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

New Forms of Media Publishing

"New media is a way in which the delivery of news and information follows a many-to-many format" (Maltoni, n.d). The rise of new media has provide people an easy way to access information efficiently via different types of media publishing tools, such as moblogs, vlogs, photoblog, and news portals. However, there is another particular new form of media publishing that is widely used among web users is YouTube.

YouTube was founded in 2005 and it then became the internet-streamed video whereby web users are able to watch and share their videos worldwide (YouTube.com, n.d.).

Freedom of speech is an issue to begin with. With the rise of Youtube, more can be said and told. In terms of politics, many select for freedom of speech through alternative media. Thanks to the rise of new media, things that can never be said on mainstream media have the chance to be heard. Many users are using Youtube as a platform to voice their opinion, publish their work and discuss worldwide issues.

The following video shows an example of video censorship that occurred in Malaysia. It is regarding the HINDRAF (Hindu Rights Action Force) rally which has been briefly covered by the mainstream media.



References:

‘Company History’ n.d, YouTube.com, viewed 8 June 2009,
http://www.youtube.com/t/about

Maltoni, V n.d, ‘What is New Media?’, ConversationAgent.com, viewed 8 June 2009, http://www.conversationagent.com/2007/11/what-is-new-med.html

Classification of Blogs & Blogging Community

According to Australian author and freelance journalist Margaret Simons, blogs can be classified into various types. They include
• Pamphleteering blogs - where an individual or a group of individuals put out a brief essay arguing a point
• Digest blog - usually summarise or to collect material from elsewhere, generally from mainstream media
• Advocacy blog - somewhat similar to pamphleteering except it is usually by a vested interest group or an advocacy group
• Popular Mechanics blog - a collection of information on how to do stuff on any kinds of speciality
• Exhibition blog - also known as vanity publishing, common to craftspeople, artists and writers where they display their work
• Gatewatcher blog - experts actually critique the reporting of their respective fields by the media
• Diary - serve as an online journal, usually personal blogging
• Advertisement - created by commercial companies promoting their product
• News blog - where breaking news are published and bloggers themselves are beginning to attend media conferences

Wikipedia on the hand has its own list of blogs and its classification. And there are categorize in 3 categories.

By Genre
based the different subject matter discussed.
• political blogs
• corporate blogs
• fashion blogs
• spam blogs
• travel blogs
• niche blogs
• dream blogs


By Media
based on the media the blogs are presented.
• vlog
• linklog
• photoblog
• tumblelog

By Devices
based on the devices used to compose the blogs.
• moblog

I personally feel that the style, format and audience makes identifying different blogs much easier. There were a number of similar classifications of blogs from both sources. The only thing different is their names. Blogs such as Personal blogging and diary are parallel. Similar to Question blogging and Popular Mechanics blog. They both provide answers online.

The blogging community
A blogging community can be formed among a group of people that share the same interest. They will have a strong bond or friendship with each other and giving comments or having discussions in their space. For example the Malaysia Alternative Voices, it is a blog for Malaysians voice out their opinions about the country. It can be consider as a political blog.

References:

ABC radio channel, The media report: A Taxonomy of Blogs, viewed 6 June 2009,
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript

Wikipedia 2009, Blog, viewed 6 June 2009,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

The Blogging Phenomenon

The term ‘blogging’ is not new to us nowadays. In fact, it has now become a trend for everyone to own a blog. ‘Blog’ is a word that shortened from ‘weblog’ which stands for a website that maintain a progressing record of information (WordPress 2007). A blog is a frequently updated, personal website featuring diary-type commentary and links to articles on other Web sites (WordPress 2007).

Blogging has become popular across the globe. One of the attractions is blogging is the idea that something can be distributed globally in an instant and click of the mouse. According to Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006) the availability of composite visuals, images and text and other graphic as well the other multimodal functions such as sounds and video makes the Internet much more appealing. This makes ideal bedrock for blogging.

And this chart above represents the size of blogosphere. Blogging is a truly global phenomenon: Technorati tracked blogs in 81 languages in June 2008, and bloggers responded to from 66 countries across six continents. Bloggers have been at it an average of three years and are collectively creating close to one million posts every day (Technorati 2008). Blogs have representation in top-10 web site lists across all key categories, and have become integral to the media ecosystem (Technorati 2008).

In Malaysia, there are bloggers who blog on certain issues that they are interested in, for example about politics, entertainment, education and food too. For Example, Jeff Ooi is a well known blogger who blogs about politic issues. This may be due to the restriction of the press in Malaysia; Jeff Ooi is using the blog as a channel to voice out his personal opinions and views. Of course blogging bring about benefits to the community. Advertisers will usually want to advertise brands and products on blogging spaces as it has higher potential of loyal audiences. Bloggers on the other hand make a lot of profit from advertisers.


References:

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, Reading Images: Grammar of Visual Design, Routledge, London.

Technorati 2008, State of blogosphere 2008, viewed 4 June 2009, http://www.blogger.com/www.technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere

WordPress 2007, Introduction to blogging, viewed 4 June 2009,
http://codex.wordpress.org/Introduction_to_Blogging