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>.

Document Design

A successful presentation helps audience connect the dots of information scattered in their brains.

After gleaning two important and interesting points from my readings, I tried to find examples for both points that would facilitate understanding and discussion among the audience. I tried to imagine how the audience would perceive my slides (Putnis & Petelin 1999). I found this vital to capture the audience's attention as they were more engaged in our group's presentation when we showed them interesting images of creative advertisements. The 'Redundancy' principle in combining graphics and prose as elaborated in Schriver (1997) was applied to enhance the audience's understanding of my points.

Slide: The Redundancy Principle

I made sure my slides were clean with clear borders to categorize information, and that font size was standard and sufficiently large to be readable (Kress & van Leeuwen 2006). A colour scheme to guide the eyes was used (Reep 1997). The headings were worded appropriately for the content of the particular slide. I took care to insert one idea per slide and ensured that each sentence was not too long, within 8-15 words. I also ensured that my content was properly referenced.

During my presentation, I made eye contact with the audience and spoke in a friendly way so that the social metafunction of my presentation would be accurate. I asked questions and prompted them to further analyze the images I presented in the slides to enhance text-audience interaction.

The significant improvement I noted from our group presentation to my individual presentation is the absence of big chunks of text in my slides. The audience responded better to my verbal explanation compared to prose, which tends to include more jargon and lexicon words. The multimodal presentation worked better to maintain audience interest (Walsh 2006).

I have learnt that the way you convey a message can sometimes be more important than the message itself as the mode of communication itself adds subtle meaning to your content. Graphics, prose, slide transitions, verbal language, and body language all come into play to help audience connect the dots. If all of the these elements are properly constructed and graciously enmeshed, a sterling presentation can result.

References:

1. Kress, G & van Leeuwen, TV 2006, Reading images: The grammar of visual design, 2nd edn, Routledge, London.
2. Putnis, Peter & Petelin, Roslyn 1999, Professional communication, 2nd edn, Prentice Hall Australia Pty Ltd, Australia.

3. Reep, DC 1997, Technical writing: principles, strategies, and readings, Allyn and Bacon, Boston.

4. Schriver K.A 1997, Dynamics in Document Design: Creating Texts for Readers, Wiley Computer Pub., New York.
5. 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.

Purpose

This blog was set up to discuss the various issues surrounding document design. It is also a record of my learning process--how I grow more perceptive towards the factors that influence multimodal communication.

My target audience is primarily my fellow classmates as well as others who are interested in issues in publication and design.