New forms of media publishing

According to Naughton (2006, p.10) the new media ecosystem will be richer, more diverse and more complex because of the number of content producers, the density of the interaction between each other and the speed at which each other can communicate.

Some New Forms of Media Publications are:

• Blogs
• YouTube
• Online Magazines
• Online Newspapers
• Online Books

So how is new forms of media publishing different from old forms of media?

The combine affordances (‘showing’, ‘telling’ and ‘hearing’) the digital modes offer in this multimodal environment has created a dynamic interaction between the users and the site (Walsh,2006, p.34). Perhaps the most significant difference is the emergence of the user generated contents. This new forms of media allow readers to be as creative as they can be. They can be the producer of and at the same time the publisher (Snurb, 2008, p.1-2). 

As U.S Secretary of states Hillary Clinton emphasized on her speech about internet freedom, the spread of information networks is forming a new nervous system for our planet, when something happens anywhere the rest of us learn it in real time and responds to in real time.

U.S Secretary of states Hillary speak on internet freedom.

Source:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccGzOJHE1rw

These new forms of media’s are allowing citizens to be active journalists, thus providing opportunities to be active participants in providing news and information. According to Reuters Traditional Italian winemakers are now using social media to publish their products. “Crociani, who says she was the first Italian winemaker to start a blog in 2004, said she has gained many new clients -individual wine lovers, restaurant owners and professional buyers -after launching a Facebook page.” (Reuters, 2010)

Twitter has upgraded its service to its users, The company announced deals with 16 partners to let users embed their multimedia content within the site, can showcase material from Google Inc.’s YouTube and Yahoo! Inc.’s Flickr, along with smaller services like Justin.TV” (MacMillan , 2010).

Surely the new media freedom of journalism has become a voice for some unheard voices among our societies while it also disturbs some counterparts in a society. Here is an interesting heading from Bloomberg, “Cyberactivists Get Help From YouTube, U.S. to Thwart Repression”. Ashraf is co-founder of AccessNow which was created because of the Iran’s post-election restrictions on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook  gets help from different sources to broadcast.

Source:  http://www.accessnow.org/

The Internet has built-in perils for democracy advocates. Lakshmanan     ( 2010)  cited according to Global Voices Online, an international bloggers network, has documented 206 cases of bloggers under arrest or threat, most in China, Egypt and Iran. In 2003 Iran became the first nation to imprison a blogger for blogging. (Tecnorati, 2009).

According to (Chau.et.all, 2009, p. 40), they have identified and analyzed a selected set of 28 racist hate groups (820 bloggers) on Xanga, one of the most popular blog-hosting sites.

References:

• Lakshmanan A.R. I, 22 February 2010, cyberactivists get help from YouTube, U.S. to Thwart Repression , viewed, 27 September 2010.  http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aecEMHij8RfM

• Chau. M , Lam. P , Shiu. B , Xu. J, Cao. J , January/February 2009, A blog Mining Framework, IEEE Computer Society.

• McMillan, D 15 Sepetember 2010, Twitter Redesigns Site, Makes It Easier to Post Videos, Photos, viewed 27 September 2010, < http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-15/twitter-redesigns-site-making-it-easier-to-share-videos-photos-and-maps.html >

• Naughton.J 2006, ‘Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem’, viewed on 25 September 2010, <http://reuteursinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/about/discussion/blogging.html >.

• Sussman.M, 2009, State of blogosphere 2009 introduction, viewed on 27 September 2010,< http://technorati.com/blogging/article/day-5-twitter-global-impact-and/page-2/

• Snurb, 20 April 2008, Produsage: An Introduction, http://produsage.org/

• 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.

Blogging Community

According to Wei Blogs are often situated within a blog community of similar interest. These communities are useful, it allows easy access to specific information of interest out of millions blog that are available. Each of these blogging communities has its own practices and behavior, some with explicit guidelines.

Similarly, Bock (cited by White, 2005), communities can be characterized by common interest, frequent interaction and identification, all three things must be present for an online space to be a community. A successful blog is one which involves community building, among peers or professionals or a community among readers. According to Donath (1997), ‘people are not only looking for information, they are also looking for affiliation, support and affirmation’. Blogs have facilitated these requirements by tagging, linking and being able to comment on each other’s blogs and with number of other features.

Example of a blog community, MarmaBLOG community focus on working women, topics in the blog includes from business, baby picture posting to wedding planning and many more.

Source: http://marmaladya.21publish.com/

"Bloggers can easily link to other blogs using, comments, hyperlinks, blogrolls, or Track-Backs-these technologies let them interact with their readers and form virtual communities in the blogosphere",(Chau.et.all, 2009, p. 37). Here are some tips from Kinkeldei (2007, p.10-11) on how to grow and work a blog community:

• Be clear in direction and topic

• Integrate existing blogs and invite users.

• Activate community features like blog directory and user directory on the community portal.

• Keep members of the community involved and informed.

• Link entries, which are tagged on Technorati, i.e. education, fashion, etc., to your blog community through an RSS feed from Technorati.

 Types of Blogging Communities

White (2006), lists three types of blogging communities, Blog Centric Community, Topic centric community and Boundaried community.

Types of blog base communities

Source:- http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community.

Single Blog/Blogger Centric Community

This is where readers go and comment on early bloggers, getting to know not only blogger but other commentors and their views as well. These centralized blog that is firmly controlled by the blog’s owner in terms of content.

An Example of a Blogger centric community.
Source: http://www.interplast.org/

Central Connecting Topic Community

Topic centric community is built on network formation as several blogs are linked together under a common interest.

Example of a Topic centric blogging community. Source:- http://www.lonelyplanet.com/

Boundaried Communities

Boundaried community is a collection of blogs and blog readers are invited to host on a single site. 

Example of a boundaried Community, where Clear boundaries as defined by registration and log–in. (White, 2006). Source: http://edublogs.org/

References:

• Wei.C, Formation of norms in a blogging community, viewed 26 September 2010, http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/formation_of_norms.html

• White, N 2005, How some folks have tried to describe community, Updated April 2005 viewed 26 September 2010, http://www.fullcirc.com/community/definingcommunity.htm

• White, N 2006, Blogs and Community – launching a new paradigm for online community?, viewed 25 September 2009, http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-%E2%80%93-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community.

• Kinkeldei,B, 6 February 2007,Whitepaper Blog Communities: Forging Connections and Promoting growth Through Blog Communities, 21publish,coorperative publishing.www.21publish.com/pub/21publish/blogging-whitepaper.pdf

• Donath, JS 1997, Inhabiting the virtual city: the design of social environments for electronic communities, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.

•   Chau. M , Lam. P , Shiu. B , Xu. J, Cao. J , January/February 2009, A blog Mining Framework, IEEE Computer Society.

v

Classification of Blogs

Blogs can be categorized according these four categories:

• Subject matter: entertainment, sports and travel.
• Media type: Vlog, Photolog, Podcast and Tumbleblog.
• Device: Moblog, Sketchlog.
• Status of Publisher-:business and corporate blog.

                            

 Flickr: an example of a Moblog.  Flickr was launched in 2004 and by April 2005 it had 270,000 users. (Naughton. J, 2006,p. 8) 
Image Source: http://blog.flickr.net/en

According to Sun et al. (2007,p. 308), classification of blogs are difficult because of the user generated content, a blogger may write any topic of his/her interest and the dynamic nature of blogs. There are blogs which combine many subjects and medias, which makes it difficult to classify it. Farrington (2009), has classified blogs into four types, which are quite simple and easy to understand. Below are the three types:

Personal blogs

A blog which comprises of personal likings, emotions, experiences and reviews irrespective of the topic.

Example of a famous Personal Blog in Malaysia

Source: http://www.yasminthestoryteller.blogspot.com/

Corporate blogs

These are blogs that are published by a particular organization to achieve organizational goals.

Source: http://www.liver.org.my/

Professional Blogs

These blogs are reader centric, which is created to share expertise and knowledge to a certain industry or on a specific topic. 

An example of a professional blog

Source: http://www.kitchenhintsandtips.com/

Micro Blogs

These blogs have brief text posts or micro media such as photos, audio clips, and so forth. Some of the most notable examples of micro blogging feature providers are www.twitter.com , www.tumbler.com , www.plurk.com.

Example of a Microblog.

Source: www.tumbler.com

Author and media analyst Margaret Simons (2007), has given names to define 9 different types of blogs:

• Pamphleteering Blogs
• Digest Blog
• Advocacy Blog
• Popular Mechanics Blog
• Exhibition Blog
• Diary
• Advertisement
• News Blog

Simons used more terminology words to name the type of blog, while I find Farringdons classification approach more encompassing as he has included micro-blogging as well in his classifications. I would say classification according to subject is more preferable.

References:
* Simons, M 2008, A taxonomy of blogs, ABC Media Report, viewed 18 November 2009,  http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript

*Sun, A, Suryanto, M.A & Liu, Y 2007, 'Blog Classification Using Tags: An Empirical Study', Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

*Naughton, J 2006, ‘Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem’, viewed on 26 September 2010, http://reuteursinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/about/discussion/blogging.html

*Farrington, R 2008, "Different Types of Blogs", Article Monkeys, viewed 26 September 2010,
http://www.articlemonkeys.com/Different-Types-Of-Blogs-8430.html

* http://www.junjowebdesign.com/junjo-blog-design.html

Blogosphere current phenomenon & Benefits to the community

In October 2006, Technorati was tracking 1.3 million postings per day, about 15 posts per second and tracking over 70 million weblogs, (Sifry, D 2007). Surprisingly in 2008 report Technorati highlighted they are tracing 133 million blogs, almost double the size that was tracked in 2006.

“Blogs are online personal diaries managed by software packages that allow single-click Publishing”,( Sun, A, Suryanto, MA, Liu Y 2007,p. 307).

   

You can see some of the benefits of blogs from the above diagram.

Source: www.flickr.com

According to Technorati 2009 report, Self-expression and sharing expertise continue to be the primary motivations for bloggers. The rise of the professional blogger continues. Overall, bloggers are a highly educated and affluent group. The state of blogosphere in 2009 shows much on the growing of blogger’s influence from a wide variety of subject range, (Sussman,M 2009). Bloggers believe that politics and business are among the fields most impacted by the blogosphere.

                                    

Source:- http://technorati.com

This is considered due to blogosphere impact on 2008 US presidential election, current financial crisis and Iranis turning to the blogosphere to engage in commentary critical of the regime (protests of the presidential election in Iran). Overall people see blogosphere as a reliable news source than traditional media on these topics. 

Social media is the current trend in the Blogosphere.

Source: http://olliebray.typepad.com/

 Twitter and other social media represent one of the most important trends affecting the blogosphere in the year 2009, (Sussman.M, 2009). In Malaysia, political blogs are influential on the elections, opposition candidates benefit more by having a blog than non-opposition candidates, as blogging provides opportunities denied to them by Malaysia's state controlled media,(Gong. R, 2010).

Blogs has provided a plat form for advertising, educating readers on health issues, sharing important news and personal thoughts. Analyzing personal entries could provide opportunities for governments and companies to understand the public in a way that was previously costly or even unavailable,( Chau.et.all, 2009, p. 36).

  

According to Gaman (2007),  28% of Malaysian Top 50 bloggers write about personal stuff while 16% talk about politics and technology respectively. Some of the most popular blogs in Malaysia are, kennysia,  SapiensBryan,  Hemmy and Yasmin The Story Teller.

A popular Blog in Malaysia

Source: http://kays-entertainment.blogspot.com

References:

•   Chau, M,Lam, P , Shiu, B , Xu, J & Cao,  J , January/February 2009, ‘A blog Mining Framework, IEEE Computer Society’.

•   Gong, R 2010, ‘Internet politics and state media control: Candidate weblogs in Malaysia’, Communication Policy Research South, viewed 25 September 2010,< http://www.cprsouth.org/wp-content/uploads/drupal/Rachel%20Gong.pdf>.

•  Gaman, 6 February 2007, ‘50 Most Influential Blogs in Malaysia’, viewed 25 September 2010<    http://www.sabahan.com/2007/02/06/50-most-influential-blogs-in-malaysia/>

• Sifry, D 2004, State of the Blogosphere, Technorati, viewed 28 September 2010, <http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000443.html>

•  Sussman, M 2009, State of blogosphere 2009 introduction, viewed on 27 September 2010,<http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2009-introduction/>.