Impact of libel suit by Restaurant Owner on Bloggers

 



Image and Article Source: http://www.rebeccasaw.com/sg-straits-times-the-jothy-curry-house-case-my-2-cents-worth/



Reading the Jan 28 article titled 'Blog hit fish head eatery's business - Bloggers worried about impact of libel suit by Sabah restaurant owner' by Carolyn Hong, it's amazing to reflect on how much blogs have invaded our culture and influenced us socially in the last 10 years. Before blogging became popularity, the mainstreams of news were newspapers and television. Traditionally, media has always been a 'push' media and media operators decide what audiences be told.
  

Image Source: http://howtoblog.org/

Internet reshaped the way information was delivered. In the beginning, ‘surfers started creating logs of the information they collected, and soon evolved into web logs’ which subsequently evolved to the term ‘blogs’ (Hall 2006,p.2). One of the advantages of blogging lies in its potential to reveal news conventional media attempts to hide. On a narrower scope, personal blogs enables voices of individuals to be heard.

Due to popularity, some bloggers have a greater impact on its audiences than others. However, these individuals are not necessarily equipped with proper journalism ethics or knowledge of the social responsibilities they should possess. This case is one of the instances that show how the ignorance of a blogger can cause about harm to other individuals. Bloggers need to find the balance between freedom of speech and social responsibility that may contradict each other.

Reference

Hall, R S 2006, The Blog Ahead: How Citizen-Generated Media Is Radically Tilting the Communications Balance, Morgan James Publishing, New York

Print Design vs Online Design 1: Brochures

Design considerations are made for online and print edition of the same sales material. Here, we explore two versions of the OCBC EasiCredit that cater to two different group of audiences.

Brochure of OCBC EasiCredit

The print version takes the form of a tell-all brochure and is printed on 157gsm paper with a glossy finish.  It is ‘illustration-oriented’ (Parker 2003, p.268) and chooses to focus on the rewards of the service. In the brochure, the designer chooses to use sans serifs fonts for both the headlines and body copy, which gives uniformity to the design. It adheres to basic design format of brochures and makes use of ‘a front-cover headline that summarizes the primary benefits of the product offered’ (Parker 2003, p.269). Information is broken up into different sections and are distributed across the different pages. One major advantage of the print version lies in its ease of reading because ‘of the different way (the) readers’ eyes encounter (the) message’ (Parker 2003, p.270).



Image Source: Screen Shot of www.ocbc.com/easicredit 

On the contrast, the online version is more textual. Unlike the multicolumn layout of brochures, the text are restricted to single columns. It is noted that the designer took considerations to ‘build white space into the left and right margins of each page’ (Parker 2003, p.273) and results in the ease to read.  Additional information is available upon clicking of the different tab-heads. Unlike constraints of the print version, links to other services provided by the bank is available upon selection in the online edition.

 

Reference

Parker, RC, 2003, Looking good in print, Paraglyh Press, Scottsdale

The Battle of Facebook and Twitter

Image Source: http://vinova.sg/services

Statistics from Nielsen has shown that users in the U.S. spend ‘906 million hours a month on social networks’ and there is a ‘43% increase’ reported between June 2009 and June 2010 (Martin, 2011). Among these social networks, there is no doubt that Facebook and Twitter are both currently the most popular social utilities used by millions of users around the globe.

Facebook is a social networking website that acts as a platform for users to stay in touch with their friends by allowing users to create personal profiles and interact via text, photos and videos. Twitter is a social network messaging systems that allows individuals to broadcast text messages of up to 140 characters to their followers.

Which exactly is better?

Apparently, the use of both these media do not conflict each other. As stated by Martin in her article(2011), Twitter is compared to’ Times Square on New Year’s Eve’ while Facebook is more like ‘a party invitation with an RSVP’.




Image Source: http://gigaom.com/2010/12/20/facebook-vs-twitter-an-infographic/

 

For better comparison, it is important to look at the 'infographic comparing the Facebook population to the Twitter population' by Digital Surgeons (Ingram, 2010). This set of data reveals that fact that although there are about 4 times more Facebook users than Twitter users, Twitter users are much more active than Facebook users. 52 percent of Twitter users update their status daily compared to only 12 percent of Facebook users.

This seems to point out the different usability of these two social network media and they still work hand-in-hand to complement each other in the present state.

References

Ingram, M, 2010, Facebook vs Twitter: An Infographic, Gigaom, Dec 20 2010. Available at: http://gigaom.com/2010/12/20/facebook-vs-twitter-an-infographic/ [viewed 17 Jan 2011]

Martin, C 2011, Facebook vs Twitter: Do You Have To Choose? , Forbes, Jan 3 2011. Available at: http://blogs.forbes.com/work-in-progress/2011/01/03/facebook-vs-twitter-do-you-have-to-choose-a-side/?boxes=Homepagechannels [viewed 17 Jan 2011]

The Blogging Phenomenon



Image Source: http://8.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/blog1.jpg

What is a Blog?

According to Sauers (2006), a blog is an online journal, blogging is ‘the act of creating posts for a blog’ and a blogger is ‘the person who creates those posts’(p.1). Kelly (2004) sees blogging as ‘a new form of journalism unfettered by the constraints of the traditional press with the power to influence public opinion’.


Types of Blogs

There are many types of blogs online, published in over 100 languages.  They can be categorized into three main groups.

Personal: This is most general category and bloggers blog about personal topics like entertainment, travel and music.

Business: Professionals may share their expertise and experience and companies use blogs to stay engaged with their customers.

By Genre: These blogs emphasizes on special topic of interests, such as sports blogs, political blogs and music blogs.

According to a news report by BBC News (2006), the introduction of blogs leads to the possibility of ‘consumer online self-expression’. Internet has caused a revolutionary change of media communication ‘from a predominantly one-way, read-only medium to a more two-way, participatory, collaborative and interconnected medium’.  This results in the empowerment of consumers to influence others and poses an impact to bigger entities, like businesses. For instance, if a blogger comments on bad experience with products, followers will have an unfavorable perception of the company. News media can no longer hide facts from audiences as the public are able to publish immediate information.

References

BBC News 2006, Blogs making their impact felt, Technology, 5 May, viewed 7 January 2011, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4976276.stm>

Kelly, F 2004, ‘Blogging’, Radio National Breakfast, ABC Radio National, 16 April, viewed 7 January 2011, <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/stories/2004/1088524.htm>

Sauers, M P 2006, Blogging and RSS: a librarian’s guide, Information Today, New Jersey

Introduction of This Blog

Image Source: http://profalbrecht.wordpress.com/2008/12/26/why-accounting-profs-should-blog/

Welcome to this media space that is dedicated for recording my observations pertaining to chosen aspects of media.

Through this blog, I wish to explore both print and online publications and analyse issues, including design considerations, which affect them. As a media student, it is hoped that I can apply information obtained from my lessons and relate it to practical examples This blog serves as an online resource for me to share with fellow media students and anyone who is interested in the topic. As the name of the blog goes, it is a media space shared by everyone of us.