Blogging has become an influential phenomenon that is gaining recognition and acknowledgement by the media, scholars, and government officials throughout the world. Recent events that have highlighted the importance of blogs and weblogs include the Asian tsunami disaster, the Iraq war, regional elections and health pandemics. In Malaysia, blogs have become increasingly prominent as a means of commenting upon issues of public significance - including the Hindraf demonstrations (Indian community), church arson attacks (Christian community) and the sugar shortage and land development issues. For good or bad, blogs have become an important source of news and commentary to many. With the addition of micro-blogs such as Twitter and Facebook, the world is now able to get up-to-date information on issues – very often “live” and immediate.
However, bloggers are often criticized for not being “professional journalists,” with the assumption being that they have neither the training nor the judgment necessary to present news and opinions that could affect public opinion. Many however, argue that their blogs are only their personal views and comments on various issues. One of the most significant charges against bloggers is that they have lower journalistic standards, and do not keep to the ethical standards of professional news reporting. Even the government of Malaysia has begun to randomly surf popular blogs to stop false or free-wheeling comments on certain issues.
Personal and non-personal bloggers are distinctively different in their demographics, blogging experiences, and habits not only in Malaysia but around the world. There is a significant difference between personal and non-personal bloggers in the ethical beliefs that they value and in the ethical practices they adhere to, especially in Malaysia as it has a diverse multicultural society. Therefore, an important point to note when blogging in Malaysia is to bear in mind the diversity of its population.
Distinction must be also be made regarding the type of bloggers who are being singled out for attention, to prevent any misconceptions from both the public and the government. For example, opinions formed from reading the infamous Malaysian blogger RPK should be carefully weighed and good judgement prevail. A blogging code of ethics should be followed, as part of the blogger’s social responsibility. If any inroads are to be made in terms of bloggers regulating themselves, consensus in the community must be developed and bloggers should exhibit common sense and good moral ethics before posting their opinions.
With the introduction of the new Apple ipad, e-reading has just become simpler although e-books apps is not a new thing – kindle, a reading device, has already been in the market and used world-wide by consumers. In this day and age, technology has given us more means to carry around our digital libraries, such as music, videos and pictures. And the advent of e-books has also changed the way we see literacy.
Through an electronic or digital screen, there are additional combinations of movement and sounds made possible. Kress and van Leeuwen (1996, 2001) have challenged the notions of traditional literacy's emphasis on print in the light of the growing dominance of multimodal texts and digital technology. Technology has change the way we even teach our kids, as computers become the norm. Children nowadays interact much more with the computer than ever before.
An example of an online library.
Today, instead of heading to the library to read or do research, people in general are able to do it online with devices such as the ipad and kindle. They are able to access information anywhere at any time, and at their own convenience. Imagine bringing 100 books with you anywhere and at anytime at the click of a button! The e-book movement presents libraries of all types with at least three fundamental challenges. Firstly, information appliances are becoming more diverse and complex. Users want to download library content onto PCs, laptops, tablet PCs, and dedicated reading devices, and cell phones. They want library services delivered via these devices too. Secondly, users want to integrate library content with other types of content. Thirdly, many users want to interact with information content in increasingly complex ways.
For students, the concept of e-books is great as a number of social and economic factors make e-books or digital content preferable to paper textbooks. Course material or textbooks in e-book format can be made highly portable. Students such as myself have a great enthusiasm in general for dedicated reading devices such as the ipad and kindle reader software. Although a dedicated reading device like Kindle may not survive the competition from a multifunctional device such as the ipad, any sort of portable device to replace backpacks will probably become a common feature in higher education in the near future. Any sort of portable device to replace backpacks probably will become common in higher education in the near future said Connaway And Wicht.
I believe that students, professors, librarians, publishers, bookstore managers, and the e-book industry face a blissful prospect - joining together to make available purchased libraries and making them portably integrated into devices such as the Apple ipad and Kindle to facilitate both traditional and new ways of reading and interacting with texts.
Words 415
Reference
Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. (2001.) Multimodal Discourse. London: Arnold.
Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge
Looney, M., A,. And Sheehan, M., “A Primer on EBooks” Educause Review, July/August 2001
Accessed on 16th June 2010 http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0142.pdf
Lynn Connaway, Heather Wicht “What Happened to the E-book Revolution? : The Gradual Integration of E-books into Academic Libraries” vol. 10, no. 3
Accessed 16th June 2010 http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=jep;view=text;rgn=main;idno=3336451.0010.302
Images taken from http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2010/01/ipad-first-impressions-review.html
With Apple’s new Apple ipad, IT users enter into a new generation of “netbooks” and this will slowly change the way the world uses technology. Although some may see it as the larger version of the already-famous Apple iphone, the ipad comes with additional new features such as being able to watch movies (including HD), TV, colour screen web browsing, playing games and reading e-books. Its large 9.7″ screen and touch screen makes it hands down one of the coolest netbooks around. The ipad is optimized for movies and games . It also happens to let you read quite well and with built-in Bluetooth and WiFi, it lets you surf virtually anywhere. If connection is an issue, the ipad allows you to connect with your existing iphone to connect to the 3G network on your iphone (as it uses your iphone as a modem) and presto, you’re able to surf practically anywhere at any time.
Images taken from http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2010/01/ipad-first-impressions-review.html
The ipad enables users to do things they never thought possible. Its uses are countless, and it can change they way we see literacy as it is. Already, its accruing to students today whose surroundings are filled with visual, electronic and digital texts, according to Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001; Kress et al., 2001; Kress, 2003; Unsworth, 2001, 2002, 2003. Thesetexts now are referred to as 'multimodal', either in print form or picture books, information books, newspapers or magazines - the ipad can provide for them all comfortably. The concept of multimodal texts in non-print form are film, video and, increasingly, those texts through the electronic screen such as email, the internet and digital media such as CD Roms or DVDs.
Images taken from http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2010/01/ipad-first-impressions-review.html
With an electronic or digital screen, there are added combinations of movement and sound (Kress and van Leeuwen (1996, 2001)). I believe that the ipad can challenge the old philosophy of traditional literacy's prominence on print in the light of the increasing multimodal texts and digital technology. As Bearne, (2003) said: “There is a 'paradigm shift', thus the discussion of textual shift of literacy education has occurred.” With the ipad, this is all possible and a change of perspective on how we interpret text is beginning to occur.
Words 400
Reference
Cope, B. & Kalantzis, M. (Eds.) (2000). Multiliteracies: Literacy Leaming and the Design of Social Futures. Melbourne: Macmillan.
Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. (2001.) Multimodal Discourse. London: Arnold.
Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge
Kress, G., Jewitt, c., Ogborn, J. & Tsatsarelis, C, (2001). Multimodal Teaching and Learning. The Rhetorics of the Science Classroom. London: Continuum
Unsworth, 1. (2001). Teaching Multiliteracies Across the Curriculum. Changing Contexts of Text and Image in Classroom Practice. Buckingham: Open UniversityPress.
Launched in July 13, 2006, Twitter was born - a micro-blogging service where users send updates (tweets) to a network of associates (followers) from a variety of devices. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Each user has a Twitter page where all their updates are aggregated into a single list (hence the name micro-blogging). Tweets are not only displayed on a user’s profile page, but via instant messaging, email, or other social networking platforms, such as Twitterrific or Facebook. In addition, Twitter works with cell phones and other sms clients, making it an easy way for mobile users to stay in touch virtually anywhere at anytime.
Twitter is increasingly used by news organizations to receive updates during emergencies and natural disasters. A number of businesses and organizations arealso using Twitter or related micro-blogging services to spread information to its staff and stakeholders. Twitter’s growth rate is substantial, with several million users as of 2008. according to Bausch & McGiboney, (2008). Putting those numbers into perspective for normal people, as from August 2006 to August 2008, Twitter users created over 100,000 books’ worth of content at 140 characters at a time (Milstein et al., 2008), as the largest, most well-known, and most popular of the micro-blogging sites.
Twitter is a good example of Viral marketing, which can be thought of as a distribution of information about a product and its acceptance over the network. There is a long history of the research on the influence of social networks such as Twitter on innovations and product distribution. However, such studies have been typically limited to small networks in the past and typically a single product or service, said Brown and Reingen in early 1987. Viral marketing success comes from self-publishing Web content that people want to share. It’s not about gimmicks. It’s not about paying an agency to interrupt others. It’s about harnessing word-of-mouth, the most empowering form of marketing there is, and Twitter is a good means of communication to do so (Scott, 2007).
Comparable explanations were also made by DeBruyn and Lilien in (2004) in the perspective of electronic referrals or word of mouth. They establish that the characteristics of the public influenced by others’ comments (followers)had different effects at different levels of decision making for an issue. Factors such as strength of awareness, perceptual similarity, followers’ interest, and topic similarity had changed the way people looked at major issues and topics because of the way Twitter is able to give instant updates on issues, and subjects.
This image shows how people can be connected through twitters and followers.
Scott, D., M., “The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to use news releases, blogs, podcasts, viral marketing and online media to reach your buyers directly” (Wiley, 2007)
Milstein, S., Chowdhury, A., Hochmuth, G., Lorica, B., & Magoulas, R. (2008). Twitter and the micro-messaging revolution: Communication, connections, and immediacy—140 characters at a time. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media.
Bausch, S., &McGiboney, M. (2008). Nielsen online provides fastest growing social networks for September 2008. NewYork: Nielsen Company.
J. J. Brown and P. H. Reingen. “Social ties and word-of-mouth referral behaviour”. The Journal of Consumer Research, 14(3):350–362, 1987.
Arnaud DeBruyn and Gary Lilien. “A multi-stage model of word of mouth through electronic referrals.” 2004.
Accessed 15th June 2010 http://www-personal.umich.edu/~ladamic/papers/viral/viralTWeb.pdf
Online social network sites such as Facebook have experienced remarkable user growth in the past several years. Facebook alone reports over 200 million users worldwide, with 100 million of those signing on every day, as said by Besmer, and Lipford (2009). Additionally, a number of social network sites are creating platforms for a variety of applications that build off of users’ social network, according to Felt and Evans (2008). Thus, online social networking communities are becoming an increasingly important aspect of our digital lives, mediated by an increasingly complex underlying architecture.
Privacy issues have become a real concern for many users, as online social networks such as Facebook are expanding rapidly; it is possible for somebody’s profile to be connected to hundreds of peers openly, and thousands of others through the network’s connections through friends of friends, whereby total strangers who get your number via Facebook can contact you. Related avenues such as “Newsfeed”, which informs other users about their activities on Facebook, add to the problem of private and often sensitive information being freely and publicly provided to others.
Other issues such as social engineering are a well-known practice in computer security, that is, to obtain confidential information by manipulating genuine users said Mitnick, Simon, And, Wozniak (2002). Using such methods on Facebook is very simple - just ask to be added as someone’s friend. The surprisingly high success rate of this practice was recently demonstrated by a Facebook user who, using an automatic script, contacted 250,000 users of Facebook across the country and asked to be added as their friend. As a result, a staggering 75,000 users accepted. Thirty percent of Facebook users are willing to make all of their profile information available to a random stranger and his network of friends, according to The Federal Trade Commission (1999) in their study of Facebook privacy issues.
The blue area represents the default settings regarding the availability of your personal data. As you can see, the default settings allow a large set of personal information to be shared among your Facebook connections as well as the outside world. As a member of Facebook, you must manually change your settings to make sure you have your preferred level of privacy. Don't assume this is taken care of for you by the application!
Images from http://interactivemultimediatechnology.blogspot.com/2010/05/facebook-and-privacy-issues-reflections.html
I believe that notable changes in online privacy issues will only come from a gradual maturity of common sense regarding what is appropriate to post in social networking forums. Sadly, this is not an easy task as carelessness concerning privacy issues will continue to occur. Revealing this sort of information needs to be viewed as similar to going alone to the apartment of a person you’ve met via the Internet. It is vital that Facebook users everywhere appreciate the potential for mis-use of the information by administrators. The environment that Facebook creates should be one that fosters good decision-making. Privacy should be the default, encryption should be the norm, and Facebook should take strides to inform users of their rights and responsibilities.
Felt, A., and Evans, D. (2008). Privacy Protection for Social Networking APIs, In the Proceedings of the Workshop on Web 2.0 Security & Privacy, May 2008. http://hci.sis.uncc.edu/pubs/visibleflows.pdf
All data and information provided on this site is for informational purposes only as it is done for the purpose of course work for Taylors Business School, IPD Weblog. I make no disclaimer nor representations as to accuracy, completeness, currentness, suitability, or validity of any information on this site and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use. All information is provided on an as-is basis.
This is a blog. That facts means nothing. It is not a peer-reviewed journal, a final archive of my writing, a sponsored publication, or the product of gatekeeping and editing. That does mean something…it means that while the ideas and thoughts are often vital and the product of a long gestational period, the writing itself is not. It is essentially as it came from the keyboard: spontaneous, unproofed, unrevised, and corrected afterward only when necessary to address mistakes that grossly effect the intent. Where such changes have been made they are explicitly noted…
This is a personal weblog. The opinions expressed here represent my...
According to Reep, (2006) “Document design refers to the physical appearance of a document… the written text and its presentation work together to provide readers with the information they need”. As example 4.4 show, the group presented the introduction towards the topic and a general introduction was done to guide the readers the text by directing attention to the individual topics just as Barnhardt (2009) said “The physical fact of that text… requires visual apprehension: a text can be seen, must be seen…” which they have done.
Image 4.4 (taken prom IPD Group Presentation)
During the presentation, images help illustrate what the presenters want to say, using visual aids their able to project a certain view which readers can understand as text helps images. As example 5.5 shows when structured, text highly informative visuals share features of the text to help explain things that text alone cannot, according to Barnhardt (2009). I believe that my group presentation was composed and presented well, with visuals and text helping hand in hand to explain our views on Semiotics. The proportion of the placement of text and graphic aids was visible in the presentation Reep (2006).
Image 5.5 (take from IPD Group Presentation)
Reference List
Reep, Diana C. (2006) “Technical writing: Document design”. Ch. 6, pp. 133-172, New York : Pearson/Longman, c2006. 6th ed.
Stephen A. Bernhardt (2009), “College Composition and Communication, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Feb., 1986), pp. 66-78”. National Council of Teachers of English, [http://www.jstor.org/stable/357383]