The End

As this blog comes to end, I am sincerely greatful for all the things that I have learned regarding issues in publication and design. I have gained insightful knowledge on the theories and concepts of publishing and design which in the future I realize, will be very useful to me. 

One of the many things that I have learned during the course of making this blog is the importance of including sources when citing other people's work. This will bring about credibility to not only their work but also to mine. 

Being ethical is of the upmost importance especially in the field that I am currently pursuing. Blogging has so far been a great experience and I will surely use the knowledge that I have gained in this process in the coming future. Thank you!

Barack Obama Utilizing the iPhone for Political Gain

Political campaign advertising has always been a crucial part of the election as candidates want to reach out to the majority of the people for political gain. The advancements of technology today have only increased the ways for politicians to reach a wider demographic.

An article entitled 'Obama Uses iPhone To Win Support' which was featured on BBC News on the 3rd of October 2008 reported that Barack Obama used the latest trend namely the iPhone application and turned it into a political campaigning tool in order to win votes for the recent American presidential campaign. The reason for using this particular brand is because of the recent uprising of  iPhone application usage which has taken hold of many citizens of America.

By utilizing this popular phone application, he was able to create a new genre in the new media of campaigning using popular technology trends. The wide usage of the iPhone has certainly better the chances of getting votes from not only the older generation but also from the younger generation. Thus, he was able to reach a wider and younger audience for political gain.

The new way of advertising through interactivity is seen to surpass the traditional way of advertising. The people are akin to have a '... higher degree in cognition interactivity instead of the linear way of getting information' (Bezjian-Avery, Calder & Iacobucci, 1998).

According to Valentino, Hutchings & Williams (2004), 'Advertising has grown from a tool used exclusively by presidential candidates to an essential element of campaign communication at all levels of government'. Hence, by using the latest trend to advertise and gain political momentum in the presidential elections, Barack Obama was very popular particularly among the younger generation.

All of that illustrates the marketing genius at work here: Obama's impact has been so big because the campaign has managed scaling down to the smallest possible level of offline and online engagement (Leberecht, 2008).

In my opinion, Barack Obama was very smart in a sense that he knew how to touch upon the technology savvy demographic in America. This demographic does not only cover the younger generation but also the older generation who have adapted to the latest trends in society.

Reference List:

1. Bezjian-Avery, A, Calder, B, Iacobucci, D 1998, New Media Interactive Advertising vs Traditional Advertising, Journal of Advertising Research, vol. 38, pp. 23-29.
2. Leberecht, T 2008, A new (Obama) brand of politics: yes, we can...remix America!, Cnet News, viewed 18th of November 2009, <http://news.cnet.com/8301-13641_3-9901353-44.html?tag=mncol>
   
3. Shiels, M 2008, Obama uses iPhone to win support, BBC News, viewed 18th of November 2009,<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7649753.stm>.
4. Valentino, NA, Hutchings, VL, Williams, D 2004, The Impact of Political Advertising on Knowledge, Internet Information Seeking, and Candidate Preference, Journal of Communication, vol. 54, no.2, pp. 337-354.

Censorship of New Media?

The Internet has always been seen as an avenue for free speech for all citizens of the world. However, a number of countries have already either implemented censorship or are pushing for the latter to be placed as a law.

An article entitled 'The Effect of New Media Censorship on the World - NMI White Paper' which was featured in New Media Institute on the 27th of July 2009, reported on a variety of countries which restrict freedom of expression and how such censorship and regulations laws might effect the censorship of new media on a global scale.

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. However, in a significant number of countries these rules do not apply.

According to BBC News (2009), Facebook has been blocked by the Iranian Government in time for the Presidential Elections. The reason being that supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi is using the utility to better the candidate's position in the elections. First of all, even if the Iranian people were to use Facebook as a facet for supporting the candidate, there is no plausible reason for banning the site. This shows that the Iranian government is boycotting the candidate even though his rival is able to own a Facebook profile. The people are not able to exercise their basic human rights.

Censorship of this sort is highly unreasonable and must be taken into consideration as the people need the opportunity to use the new media for beneficial reasons. I personally believe that the this is not ethical at all and this regulation should change. If I am able to exercise my rights and decide for my own whether or not Facebook is beneficial or not, the people of Iran should be able to do the same.

Reference List:

1. BBC News, 2009, Tehran Blocks Access to Facebook, viewed 17th of November 2009, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8065578.stm>
2. Eber-Schmid, N 2009, The Effect of New Media Censorship on the World, NMI White Papers, viewed 17th of November 2009, <http://www.newmedia.org/articles/the-effect-of-new-media-censorship-on-the-world---nmi-white-paper.html>.
3. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 2009, Article 19, United Nations, viewed 17th of November 2009,  <http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:slALRfFBlLwJ:www.aspire-irl.org/UN_Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights.pdf+universal+declaration+of+human+rights+pdf&hl=en&gl=my&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESh2FFaINHsgy2mzTLyjp9DkxMza4niXbbQHiZi_eyNe-LGrdaV_sNQVd5jEdZAgncflyV_JLlV9BfmDMhUT0UWwz_t94u-TiZIhTsC7LGCxHvyZzN-Ah8hG6sxd0-jYzD6BCmT9&sig=AHIEtbTeCcbqwMmQSK5tcXqb_K_gRX3Ckg>.

New Facebook Design Making People Mad

The famous social networking site, Facebook, has recently made changes in their design interface prompting it to be better than before. However, 100 million Facebook users were not happy with the changes.

 An article entitled 'Facebook makeover leaves some devotees fuming' which was featured in Australian IT on the 11th of September 2008 reported that recent changes done on Facebook has received a negative backlash from the Facebook community. Vice President of Marketing, Chamath Palihapitiya stresses on the benefits of the new design and how it was done in change of the current phenomenon of video-sharing, pictures and musings. Mark Slee, Facebook engineer is confident that Facebook users will find the changes a lot more useful once they are use to it (AFP, 2008).

Old Facebook

(Image Source: Google Images)

New Facebook

(Image Source: Google Images)

What constitutes as a good online design interface? According to William (2009), the reason why Facebook is appealing to the masses is because of it's simple and consistent design interface. Thus, creating a sense of modernity and simplicity which is easy for the users to get use to. People are use to consistency, that is why the recent facebook were only appealing to about 30 million out of the 300 million Facebook users.

The issue regarding the real time streaming is a major problem as new live feeds are consistently updated, thus, making the page load slower than before. Each time that happens, the screen changes focus and you have to scroll to figure out where you were when your reading got interrupted (Bradley, 2009). This makes it longer for the page to load.

Another issue pertaining the changes is the never ending updates of comments from other people whom are not even apart of your friends' list causing more unnecessary information to be shown on the page. As a former Facebook user myself, I had decided to delete my account as I was not pleased with the changes at all. These issues have to be revised in order to keep the majority of the facebook community content with the site.

Reference List:

1. AFP, 2008, Facebook makeover leaves some devotees fuming, The Australian Media Supplement, viewed 15th of November 2009, <http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/facebook-makeover-leaves-some-devotees-fuming/story-e6frgamx-1111117453632>.
   
2. Bradley, T 2009, Facebook Makeover: The Good, The Bad, and The Backlash, Microsoft, viewed 15th of November 2009, <http://tech.msn.com/products/articlepcw.aspx?cp-documentid=22409898>.
3. William, R 2009, Good Design Features, viewed 15th of November 2009, <http://www.ratz.com/featuresgood.html>.
   

New Media: Replacing Old Media?

The way people choose to read is currently going through a significant change in our technology savvy world as E-books are gaining momentum in replacing printed books.

An article entitled 'International versions of Kindle out for Christmas' which was featured in the The Times on the 8th of October 2009, reported that Amazon, an American-based multinational electronic commerce company, will soon begin selling an International version of Kindle e-book reader to their rapidly growing market. E-books are slowly but surely becoming more popular as seen by the increase in revenue sales.

Naughton (2006) states that "the combination of digital convergence, personal computing and global networking seems to have ratcheted up the pace of development and is giving rise to the radical shifts in the environment".


There are many issues pertaining to the rise of new media as questions are being raised regarding the different genres, audiences and context. In the panel discussion: Survival of Media Platforms for Journalism, The guardian's resident blogger, Roy Greenslade suggests that old and new media will converge to form an ultimate Net experience. He thinks that newspapers will decrease in value as audiences particularly the Internet Generation refer to the net for everything. An example would be craigslist, which is a site for classified ads much like the old ads in newspapers is better as it is free.


This brings us to the how media companies will eventually have to adapt to the new changes. Another speaker, Campbell Reid suggests that traditional media will just have to compete with the net, however, newspapers will always have an audience. According to Max Uechtritz, traditional media will always follow the consumer as new technology such as mobileTV is already popular in India and Japan.


In my opinion, I completely agree with Roy Greenslade that old media will eventually learn to converge with new media. As an active audience of television and the net, it will be wise to bring the two platforms together into one big medium. However, traditional media will always be important as the net does have its limitations.

Reference List:

   1.  Harvey, M 2008, International Version of Kindle Out for Christmas, The Times, viewed 13th of November 2009, <http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,26181424-7582,00.html >
   2. Naughton, J 2006, Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem, viewed 13th of November 2009, <http://74.125.155.132/scholar?q=cache:x1ECP2qdwm8J:scholar.google.com/&hl=en&as_sdt=2000>.
   3. The Media Report, 2009, Survival of Media Platforms for Journalism, ABC Radio National, <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2009/2436717.htm#transcript>.
   4. Wikipedia 2009, Amazon.com, viewed 13th of November 2009, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com>.

New Forms of Media Publishing

The advancements in technology today have changed the media ecosystem like never before. The combination of digital convergence, personal computing and global networking systems seems to have ratcheted up the pace of development and is giving rise to radical shifts in the environment (Naughton, 2006).

An example of the way new media is changing the role of journalism and communication is the current rapid rise of user-generated content. Before the Internet, audiences were thought of as passive and not interested in creating content however now we are now through blogging, Youtube and etc. Information is no longer disseminated by the corporate media. Journalism has yet to dissapear, on the other hand it is embracing new media as audiences are changing their medium.

In 2008, Barack Obama used the Internet for his political campaign. Schifferes (2008) states that, "one of the unique features of the Obama campaign has been its ability to embrace social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook". He goes on to say that by doing so, Obama was able to reach a wider and younger audience which was once not politically driven.

Reference List:

1. Naughton, J 2006, Blogging and the Emerging Media Ecosystem, viewed 13th of November 2009,  <http://74.125.155.132/scholar?q=cache:x1ECP2qdwm8J:scholar.google.com/&hl=en&as_sdt=2000>.
   
   
2. Schifferes, S 2008, Internet Key to Obama Victories, BBC News, viewed 13th of November 2009, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7412045.stm>.
   
   

Designing for Online vs Print

Designing for print is far more different than designing for a website. First of all, print is designed in such a way that the placement of the layout  is very important as there is usually a fixed canvas (Nielsen, 1997).

On the other hand, designing online depends on how the reader is scrolling the page. There is no fixed amount of space for the layout. Nielsen (1997) states that "a small amount of 2-dimensional layout is possible, but not to the extent of creating a pre-planned experience with a fixed spatial relationship between elements". Hence, every little detail must be accounted for when designing for print compared to the web as the way readers scan the information differ.

Another difference would be that interactivity between the medium and the reader. In print, interactivity is limited as the words are used to entice the audience and is usually limited to one page.

Print

(Image Source: http://www.bydesigngraphics.com.au/gallery2.html)

However, in web, navigation links are used to refer them to additional information to keep the reader on the website as long as possible. Readers are able to navigate away from the main page and are able to use the modal accordingly because of hyperlinks (Shriver, 1997).

Web

(Image Source: http://www.sleeplessmedia.com/website-design-portfolio-details.php?id=6&keywords=Weeks_Wedding_Photography)

Designing for print is significantly different from designing for web as mentioned in the examples above.

Reference List: 

1. Nielsen, J 1999, Differences Between Print Design and Web Design, Useit.com, viewed 13th of November 2009, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990124.html>. 
2. Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamic in Document Design: Creating Texts for Readers, Wiley Computer Pub., New York.