94>.

5. Technorati 2008, State of the Blogosphere, viewed 30 May 2009, <http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere>.