Reflections

Introduction

Process of creating this blog has been an uncountable experience for me. Lots of researches need to be done before I can publish any of my posting to make sure information in my posting is credible. In the process, not only my exposure has been widened but my mindsets on several issues manage to be change after looking at many perspectives. Besides that, I have also learned to familiarize with web interface and follow the design principles in a multimodal environment. During the process of creating and maintaining my blog, many difficulties I have encounter although the site has provided me some simple editing tools. Hence, bloggers should be feeling thankful and lucky because we do not need to be expert in html before we can create our own blog anymore. We just need to type everything in the space provided and then the site will help us to convert into html languages in order to post on web.

Theories applied

Although this is only an assignment, but the efforts of completing was never easy. Lots of reading I have to read in order to relate the information with the theories. Nielsen’s theory was always on my mind during the period of my blog production. Concise, scannable and objectives was applied in my blog as these are Nielsen’s advice after study on the ways web user read on the web. It is because reading on the screen is harder than on print and it makes most of the web users are reading the content on web by scanning in an F-shape pattern.Besides that, another important lesson that I have learned is importance of hyperlink usage in web. Not only for convenient but it also attract reader to read and click as it allow readers to link to the site they are interested.

Blogging

Previously, I never love bogging but now I realize blogging is a wonderful tool where anyone can post anything for everyone to read through public media- Internet. Since it is not private, individual should be aware of the content that they post up. Some material might be very sensitive to talk about. As Schirato & Yell has mention before that right material has to be use to suit the target audience cultural background. Hence, blogger must contemplate his intentions by consider the implication of posting to the audience and the situational context before posting anything.

Conclusion

Bloggers always blog for a reason and purpose either public or personal to achieve an objective. Every information posted must be credible based on credible sources. Therefore, as a professional and ethical blogger, references and citation is a must even if the subject matter is serious and sensitive to avoid infringement or copyright issue.

9) issue four- Freedom of Speech: On Websites

Not all magazines added or changed to online publication due to the reasons stated in the previous post. There is a reason underlying it, which it is related to political issue. In the Malaysia context, the two websites named Harakah and Malaysiakini started off with a difficult situation because they are considered as pro-opposition and anti-government’s sites.

(Source: Harakahdaily.net 2009)

Harakah is a newspaper founded in 1987 and published by Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS). The circulation of Harakah broke new heights during the post- Anwar Ibrahim sacking by Tun Dr. Mahathir in the late 1990s. This has caused printing permit, which for years had allowed publication twice a week, to be changed to twice a month by the Barisan Nasional, the dominated government of Malaysia and finally they decided to go online at Harakahdaily.net

( Source: Malaysiakini 2009)

Malaysiakini, on the other hand was formed at the height of the Reformasi movement in 1999, the former Malaysia's Deputy Prime Minister Datok Seri Anwar Ibrahim had been arrested and virtually demonized by the mainstream media. There were active demonstrations on the street and a lot of people were looking for information that they weren't getting from the mainstream media. On the issue of Anwar, the media wasn't reporting in the manner they should. There was a lot of self-censorship and the only way for people to get information was from the Internet, from pro-Reformasi Web sites. Even so, there were a lot of rumors and unconfirmed news. So Malaysiakini was set up to quickly post news that was researched and investigated (Ho 2008).

The question is, does freedom of speech exist on internet?

The founder of Malaysiakini, Steven Gan said not really. The former Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad pledged back in 1995 not to censor the Internet, because he wanted to attract investors to the new Multimedia Super Corridor. This pledge is the loophole Malaysiakini is exploiting (ZDNetAsia 2008).

However, things are not the same when Malaysiakini published a letter satirizing UMNO Youth in 2003, which did not amuse them and they made a police report under the Sedition Act 1948.
According to The Commissioner Of Law Revision (2006, p. 6), Sedition Act 1948 is “notwithstanding anything in subsection (1) an act, speech, words, publication or other thing shall not be deemed to be seditious by reason only that it has a tendency to point out, with a view to their removal, any matters producing or having a tendency to produce feelings of ill will and enmity between different races or classes of the population of the Federation, if the act, speech, words, publication or other thing has not otherwise in fact a seditious tendency.”

In order to move forward, I think the government should not look at freedom of speech and the sensitive issues so seriously because if we were to avoid from discussing the sensitive issues, they will not be solved forever and remain as a problem to the country. What the government should do is discuss the issues openly with an open heart with its rakyat and find the best solution to overcome it. As a result, rakyat will pay more respect to the government and move forward together to achieve its mission and vision.

References:

1.Commissioner of Law Revision, 2006, Sedition Act 1984 Incorporating all amendments up to 1 January 2006, Commissioner Of Law Revision, Malaysia.

2.Ho, V, 2008, Malaysiakini: Sparing no effort for the truth, Singapore, viewed 16 November 2009, <http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/internet/0,39044908,62040225,00.htm>

3.ZDNet Asia 2001, Malaysiakini: Gov't may curb Internet, Singapore, viewed 16 November 2009, <http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/communications/0,39044192,23125203,00.htm>

8) issue three- Freedom of Speech: On Publications

The Sarawak Tribune was established in 1945 and it was an English-language Malaysian newspaper published in Kuching, Sibu and Bintulu, in Sarawak.

(Source: Google 2009)

The daily reprinted a collection of the cartoons on February 4, 2006 during the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy to illustrate a story on the topic titled "Cartoon No Big Impact Here".

Former Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was quoted in Bernama news that the permit of The Sarawak Press Sdn Bhd, the publisher of Sarawak Tribune, has been suspended immediately until further notice by invoking subsection 6(2) of the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984, Act 301.

Meanwhile, Sarawak Tribune's editorial chairman Idris Buang said the senior management of the newspaper has accepted the government's decision to suspend the daily until further notice. He was quoted in Bernama news that the suspension order issued by the Internal Security Ministry was received at his office in Kuching. He said the Sarawak Tribune will cease to operate from Feb 10 until such a time when the suspension is lifted.

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Radzi Sheikh Ahmad said the Cabinet also felt that the action of the newspaper was a serious matter, especially in the light of Malaysia’s position as the chairman of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference.
“It is an embarrassing situation for us because Malaysia is holding the OIC chair, and it involves an Islamic matter,” he said (Zulfakar and McIntyre 2006).

According to The Commissioner Of Law Revision (2006 p. 9), “if the Minister is satisfied that any publication contains any article, caricature, photograph, report, notes, writing, sound, music, statement or any other thing which is in any manner prejudicial to or likely to be prejudicial to public order, morality, security, or which is likely to alarm public opinion, or which is or is likely to be contrary to any law or is otherwise prejudicial to or is likely to be prejudicial to public interest or national interest, he may in his absolute discretion by order published in the Gazette prohibit, either absolutely or subject to such conditions as may be prescribed, the printing, importation, production, reproduction, publishing, sale, issue, circulation, distribution or possession of that publication and future publications of the publisher concerned.”

The main reason of the suspension was due to caricature which insulted Prophet Muhammad and it has offended the Muslims in Malaysia and all around the world. Government was afraid that readers would take it seriously as they believe everything they see and read on newspapers. Just and Carpenter’s 1987 study (Schriver 1997, p. 369) stated that readers rely on everything in their perceptual field the syntax and semantics of the prose and graphics to construct an idea of the meaning as quickly as possible.Similarly, books that contain false information on religious issues would be banned from the market.

According to Centre for Independent Journalism (2007), the latest ban was a total of 37 books on Islam because of "twisted facts" in the books. Earlier in January, 18 books also fell under the same fate. More than 50 books were banned officially in 2006 alone, while 14,400 titles were reportedly restricted entry at the custom checkpoints. The public are denied to access those books because the government feared that the books can potentially caused harm to the country.

References:

1.Centre of Independent Journalism 2007, Book banning: department open to dialogue, Malaysia, viewed 16 November 2009, <http://www.cijmalaysia.org/content/view/215/5/>

2.Commissioner of Law Revision, 2006, Prining Presses And Publications Act 1984 Incorporating all amendments up to 1 January 2006, Commissioner Of Law Revision, Malaysia.

3.Malaysian National News Agency 2006, Sarawak Tribune's Publication Permit Suspended, Malaysia, viewed 16 November 2009, <http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v3/printable.php?id=179503>

4.Malaysian National News Agency 2006, Sarawak Tribune's Management Accepts Suspension Order, Malaysia, viewed 16 November 2009, http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v3/printable.php?id=179558

5.Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design, Wiley Computer Pub, New York.

6.Zulfakar, M & McIntyre, I 2006, Cabinet wants tough action against Sarawak Tribune, Malaysia, viewed 16 November 2009, <http://thestar.com.my/news/story.aspfile=/2006/2/9/nation/13341162&sec=nation&focus=1>

7) issue two- New Facelift for Yahoo

Yahoo has come out with a new and personalized home page named My Yahoo rather than the classic home page. It is integrated and created to give audience a fresh look and more function with additional toolbar or button in it. In My Yahoo home page, users can personalized its home page by creating own layout, choosing prefer colour, add in news of the days to your page or even share your page with friends.

Classic Yahoo! home page...

My Yahoo! New & personalized home page...

Nielsen (1997) has said in his article that web users use to scan the web material. Hence, the new personalized Yahoo webpage’s layout has not much different compare to the default classic home page. The web designer is following theory by Diana C. Reep (2006) where consistency is a must to bring classic Yahoo home page and My Yahoo personalized home page under single identity. This principle is important to avoid users get confused by the page identity.

After trying to use the My Yahoo services, I personally think that it is better than the classic type because it provide more interactive functions that suit the need for most of the web users in the new era. It is also user friendly.

Similar with the classic home page, My Yahoo home page remain three columns but more framing exists to arrange different types of information in different frame. As Kress & Van Leeuwen (1996) has indicates that the stronger the framing of an elements, the more it is presented as separate unit of information. The absence of framing is to stress on group identity, presences signifies individuality and differentiation.

Besides framing, salience is being used in My Yahoo by giving the home page background a colour to make the page looks lively. It is following Kress & Van Leeuwen (1998) theory where the elements of salience are made to attract the viewers’ attention to different degrees.

References:

1.Reep, D.C. 2006, Technical Writing: principles, strategies, and readings, Pearson Education, New York.

2.Kress, G. & Van Leeuwan, T. 1998, Approaches to media discourse, Blackwell, Oxford.

3.Nielsen, J. 1997, How Users Read on the Web, Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, viewed 15 November 2009, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/97109.html>

6) issue one- Sensitive Issue

Communication in social semiotic perspectives is a social practice that carries out by members of a society within a social context. Different individuals have different living histories . The histories is of the texts and meaning making that we have experienced in our lives. Intertexuality exists in the meaning making process which involves circulation and exchanging of meaning. However, according to Schirato & Yell (1996), picking the right material to suit the right audience is necessary. It is because awareness of an individual in relation to certain text or sign is depending on cultural literacy in a situational context.

Burger King's Ice-cream Design Banned!!!

For instance, the issues of design on design on Burger King’s ice-cream lid. The design on the lid apparently looks like the word “Allah” in Arabic. For Burger King or non-Muslim, they might take the design which it solely picture ice-cream sign only. But, for Muslims, they feel offended and are very sensitive towards the design because it portrays the name of God.

Picture's source: http://www.pickledpolitics.com/archives/35

Besides that, recently, there is an issue about a teacher in Sichuan Province wrote in his blog about the true feeling and experience escape from the earthquake that happened recently. He wrote in his blog that he quickly run when he realize that the earthquake is going to hit without even thinking to rescue his students at the moment. Moreover, he also said in his blog that his action is reasonable because if he was to rescue anyone it will be his own son. It is nothing wrong to protect himself first. In this case, he is being selfish but alive.

After it is published on the blog, as a teacher who did such selfish action, he was criticized and  by all the peoples in China who ever read his blog or knew about it. As a result, he was get fired by the school headmaster due to the peoples’ pressure. The issues here is the teacher must not publish such a sensitive content in his blog because there are many peoples out there living in the same place with him lost their families members in the earthquake tragedy. Maybe for a western people who read the blog, they feel fine but for Chinese people, they are feeling offended because this incidents was happening on them.

Audience is reading based on their schemata where meaning making process is different, base on individual culture background and their experiences. Putnis & Petelin (1996, p.230) has incidates that schema theory suggested that readers interact with texts and construct their meaning by calling on their framework of prior knowledge and background experience of objects, situation, events, action – their schemata.

References:

1."Allah" ice-cream banned by Burger King, Pickled Politics, viewed 15 November 2009, <http://www.pickledpolitics.com/archives/35>

2.Schirato,T & Yell, S 1996, Communication and cultural literacy: an introduction, Allen & Unwin, St. Leonards, N.S.W.

3.Putnis, P. & Petelin, R. 1996, Professional communication : principles and applications, Prentice Hall, Sydney.

4.Yahoo News, viewed 15 November 2009, <http://tw.news.yahoo.com/article/url/d/a/080527/4/100ah.html>

5) New Form of Media Planning

Nowadays, people from all around the world are constantly on the rush for time. They always wanted anything to be convenience following the various creation of new technology. Despite the creation of new gadgets, it has brought out the trend to mobilize our media. Blogging activity becomes more convenience, mobile and even handy where we are able to access blogs and post entries with moblogs (mobile blogs). It allows users to update their blogs from mobile phone or any other mobile devices.

For examples, online social network, MySpace has recently partnered with mobile giant, Vodafone in UK to host their blog. (MarketClusters 2007). In Malaysia, web users can moblogs with the new Nokia N95 mobile phone. Blog Heralds (2008) indicates that with the explosion on the new Nokia N95 mobile phone, with the new blogging application, it allows users to post to both Wordpress.com and self-hosted Wordpress blogs.

The number of moblogs and mobloggers has increase as camera phone has become a common in the market and everyone is able to have one. BBC news has states that “any blog is more likely to contain snaps sent from a phone as it is longer text entries composed in a moment of reponse.”

Besides moblog there’s a new form of media publishing in Malaysia is exists of the first Malaysian drama series to be specifically developed and produced for broadcast on the Internet. The online drama series title : Kerana Karina, comprising 20 four-minute episodes was streamed on http://www.gua.com.my/website successfully between October and December 2007, and has attract about 834,000 visitors to view it online.

References:

1.MarketClusters 2007, MySpace partners with Vodafone, MarketClusters, viewed 14 November 2009, <http://live.marketclusters.com/cl2/view/2007/02/07/myspace_partners_with_vodafone/ >

2.BBC News 2007, Hi-tech ways to stay in touch, BBC News, viewed 14 November 2009, <http://kickdefella.wordpress.com/2007/01/13/in-honour-of-the-heroes/%3e

3.Blog Herald 2008, Nokia N95 mobile phone gets Worldpress publishing application, Blog Herald, viewed 14 November 2009, <http://www.blogherald.com/2008/01/14/nokia_n95_mobile_phone_gets_wordpress_publiching_application>
4.The Star Online 2008, A First for Malaysian drama, Tech Central, viewed 14 November 2009, <http://star-techcentral.com/tech/story.asp?file=/2008/1/17/technology/19773587&sec=technology>

4) Designing for Online vs Print

Evans (2004) has stated that principles help designer determine the relationship between the parts or design elements involved and serve as rules that a designer can follow when combining these elements in design. However, the main different when designing for print and online is the text placement.

Jakob Nielsen (1999) argues that many web users do not know how to design functional web documents. According to Jakob Nielsen (1997), he basically says that web writing should succinct, scannable, and make use of hyperlink to improve web usability. Diana Reep (2006) has reinforced Jakob’s theories because results show that 79% - 81% of users scan web material. Hence, Jakob Nielson (1997) suggests that online design should follow the F-shaped pattern where web users scan the content ‘fast’ in an F shaped.

Different with online, design for print information need to be more detail. The most important headline must be placed at the top left following with the body at center and end at bottom right. It is a must because readers often read print material in a Z shaped.

References:

1.Evans, P 2006, Publication Design, Delma Learnig, New York.

2.Reep, D.C. 2006, Technical Writing: principles, strategies and readings, Pearson Education, New York.

3.Nielsen, J 1997, Be succinct! (Writing for the web) Useit.com, viewed 12 November 2009, <http://www.useit.com/>.

4.Nielsen, J 1999, Jakob Nielsen interview, Jupitermedia Corporation, viewed 12 November 2009,
< http://www.webreference.com/new/nielsen.html >.