The chosen articles to be discussed in TechBlog are mainly based on the issues how new media affects our life and the society during these days. TechBlog is aimed to reach a younger group of readers because in my opinion, it is vital for them as part of the online community to realise what are the issues that new media has led in and how it creates impacts on us.
-Blogging, Blogging, Blogging
The term ‘blogging’ is not new to us nowadays. Recently, it has become a trend for people to own a blog. What is actually blogging? ‘Blog’ is a word that abbreviated from ‘weblog’ which stands for a website that maintain a progressing chronicle of information (WordPress 2007).
Blog actually morphed from the traditional diary. The difference is that, blogging is a way for us to share our thoughts and ideas with other people while diary is something that is more confidential. Through blogging, we may get comments from the readers too. Nowadays in Malaysia, many people have involved themselves in blogging. Statistics from Sabahan.com (2007) shows that, among the Malaysian Top 50 Bloggers, 28% of them write about personal things and those who write about politics and technology are respectively 16%.
As stated above, in this well developed technology era, people have transferred the words from their diaries to their blog. Bloggers express their feeling and thoughts in their own blogs. Besides, there are business corporations or professionals that join the blog stream to promote their products and to tell the readers more information about their companies too. Furthermore, for those who are far away from their family or friends, they can upload their recent photos or posts about themselves on the blog to show their faraway love ones. Personal blogging is not a bad thing as it can be a communication bridge among people to have better understanding of each other. Nevertheless, there are bloggers who blog on certain issues that they are interested in, for example about politics, entertainment, education and food too.
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 tunnel to voice out his personal opinions and views. On the other hand, there have been many kinds of blogs nowadays, for instance video blogging (vlog) like YouTube and Metacafe where videos are used to convey message or insight within a blog (wiseGEEK 2007), moblog (mobile blog), sketchblog and Splog (spam blog).
- Online versus print
Obviously, online media has taken over the traditional print media. Walsh’s (2006) effort in comparing three set of documents (novel, picture book, internet site) has proved that an internet site which contains texts, animation, music, hyperlinks and video clips are multimodal whereas print media is said to be more monomodal based. Print media is only restricted to texts and images. Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (1996) three signifying systems: information value, salience and framing not only can be applied within print media’s layout but also on the internet site. Online media like blogs enable readers to choose their own reading path by using technological differences like frames, hyperlinks and menu bars (Walsh, 2006). Readers can click on the hyperlink to go into other site for more information about the specific term. This is the reason why online media like blogs are said to be more interactive than the diary which contains only words.
example of blog
example of traditional diaryOnline media are now expanding by leaps and bounds. Undeniably, it has made our life easier and convenient. People are now so much depending on it. As a result, print media is no longer dominant. Online media is roaring.
References
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.
Sabahan.com 2007, 50 Most Influential Blogs in Malaysia, viewed on 31 Ocotber,
<http://www.sabahan.com/2007/02/06/50-most-influential-blogs-in-malaysia/>
Screenshots, 2007, Jeff 4 Malaysia, viewed on 31 October 2007,
<http://www.jeffooi.com/>
Walsh, M 2006, ‘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.
wiseGEEK 2007, What is vlogging?, viewed on 31 October 2007,
<http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-vlogging.htm>
WordPress 2007, Introduction to blogging, viewed on 31 Ocotber 2007,
< http://codex.wordpress.org/Introduction_to_Blogging>
References
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.
Sabahan.com 2007, 50 Most Influential Blogs in Malaysia, viewed on 31 Ocotber,
<http://www.sabahan.com/2007/02/06/50-most-influential-blogs-in-malaysia/>
Screenshots, 2007, Jeff 4 Malaysia, viewed on 31 October 2007,
<http://www.jeffooi.com/>
Walsh, M 2006, ‘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.
wiseGEEK 2007, What is vlogging?, viewed on 31 October 2007,
<http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-vlogging.htm>
WordPress 2007, Introduction to blogging, viewed on 31 Ocotber 2007,
< http://codex.wordpress.org/Introduction_to_Blogging>
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