The Media Evolution

Before, information was always in printed form, be it newspapers, magazines or books. But now, with the introduction of Internet to our lives, information takes on an evolution too; now readily and easily access digitally. We can see this with newspapers, magazines or radio stations having a website to cater those goes online more would rather retrieve news online. In contrast to printed documents, new media is a major leap in how information is presented. Walsh (2006) describe it as ‘multimodal texts’ whereby there is an incorporation of different modes: images, music, moving images and either written or verbal communication. These other elements add flair to what we read and interpret, making it more interactive and fun.

Sites such as Youtube and Twitter, redefines the way information and news are retrieved. Here, Naughton (2006) states that our generation where Internet plays a dominant role are influenced by ‘pull’ technology. Instead of just being a passive audience and absorb information fed to us, we now do the opposite; we seek for information we want. The Guardian (2010) reports how blogs were resorted by journalists when their newspapers were ceased. In addition, British parties are looking into using Facebook, Twitter and Youtube to aid their political campaigns since the success of Barack Obama’s online strategy. Sifry (2010) concludes that the Internet, if not monitored will gain precedence in election campaigns. The Internet is a favourable as it is fast, has mass audience, diverse and rich in networking. (Naughton, 2006).


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References:

Naughton J 2006, Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, viewed 30 September 2010, <http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/discussion/blogging.pdf>.

Sifry, ML 2010, How the Internet is Changing Politics in Great Britain, TechPresident, viewed 30 September 2010, <http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/how-internet-changing-politics-great-britain>.

The Internet and Politics: Revolution.com 2010, The Guardian, viewed 30 September 2010, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/04/iran-politics-blogging-internet>.

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

Welcome to the Blogginghood

Our world is built upon layers of communities. It is inherent to the way we humans interact and socialize. Community gives us a sense of belonging and identity. So it is of no surprise the existence of a blogging community. There is no exact definition of what blogging community is. However, the word ‘community’ according to TheFreeDictionary (2010), means ‘a group of people having common interests’; ‘similarity or identity’. Owyang (2007) describes it as “Online communities are bodies of people joined together by a common interest”. Thus, we can deduce that a blogging community is where people interact and share the same interest in blogging and blogs.

A blogging community is created is when you have constant viewers. According to Wordiq (2010), constant commenters of a blog are described to be the blog’s community.
In order to get a blog to have constant commenters, it is important to have the blog recognized. This can be achieved by viewing other blogs of interest and leave a comment (eHow, 2010). By doing the former, it will eventually lead other viewers or bloggers to notice and follow your blog. Of course other methods would involve utilizing ‘tags’. Tags are brief description or labels to assist in searching for information (NZherald, 2006; Flickr, 2010).

An illustration of a blogging community is Jeff Ooi’s blog. In his blog, not only does he allows comment boxes for interaction but allows viewers to use social networking sites to such Facebook, a microblog; Twitter, a social news website; Digg and Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. These tools allow viewers to circulate and share his post. Consequently, this enlarges his 'community' of followers to his blog.


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Reference:

NikkiS n.d, How to build a blogging community, eHow, viewed 29 September 2010, <http://www.ehow.com/how_2152382_build-blogging-community.html>.

What are tags? 2006, New Zealand Herald, viewed 28 September 2010, <http://www.nzherald.co.nz/site-information-help/news/article.cfm?c_id=500827&objectid=10414474>.

What are tags? 2010, Flickr, viewed 28 September 2010, <http://www.flickr.com/help/tags/>.

Class Me

There are many various form of blogs and can be categorized according to different aspects such as topic and blog type. For example, under the category of topic, there are personal blogs which was predominant when blog first appeared (Smich, 2010), then eventually came political, business, topical, literary and health blogs just to name a few (Cho, 2004). On the other hand, under the aspect of blog types would include vlog; a video blog, spam blog; a spam based blog, photoblog or phlog; a blog made mostly of photos, j-blog; blog by a journalist, and Multiblog; a conversational blog between two or more people (wiki, 2010).

In ‘The Taxonomy of Blogs’ by Simons (2008), she mentions there are nine kinds of blog. Namely, there are pamphleteering blog, the diary, digest blog, advocacy blog, popular mechanics blog, exhibition blog, gatewatcher blog, advertisement blog and news blog. In comparison to other sources I have found regarding groupings of blogs, I have found some similarities. For instance, ‘diary blog’ Simons (2008) and ‘personal blog’ (Cho, 2004) are blogs whereby users put up posts of personal rants, events, thoughts and activities. Next, ‘exhibition blog’ (Simons, 2008) are blogs created by those in arts and music, like photographers, artistes and writers with desire to share their creation online. ‘Exhibition blog’ can be compared to a photoblog. From my observation, Cho’s method of classification is limited to the subject matter of blogs. Meanwhile, Simons’s method is more comprehensive and takes in not just subject matter but accounts of other elements such as the format, style and audience.


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References:

Cho A 2004, The Different Kinds of Blogs, University of British Columbia, viewed 26 September 2010, <http://www.slais.ubc.ca/courses/libr500/05-06-wt1/www/A_Cho/kinds.htm>.

Simons M 2008, ‘A taxonomy of blogs’, The Media Report, ABC Radio National Transcripts, viewed 26 September 2010, <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript>.

Smich M 2010, Discussing various Blog types, Myhosting, viewed 26 September 2010, <http://myhosting.com/blog/2010/04/discussing-blog-types/>.

Wikipedia 2010, Glossary of blogging, viewed 26 September 2010, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_blogging_terms>.

Blog-oh-Sphere?

At one point, the Internet world or anyone who had Internet access was struck with the ‘blog’ fever. Suddenly everyone wanted or already had a blog of their own. So what is a blog actually? According to Britannica (2010), The word ‘blog’ comes from the words ‘web blog’ and a blog is space whereby thoughts, activites or events are recorded and posted by individuals, groups or companies. In other words, blog can be said to be an online diary. Tim Bernes-Lee is believed to be the first person to create a ‘blog’ although some beg to differ as their interpretation of blog is contrasting.

According to to Blogpulse (2010), there are a total of 147,199,651 and the numbers are escalating with approximately 70,000 new blogs each day (Britannica, 2010). With that big number of blogs, there is no doubt the existence of regional blogging trends. For example in Malaysia, it is common to come across blogs that disccuses political issue like the famous Raja Petra Kamaruddin (RPK) blog. Though according to a survey by Rice Blogger (2009) the top three blogs in Malaysia as of 2009, were not political blogs but rather, on technology, automobiles and how-to. In U.S however according to Technorati Top 100 (2010), The Huffington Post, a news blog sits at the top followed by two technology related blogs.

RPK’s blog is always known to criticize the Malaysian politics and government. Despite the credibility of the information he shares, RPK’s blog offers the Malaysian citizen an alternative form of news. On top of that, RPK’s blog has also bring much transparency and shed light unto the insides of the government.


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References:

Blogpulse 2010, Blogpulse stats, viewed 25 September 2010, <http://www.blogpulse.com/>.

Blog 2010, Encyclopædia Britannica Online, viewed 25 September 2010, <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/869092/blog>.

Top 100 Blogs 2010, Technorati, viewed 25 September 2010, <http://technorati.com/blogs/top100/>.

Wong, A 2009, Top 100 Malaysian Blogs, Rice Blogger, viewed 25 September 2010, <http://www.riceblogger.com/top-100-malaysian-blogs/>.