New forms of media publishing.

The publishing of media in today has changed as Naughton ( 2006) mentioned 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 radical shifts in the environment.” Indeed, this has altered how conventional media and journalism works , especially with the new media platforms such as facebook, twitter and youtube.

With the new ways to publish media, audiences do not just digest information like how it works for traditional media. Now people are able to choose and contribute their opinion to the information that they read (Harper, 2009). This thought is also supported by Alex Bruns (2007) who claimed that “users are always already necessarily also producers of the shared knowledge base, regardless of whether they are aware of this role”.

In the new media, people are able to pick and choose the information that they pick because of the multimodality that is incorporated in the source of information. For example , on website the combination of modes such as hyperlinks, graphics, audio, text and menu options enables the reader to choose their own pathway of reading the information depending on what they would like to read ( Walsh, 2006)

References:

Harper, R A , The Social Media Revolution: Exploring Journalism and News Media Organizations, viewed 20 April 2011,< http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/202/the-social-media-revolution-exploring-the-impact-on-journalism-and-news-media-organizations>

Naughton, J 2006, Blogging and the emerging media ecosystem, Reuters Institute, viewed 27 April 2011,< http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/discussion/blogging.pdf>

Produsage: A Working Definition 2007, viewed 23 April 2011, <http://produsage.org/>

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, p.24-37.

Types of blogging communities & methods to build blogging communities.

Blogging community means a group of people sharing the same interest. It also means communication that is accessible to people regarding a topic (articlebase.com, 2008)

To create a blogging community one has to create their own social network, use message board to construct and control discussions, feature with an existing online community (Kalli, 2008). In a way this encourages bloggers to find and connect with other bloggers. The process of connecting with other bloggers are now able to connect easily with other blogging community with the help of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and feedreaders can assist how people read and discover blogs ( White, 2006).

There are three types of blogging community. According to White(2006) the types of blogging communities are the single blog centric community, the central connecting topic community and the Boundaried community. The single blog centric community is a type of blogging community that is focused on only one blog. The blog could be owned by a blogger or an organization. The commenters and the readers are also part of the community but the central identity of the community are primarily the blog owner. The central connecting topic community is a type of blogging community that is formed when other blogs of same interest connect with each other. Boundaried Community is a blogging community that consists of a group blogs and blog readers hosted one particular site of a platform.

References:

A Blogging Community is an Online Possibility to Share Interests 2008, Articlebase, viewed 22 April 2011, <http://www.articlesbase.com/blogging-articles/a-blogging-community-is-an-online-possibility-to-share-interests-309903.html>

Blogs and Community –launching a new paradigm for online community? 2006,The Knowledge Tree, viewed 25 April 2011, <http://kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2006/edition-11-editorial/blogs-and-community-–-launching-a-new-paradigm-for-online-community>

Kalli, A , Three Ways to Create Around your Blog , Virtual Assist, viewed, 26 April 2011, < http://www.virtualassist.net/blog/three-ways-to-create-a-community-around-your-blog.html/>

Classification of blogs & opinion about the most appropriate classification approach.

In regards of the classification of blogs there are several ways to determine them. According to Simons (2008) she classifies the blogs as to their purpose. For example, pamphleteering blog where an individual expresses their point of view regarding an issue. Digest blog where people collect information from other source and summarize them. Advocacy blog where the blog tends to be voiced out by a interest group in sharing their thoughts in an informational way. The last is Popular Mechanics blog, which is instructional blog featuring information on how to do things. The exhibition blog, where the blogs are usually filled with aesthetics in the form of photography, poetry and it is usually hosted by artistic people. There is the Gatewatcher blog, this blog scrutinizes how the media plays its role and is run by people who are expert in the field itself.The Diary is a type of blog that features about people’s personal lives.The Advertisement is a blog simply promotes and advertise a certain product. The news blog is a blog which delivers news.

Another source however has classified blogs according to their mode or mechanism. For example, bloggingjunction.com mentions four types of blogs, which are Company blogs, personal blogs, general blogs, and Niche blog. Other than that, (Cybersoc.com, 2007) identify blogs in terms of models as well as how audience review the blog such as ‘Closed blogs’, ‘Blogs as conduit information’ and ‘Blogs as participant in ‘The Conversation’. Closed blogs are considered as the kinds of blogs which has a small amount of audience but they are passionate in their interest and the blog will unlikely grow. Blogs as conduit information are blogs that has larger audiences than the Closed Blog and the Blogs as participant in ‘The Conversation’ is the type of blog that has people connecting with each other through conversations and its audience is as big as the number of the people who are active in the conversation.

In my opinion, blogs are now too complex and intricate to classify. Although the classification of blogs may fit the types and labels that it is given but blogs have now evolved and in its content has many elements and aspects which makes it hard to group then in certain kinds.

References:

Talwar, S 2010, 4 Types of Blogs that exist, Blogging Junction, viewed 24 April 2011, <http://www.bloggingjunction.com/4-types-of-blogs/>

3 Types of Blogs : Closed , Conduit , and Participant in the Conversation 2007 , Cybersoc, viewed 23 April 2011,

Taxonomy of Blogs 2008, Media Report, viewed 25 April 2011,<http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript>

Blogs as current phenomenon & benefits of blogging to the community

Blogging is now a huge phenomenon that is taking over the internet world. Almost everyone owns a blog. As of 2010 the current scope of the blogosphere is that the highest percentage of bloggers according to Technorati.com are from the US. The second highest blogging community come from Europe which is 29% and 12% from Asia Pacific , 7 % from Canada and Mexico and the least is from South America which is 3 %. Other than that, the total of identified blogs on the internet are about 160, 561,508 and still in counting (blogpulse.com, 2011). In Malaysia , studies shows that there are as many as 30,000 blogs existing in the country (Smeltzer,2008).

In Malaysia, most blogger tend to incorporate their personal thoughts and interest in their writing. One of the most popular topic that most Malaysian tend to dwell on is about politics. Malaysian generally have their own thoughts about the ongoing situation of the country’s politic. Technorati.com has also mentioned that the current trend in blogging for most people is to share their thoughts and interests.

The benefits of having the type of blogs that feature personal opinions is that people have a sense of freedom in speaking their mind as well as debate and receive constructive criticism from other people regarding issues or topics that is being discussed on the blog.

References:

BlogPulse.com, Blogpulse Stats 2011, viewed 20 April 2011 , <http://www.blogpulse.com/>

Smeltzer, S. (2008) ‘Blogging in Malaysia: Hope for a new democratic technology?’, Journal of International Communication , viewed 23 April 2011, < http://www.cprsouth.org/wp-content/uploads/drupal/Sandra_Smeltzer.pdf>

Sobel , J 2010, State of the Blogosphere 2010 Introduction, Technorati State of the Blogosphere , viewed 26 April 2011,<http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2010-introduction/>