Reflection

All the way round when doing this weblog, I had come across a lot of document designs and writting as well as structure items. When doing a posting, appropriate and relevant pictures should have included, so that it could help the readers to understand what is going on. According to Kress and van Leeuwen (2006, p.23) the new visual literacy should have the language together with image side by side to show the audience. Thus, I did apply this theory in my blog whereby showing some visual pictures as well as graphs and charts in order to make the blog easy to understand by the readers.

Moreover, when doing the writing part, highly concern on the citation and reference. Once get the information from the others website as well as ideas from others people. For instance, referring to Blood (2002) stated that linking to referenced material allows readers to judge for themselves the accuracy and insightfulness of your statements.

Last but not least, some of the design in the blog is also important. A blog design must be readability by making sure the background and foreground colours chosen have sufficient contrast to make the text easy to read. Moreover, line-spacing for paragraphs make longer blocks in order for readers easy to read. (Urban 2009)

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Reference

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T.2006, ‘Reading images, Chapter 1: The semiotic landscape: Language and visual communication’

Blood, R 2002, The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog: Weblog Ethics, viewed 6^th November 2010,

<http://www.rebeccablood.net/handbook/excerpts/weblog_ethics.html>

Urban, J 2009, 10 Important Traits of a Great Blog Design, Six Revision, viewed 6^th November 2010,

<http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/10-important-traits-of-a-great-blog-design/>

News on blog

Blogging is a famous new media tool which consider fully adopted by the society worldwide. Technorati as a blog-tracking service was claiming to be monitoring 56.9 million blogs moreover, there are two blogs created per second. (Naughton n.d, p.7) Readers of blogs are not only randomly read about the dairy or daily life of others now, they are also looking for interesting news to browse around. Research found there are seven of the fifteen participants who taking part in the survey referred to blog as a newspaper or magazine. (Baumer, Sueyoshi & Tomlinson 2008)

Source: West Malaysia

On the other hand, newspapers publishers are also start to use blog to do news posting ad updates time to time. Going into digital further increases this complexity, especially in the case of integrated newsroom, it is easier for journalist to producing stories all day and night, creating animations and visualization, shooting videos. Thus, many newspapers also run blogs, where blog can battle complexity. (Legrand 2010)

The readers did have expectation when they browsing through the blogs. Blog readers often approach different blogs differently and contribute differently in different contexts; and each participant share comment, lurk, depending on the blog itself. (Baumer, Sueyoshi & Tomlinson 2008)

Moreover, blogs are different type of community-centered journalism that can appeal to people who do not read newspapers and better engage readers in the news. (Spillman, Demo & Daily 2007, p.13) By using blog, there are a lot of benefits to readers. For the old media printing style of newspaper could not shows the readers a link or more background information regarding particular news, however there are different by using a blog. Sometimes, readers are expected the journalist could be able to give some brief pass background of link to others similar article for the news. By providing a link, readers can click on it an familiar with the news, often the “value- add” for blog posts is not in repeating the information of the article, nor reporting new information, but sharing the blogger’s opinion or analysis whereby blogger using the news article as starting-point for further discussion. (Wagner, Liu & Birnbaum 2009, p.1)

Furthermore, readers are expecting to give comments to the news sometimes. Reader’s expectations in commenting can be traced to the reader’s perception of the blogger or blog and motivation for reading. (Baumer, Sueyoshi & Tomlinson 2008) Thus, newspapers journalist and publish in blog will be able to match the reader’s expectations.

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Reference

Naughton, J n.d, Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem, viewed 6^th November 2010,

<http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/discussion/blogging.pdf>

Baumer, E, Sueyoshi, M & Tomlinson, B 2008, Exploring the Role of the Reader in the Activity of Blogging, viewed 6^th November 2010,

<http://www.ics.uci.edu/~ebaumer/chi1132-baumer.pdf>

Legrand, R 2010, Newsrooms Should Use Blogs to Battle Bloat, Complexity,  Mediashift, viewed 6^th November 2010,

<http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/04/newsrooms-should-use-blogs-to-battle-bloat-complexity112.html>

Spillman, M, Demo, L & Daily, L 2007, The Weblog Forest: The effectiveness of staff-produced blogs in engaging newspaper audiences in a conversation, AEJMC Newspaper Division, viewed 6^th November 2010,

<http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:crxDjs7mpXwJ:www.poynter.org/resource/public/20080403_141951_13232.pdf+effectiveness+of+newspaper+using+blog&hl=en&gl=my&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESj4rPJXiayyZs48qAHDjOfNKiWqpJ4Jgxont4C_04Gvkc4mhZPcPRqeMHBpTE7rRjAYL1mDQuR-T-PeA2LImcmzQRM9yQb1TPo8v3OWUyQyowcC7Blctjql0Fh9A01kPGKOL3dM&sig=AHIEtbSEOra04NXCHD-Ki6zWvd2wXnLI2Q>

Wagner, EJ, Lin, JH & Bimbaum, L 2009, Rich Interface for Browsing News in Blog Posts, viewed 6^th November 2010,

<http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:w0qDJ5__9JcJ:www.smart-ui.org/events/vissw2009/papers/VISSW2009-Wagner.pdf+reader's+expectation+from+reading+news+blog&hl=en&gl=my&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiwf5XN5SzRKFD0NTx4swhA2jBOZncYnQQRdXwfSCq8u6yuntDffKdobsAN08LJihEhIJpugHt_0Fy3kujPgNnPl3SyD0A0u17zcSfS-IWe97zhYneMKBqhzrej1gmlpXvR0JqZ&sig=AHIEtbQ_3eDEvde2Vuy40ATL2c3u4ltNzw>

Celebrities on Twitter and journalist

Twitter has rise an issue where celebrity Imposters. It is a normal case for celebrities to own their twitter account, however, how many of the account is real and manage by the celebrities themselves?

According to Chiaramonte et. al (cited in Dwyer, Hiltz & Passerni 2007) there are millions of people have joined social networking sites, adding profiles that reveal personal information, however the reputations of social networking sites has been diminished by a number of incidents publicized by the news media. This issues also affected the journalist where reporting the information and celebrities account though news, nevertheless, when this comes across false information it cause journalist a big trouble, it is no longer trust worthy. Hence this is not just a journalist problem instead; social networking and the users are responsible on this issue. (Owens 2009)

Source: Google

Author or journalist must always keep the ethic of publish in mind. Authors are ethically obligated to present a true and accurate account of their research process and findings. (Game & West n.d) Nevertheless, it does not mean that journalist are failed to do so, but in the twitter world, even journalist could not identify whether or not the information given or the celebrities account are trustable. Thus this had caused them a big problem in reporting accurate news. The Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development release a report by stated that Twitter, social networks and the Internet in general can also have the detrimental effect of potentially speeding up the spread of rumours or wrong information. (English 2010)  Hence, there is a broad discussion among journalists to ensure that professional standards and ethics codes are as applicable to online journalism and social media as have long been in traditional media. (English 2010)

Twitter which is suspended on its credibility, celebrities’ names and profile details had been used to create account and act as the real person in their postings. Users on Twitter evaluate the credibility of a source based solely on information coming directly from that source. (Mims 2010) On the other hand, usually users in Twitter will expect or assume that the celebrities on Twitter are real. (Sciretta 2009) I myself did follow some of the celebrities in Twitter, which is being identified it is their real account after a while of investigation.

 

Source: Nerw Public

 Twitter had come across law suit which caused by the celeb imposters issues. The management team did verify account system. According to Twitter blog (2009), they will suspend, delete, or transfer control of accounts known to be impersonation; moreover they did recommend users to check on the celebrities’ official website in order to ensure the account.

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Reference:

Dwyer, C, Hiltz, SR & Passerini, K 2007, Trust and privacy concern within social networking sites: A comparison of Facebook and MySpace, viewed 1^st November 2010,

<http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:XyiY8zJzKWMJ:csis.pace.edu/~dwyer/research/DwyerAMCIS2007.pdf+importance+of+personal+privacy+in+social+network&hl=en&gl=my&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiHR5jPvXm32YsBDAIjBjHi-VfqI1IZNzbQufXldE05UtnAq5j3asVGsNBE-kYfQI8vz56VgC_gQayR_hjPFkVGutWlKfF40uoihn34Rb_UjPfEmdtGprk8qlzNOG3p0vuBF7S2&sig=AHIEtbRvtG_aDKW5DTvJGZmAT4WAsjE64w>

English, K 2010, English: Is Twitter a threat to journalistic credibility?, Inside The Star,  viewed 6^th November 2010,

<http://www.thestar.com/opinion/publiceditor/article/825223--english-is-twitter-a-threat-to-journalistic-credibility>

Game, A & West, MA n.d, Ethical Publishing Principles: A Guideline for Authors, Organisation Studies, Aston Business School, viewed 6^th November 2010,

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:GUCZ1iif1w4J:www.bps.org.uk/downloadfile.cfm%3Ffile_uuid%3D224B55CC-1143-DFD0-7E9A-408F74B75795%26ext%3Dpdf+ethical+publishing&hl=en&gl=my&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgjCM_Q1Kze-2tDLWFzC9sKcuOL2fnSBp0uriIyumxliM1_4fHjnpws9IRevI0YvZ-KI-BTa9gxFBbuw_WZ8Tu28NteBfxiHrro4-HySmlG0nSIj0h-2GLA4IqZyaVPulJOSMwt&sig=AHIEtbTndUWQhZNjYHPnen7CLKEoza-8PA

Mims, C 2010, Twitter’s Credibility Problem: Research shows that users have little trusts in the information they get from Twitter, Technology Review, viewed 6^th November 2010,

<http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/25791/?ref=rss>

Owen, S 2009, How Celebrity Imposters Hurt Twitter’s Credibility, Media Shift,

<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, Slashfilm, viewed 6^th November 2010,

<http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/03/26/the-growing-problem-of-celebrity-imposters-on-twitter/>

Twitter Blog 2009, Not Playing Ball, viewed 6^th November 2010,

< http://blog.twitter.com/2009/06/not-playing-ball.html#links>

It's E-BOOK century!

According to Thompson (cited in BBC.co 2010), reading on screen has to get more like reading a book. Nowadays, new media had take place in the society, people prefer everything online and digital. New media ecosystem are shaping IT users’ expectation and experiences, rich media applications are becoming an essential part of the internet experience, not just for entertainment. (Kishore 2007) The demand for the virtual book has gone vertical which is fuelled by the recent global release of Amazon’s Kindle and the new device called Ipad. Many people are starting to switch to read a text book rather than ebook. (Cornwall 2010)  The demand on new media is non-stop increasing.

(US Trade Wholesale Electronic Book Sales :Q2 2010 = $88.7 Million, July + Aug 2010 = $79.8 Million )

(Compare Q1 + Q2 2010 ($179.7 M) vs. 2002 - 2009 Annual Trade Wholesale Sales  )

The 2 graph above showing only US E-book market, from the graph we could clearly see  that there are increasing numbers on E-book selling, which also show us that the popularity of e-books nowadays. The new media e-book and the old media printed book had gone into an argument issue whereby there is consumers support and not support e-books.

E-book’s portability which can be read on multiple devices has helped it to gain momentum, moreover the ability to interact with e-books digitally such as digital notes, bookmarks, zoom in settings) has even made hardcovers and paperbacks obsolete for some. (Parr 2010) Furthermore, electronic format offers reader benefits like it could be read in a variety of lighting situations, it could be reading during nighttimes road trips or in bed whereby the back lighted screens are allow readers to do so. (Kleinman 2010)

On the other hand, E-book could be the new genre for content management base on predictions, development in global information infrastructure, increasing volume of content published in digital format, superior characteristics of digital publications in providing rich multimedia environment with hypertext links and interactivity, development of technologies allow the digital book to become as portable as traditional book. (Rao n.d, p.3) Thus, I believe that there will be even more people adopt this new media in the future since it could benefit the public.

Consumer’s perception is also changing from reading a physical book to e-book. This is due to today's consumers have embraced mobile, on-the-go media consumption, the prevalence of MP3 players and handheld video games.(Lardinois 2009)  Thus, consumers are now more likely to buy electronic goods than ever before.

Furthermore, the device which launch continuously, such as Ipad will influence people to get to use e-book.  After all, there is survey showing 30% of print book buyers will wait up to 3 months to purchase the ebook however even though the percentage is growing for ebooks but 81% of survey respondents still said they currently purchased an ebook only “rarely” or  “occasionally”.(SCR 2010, p.8)

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Reference:
BBC.co 2010, The Rights & Wrong if Digital Books, BBC News Technology, viewed 5^th November 2010,
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11693222>

Kishore, A 2007, The New Media Ecosystem: Resistance Is Futile (And Could Even Be Futal), Information Week Global, viewed 5^th November 2010,
<http://www.informationweek.com/news/global-cio/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=ZW3RLGKGDKOXNQE1GHPSKH4ATMY32JVN?articleID=202401919&pgno=1&queryText=&isPrev=>

Cornwall, D 2010, E-Books Popularity on the Rise, The 7.30 Report, viewed 5^th November 2010,
<http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2010/s2849989.htm>

IDPF.org, 2010, Industry Statistic, IDPF, viewed 5^th November 2010,

<http://www.idpf.org/doc_library/industrystats.htm>

Parr, B 2010, Reading Faceoff: E-books vs. Print Books, Mashable, viewed 5^th November 2010,

<http://mashable.com/2010/07/19/reading-faceoff-e-books-vs-print-books/>

Kleinman, S 2010, The Book Experience: Print books vs. digital ebooks, Zaltz Publishing, viewed 15^th  November 2010,

<http://www.palmpower.com/issues/issue200206/ebook0602001.html>

Rao, SS n.d, Electronic Books: A New Genre of Content Management, viewed 5^th November 2010,

<http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.138.5535&rep=rep1&type=pdf>

Lardinois, F 2009, Report: EReader and EBook Market Ready for Growth, Read Write Web, viewed 5^th November 2010,

<http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/report_ereader_and_ebook_market_ready_for_growth.php>

SCR 2010, E-Books, Vol. 14, No.14, viewed 5^th November 2010,

<http://www.atypon-link.com/PSP/doi/pdf/10.5555/scrn.14.1.8>

 

Privacy! Protect your personal data when using Facebook

Source: Soft Sailor

Facebook is straightforward about the usage it plans do the participants’ personal information. (Gross & Acquisti 2005) Recently Facebook facing a trouble whereby it was founded breaching its privacy policy. As all of us know, Facebook is the most famous social network, once registered on Facebook, and it will save the personal data of the users. For example, personal name, age, address and so on. However, it had found out that the personal details of users had been used to transmit to Advertisement Company by using some of the application provided by facebook itself. These particular applications providing access to Facebook users name as well as friends names to companies to build detailed data base on people, in order to track them online. (ABC News.com 2010)

(Source: Facebook Privacy Breach  in Youtube)

According to The Star Online (2010) stated that the Malaysia Parliament passed the Personal Data Protection Bill 2009, whereby protecting the personal data belonging to the public from being misused through commercial transactions. This shows that the Malaysia government is concern on the personal data issues in social networking nowadays; I believe it is due to the cases whereby strangers are always detecting users profile and get abused. Refer to Dwyer (cited in Dwyer, Hiltz & Passerini 2007), privacy within social networking sites is often not expected or it is undefined.

Social networking records all interactions and retaining for potential use in social data mining, most of the transactions leave behind no trace. (Dwyer, Hiltz & Passerini 2007) This means that, most of the data will be detect by third parties and use it for others purposes, furthermore, in online network there are always difficulties to get control on privacy. Hence, theses sites need explicit policies and data protection mechanisms in order to deliver the same level of social privacy. (Dwyer, Hiltz & Passerini 2007)

Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim mentioned that the new regulations on data protection would ensure personal data would not be given out except with the consent of their owners. (The Star 2010) Therefore, with the new regulations sets most of the social website personal data could be able to protect. The proposed bill in Malaysia gives various rights to the individuals with respect to personal data held by a third party. (Common Lii.org 2002) This regulation might help users to have further protection over personal data. In my opinion, Facebook should also improve their technology on the privacy settings. On the other hand, users should also realize on the important on personal data protection in order to avoid them to get abuse.

Source: TIPS

‘Personal data is generously provided and limiting privacy preferences are sparingly used.’ (Gross & Acquisti 2005) Again referring to Gross and Acquisti (2005) the variety and richness of personal information disclosed in Facebook profiles, the visibility, users may put themselves at risk for a variety of attacks.

After all, users of Facebook should aware on the privacy setting such as set to public, at the mean while Facebook did make changes on the privacy settings always. It takes one massive step out of the equation for advertisers finding and aggregating data of millions of users as well. (Figueroa 2010)

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Reference list:

ABC NEWs.com 2010, Facebook admits pivacy breach, viewed 1^st November 2010,

<http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/10/19/3042594.htm>

Common Lii.org 2002, Towards a Personal Data Protection Regime in Malaysia, Journal of Malaysian and Comparative Law, viewed 1^st November 2010,

<http://www.commonlii.org/my/journals/JMCL/2002/11.html>

Dwyer, C, Hiltz, SR & Passerini, K 2007, Trust and privacy concern within social networking sites: A comparison of Facebook and MySpace, viewed 1^st November 2010,

<http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:XyiY8zJzKWMJ:csis.pace.edu/~dwyer/research/DwyerAMCIS2007.pdf+importance+of+personal+privacy+in+social+network&hl=en&gl=my&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiHR5jPvXm32YsBDAIjBjHi-VfqI1IZNzbQufXldE05UtnAq5j3asVGsNBE-kYfQI8vz56VgC_gQayR_hjPFkVGutWlKfF40uoihn34Rb_UjPfEmdtGprk8qlzNOG3p0vuBF7S2&sig=AHIEtbRvtG_aDKW5DTvJGZmAT4WAsjE64w>

Figueroa, A 2010, The New Economy: Privacy issues hit Facebook again, The Christian Science Monitor, viewed 4^th November 2010,

<http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/new-economy/2010/0730/Privacy-issues-hit-Facebook-again>

Gross, R & Acquisiti, A 2005, Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Netwrk: The Facebook case, ACM Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society, viewed 1^st November 2010

<http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~acquisti/papers/privacy-facebook-gross-acquisti.pdf>

The Star Online 2010, Parliament: Personal Data Protection Bill passed, viewed 1^st November 2010,

<http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/4/5/nation/20100405210518&sec=nation>