Reflection

During the process of blogging, I have learn new skills in document design and of course, became more aware on the various issues in the media.

Aside from writing the content, document designer is also thing that I need to take into consideration to make this a comfortable website for viewers to stay on reading on my content. Walsh (1996) has mentioned the multi function of internet and the power of hypertext and hyperlink has made it a unique approach towards publishing experience as compared to the publication of a book.

I also added pictures to text to help my audience understand and digest the content as Kress & van Leeuwen (2006) suggested that it would enhance the meaning of the document and attract the audience.

Although blog is a platform that advocates freedom of speech, but still, as a good responsible blogger, we need to act ethical while blogging. Filter of contents and topics need to be done cautiously so as to avoid any unnecessary copyright or defamation infringements. Be ethical, be quality.

References:

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006 ‘chapter 1: The semiotic landscape: language and visual communication’, in Reading images: the grammar of visual design, 2nd edn, Routledge, London.

Walsh, M 2006, 'Textual shift: examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts', in Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29, no.1, pp.24 - 37.

The Power of Photograph

A report of BBC news entitled “Picture power: Tim Hetherington” which reporting the British photographer Tim Hetherington talks about his photograph of a US soldier in Afghanistan which has won the 2007 World Press Photo Award.

Nowadays, it is not surprised to find a couple of enlarged color pictures on the cover of their daily newspaper – as well as inside the middle-pages. In fact, readers would probably do not like a serious newspaper that doesn’t bother with graphic incentives and catchy visuals.

Kress and Leeuwen (1996) have pointed out that in today’s world we are moving towards a decade that has a decrease control of language in the public media and increase importance in visual communication.

As Walsh (2006, p.29) clarify’s that audience are inclining towards favouring text that has features of multimodality, the use of photos to increase a story’s effectiveness and quality are on a rise. The use of visuals fulfills a ‘prosodic’ role of highlighting important points and emphasizing structural connections complementing the meaning of text (Kress and van Leeuwen 1998, p.187).

By using images, we would be able to command attention from target audiences through salience– the elements of a layout attract the reader’s attention to different degrees, and through a wide variety of means: placement in the foreground or background, relative size, contrast in tonal value or color, differences in sharpness and so on (Kress and van Leeuwen 1998, p. 188).

Look at the pictures below. You do not only know the truth from the picture, but you are also feeling how they felt. A picture tells a truth but also provide feeling and impact at the sametime. Compared to texts, the expressions loaded on the subject's face.







































(Source: news.bbc.co.uk)

Moving to a digital world, a picture does play a huge role. Imagine yourself reading a book with full of text and words that has the minimum space for you to breathe in, do you sometimes desire for a picture, or maybe an illustration to refresh your mind?

References:

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 1996, ‘Chapter 1: The semiotic landscape: language and visual communication’, Reading images: the grammar of visual design, pp 15-42, Routledge, NY.

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 1998, ‘Chapter 7: Front pages: (the critical) analysis of newspaper layout’, Approaches to media discourse, pp. 186-219.

‘Picture power: Tim Hetherington 2008’, BBC News, viewed 13 June 2009,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7240590.stm

Walsh, M 2006, ‘The ‘textual shift’: examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts’, The Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol 29, no. 1, pp. 24-37.

New Facebook VS Old Facebook

Facebook have changed their layout for 3 times since they first launched. An article from Australian IT (2008) entitled 'Facebook Makeover Leaves Some Devotees Fuming' shows the disappointment and frustration of millions of facebook users when a new layout was introduced. They even have video on protesting the new facebook.



Sometime it is a mess when everybody is flared up when the new design of a website does not match with their expectation. So, is change a good or bad thing for websites?

(source: facebook.com)

Nielsen (2008) has stated that if a website is not easily to be used, internet users will most probably leave the website. Facebook has changed into a new interface according to the feedback of internet users but it failed to meet the reading habits of internet users in various ways.

Taking a look at the new interface of Facebook, the word “complicated” will come into mind as you can see there are too much of navigation bars and section to explore. People easily get confused and lost their way in the social networking website as they have to make a few attempts and get used to the new interface of the website all over again. The over flooding applications in website is also something document designer should avoid when it obstructs users to scan for the information they wanted (Reep 2006).

Document designers should keep in mind that the main principle for designing web pages is to provide a comfortable layout for readers to read on screen with minimum of eye movement (Parker 2003).

Although there are a lot of complaints of facebook new layout but in fact there are still a lot of people using it. As the statistic below shows that the user of facebook is actually increasing.

(source: compete.com)

So, is the ever popular facebook has changed the trend of website publication as it is still highly in demand even with its complex web design?

References:

Australianit.news.com.au 2008, Facebook makeover leaves some devotees fuming, media section, viewed 13 June 2009, http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24328928-15318,00.html

Nielsen, J 2008, Writing for the Web, viewed 13 June 2009, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9703b.html

Parker, RC 2003, ‘Chapter 14’, in Looking Good in Print, 5th edition, Scootsdale, Arizona.

Reep, DC 2006, 'Chapter 4: Principles of document design', in Technical writing, 6th edn, Pearson Education, Inc., New York, pp. 173 - 190.

The Last Supper of Suharto

(source: google.com)

One of the Indonesia’s top news weeklies, Tempo has apologized regarding the cover of the 4-10 February 2008 issue which portrays former president Suharto and his children in a composition impersonating Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper.

Christian activists visited Tempo’s building, to protest on the cover of the Suharto. They were offended as the Tempo magazine compared it between Suharto to Jesus.

On page two of Koran Tempo, a daily published by the same outfit as the weekly, a large headline over an apology read, "Tempo Magazine Apologises," with a subheading: "We had no intention of hurting Christians." "We had no intention of hurting Christians. We were only inspired by the composition of the Leonardo painting, and not in the concept or context of the event told in the holy bible," Tempo chief editor Toriq Hadad said in the apology.










(source:google.com)

Ethical Publishing
The right and ethical thing that should be considered by everybody is taking responsibility for one’s action (Weber, 1995). The sketch of Suharto offended the Christian community as the Last Supper painting is considered a holy symbol. By imitating Suharto’s picture on Last Supper might be an aspect of entertainment to some readers but it insults the Christian readers. They should take into consideration on religious matters that is highly sensitive in all community.

Cultural/Situation Context
According to Schirato & Yell, “For any text to be recognizable and readable, it must draw upon a ready established and shared set of meanings.” Obviously, Christians do not tolerate jokes which are related to their religion when others take it as a source of entertainment. This shows that a shared set of meaning is not established by these different groups of readers.

The Christians were unhappy with the picture of Suharto depicting Jesus Christ, their Lord and Savior. The picture created controversies due to cultural differences where misunderstanding of links between the compositions of Leonardo’s painting and the context of the event told in the Holy Bible were being questioned. According to Haynes, “what exactly is considered blasphemy can vary between religious groups and people.” (Michael 2007)

Publishing Regulation
In Malaysia, I think these issues will never be published as we have a strict censorship under the Printing Presses and Publications Act. Religion is a very sensitive issue as we’re from a diversified culture. For example, the movie “The passion of the Christ” (2004), has been barred from cinemas and churches due to "religious sensitivities" (asianews 2004) The Malaysian Film Censorship Board has restricted the film in the primarily Muslim country.

With regards to the issue, I personally think that the cover of Tempo imitating the last supper was undeniably wrong and unethical. It violated the respects to cultural and religious differences among the people.

References:

‘Indonesian weekly apologises over Last Supper Suharto cover’ 2008, ABC.net, viewed 12 June 2009, http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/02/06/2156269.htm

‘Malaysian Muslims offended by "The Passion"’ 2004, Asianews.com, viewed 12 June 2009, http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=584

Michael, M 2007, ‘Freedom of Religion Confronts Journalism’, BCHeights.Com, viewed 12 June 2009, http://media.www.bcheights.com/media/storage/paper144/news/2007/03/26/News/Freedom.Of.Religion.Confronts.Journalism-2791570-page2.shtml

Schirato, T & Yell, S 1996, Communication and cultural literacy: An introduction, Allen and Unwin, St. Leonards NSW.

Weber, J H 1995,’Ethics in scientific and technical communication’, WISENET Journal 38, viewed 12 June 2009, http://www.jeanweber.com/newsite/?page_id=22

Emoticons :P

With the rise of the Internet, email and chatting programs, people have become dependent on the system. It is obviously an efficient means of communicating with others from all over the world. However, many people have no idea how to write, and many others have no idea how to interpret what they receive. The inability of people to interpret true feelings and emotions has resulted creation of various new communication features have surfaced that have to be analyzed; amongst those, emoticons.

American professor Scott Fahlman from Carnegie Mellon University invented the original emoticon made up of typing a colon, a hyphen and a parenthesis on 19th September 1982. (abc.net 2007)

(Source: Wikipedia.com)

With the rise of software it has turned these graphics into more 3D and animated form.

(Source: www.apexdc.net/image/screenshots/emoticons.png)

As stated by John Timmer (2007), different cultures interpret things differently, so emoticons cannot be recognized universally as they carry cultural baggage. Sometimes joking remarks which mistaken by the receiver as serious statement may cause big problems. (Adler & Rodman 2000, pg. 147) We may accidentally offend someone who misunderstands the meaning of the emoticon due to the cultural or gender differences. “Particular cultures provide particular trainings for readers”(Kress & Van Leeuwen, 1998, p.201). Readers employ their cultural backgrounds and knowledge in the process of making meaning of the emoticons. Emoticons sometimes might not help but worsen the situation, which is when it causes conflicts between cultures.

Schirato and Yell (1996) mentions that, “All texts, including jokes and riddles, carry elements, or traces, of context with them.” The elements carry by the texts help to interpret more accurately than emoticons can do. There is not only one set of meaning for an emoticon as people may interpret it differently. Personally, I do not use emoticon often. It somehow distracts me from reading the words and may also cause confusion of the sentence.

In conclusion, emoticons is indeed a phenomenon and a true complement to text in the internet field but it is still only half the process to achieving a guaranteed way of conveying a message without risking misunderstanding.

References:

Adler, RB & Rodman, G 2000, Understanding Human Communication, 7th edn. , Harcourt College Publishers, United States of America, pg. 147.

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 1998, ‘Front pages: (the critical) analysis of newspaper layout’, in Bell, A & Garrett, P (eds) 1998, Approaches to media discourse, Blackwell, Oxford, chapter 7, pp. 186-219.

Schirato, T & Yell, S 1996, Communication and cultural literacy: An introduction, Allen and Unwin, St. Leonards NSW, pp. 110.

ABC Radio National 2007, The Media Report: Emoticons and email etiquette, viewed 09 June 2009, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2007/2064342.htm

Timmer, J 2007, Emoticons carry cultural baggage, viewed 09 June 2009,
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070514-emoticons-carry-cultural-baggage.html