A Period for this Blog Assignment

Among all the assignments I've had, this blog is the most pleasurable one to do. Not only I can write but also read others' thoughts on new media. Their writings are nice leisure readings covering a wide spectrum of fascinating topics (so click a few links at the blogroll on the right and take a look at them!). Indeed, for this course name being "Writing for New Media", this blog offers me a few hands-on experiences in writing one of the many genres of new media - blog.

Writing blog helps me realize the importance of interactivity in new media. As a blogger, I definitely want people to check out my blog and comment on my posts. To fulfill my ambitious desires, choosing the right topics is essential. To make my blog fun, informative as well as original, I've tried to find examples that local readers tend not be very familiar with, such as Urban Dictionary. How the entries should be composed is another matter: how long should the entries be, what degree of formality should it be, how academic or casual my posts can be etc.. Although this blogging assignment's primary tone is analytic, I've tried not to make it sound too complicated and boring (the last thing I'd try to do in this blog is to intimidate my readers with complex ideas and lengthy texts). By incorporating relevant hyperlinks, images and video, I aim to help my readers to understand my messages better and wish they'd find them fun to look at and watch.

However, the use of the external resources above must be nicely controlled. You may have already discovered that I didn't include many hyperlinks, images or videos in my entries. Even though these resources give posts extra information, too many of them possibly confuse readers. A blogger is like a novelist; you want your piece of writing to be read from the beginning to the end, top to bottom. If numerous hyperlinks, images and videos are incorporated into the entries, seldom is the chance of the readers being determined to read through the whole piece of writing. Where should they be presented in the posts is another important issue to note. By putting them too early, readers' attentions are diverted; too late may render them lose the interest in the posts as there is nothing to refresh their minds.

 

This blogging experience helps me to understand better what've been covered in the course. As the entries have to relate to various themes learnt, before composing the posts, I researched different genres of new media texts and analyse them. This practice assists me to get familiar with the ideas related to new media writing, collaborative and participatory Internet culture, for example (which I always find fascinating as the culture encourages creativity).  Indeed, this blog's also an example of collaborative and participatory new media writing, since blogging emphasizes interactions within the blogger's community; through the processes of others commenting on the posts and me replying others' comments, I know what my readers want to read and know, and therefore I can produce tailor-made texts in the future.  

 

To make this blogging experience so beneficial to me, I'd like to thank those who've read through my posts and commented on my thoughts. I hope the posts fascinate and offer you more interesting information on new media. I treasure your comments and I take them seriously. I really enjoy interacting with you through commenting. Your comments've surely broaden the ground for discussion on respective topics.

(from creativewriting-prompts.com)

 

 

Sample post to be evaluated in detail:

Urban Dictionary - Collaborative Creativity by New Media

 

Comments made on others' blogs:

Skype (Marques Fields) 

My Feeling to Blogging, Online Game, a Space?!, Multimodality boosts credibility?! (Vivian Lai) 

My digital life 4 (Chan Chi Hin)

Facebook - a new era (Connie Wong)

 

 

How Does Collaborative New Media Influence Journalism?

With most of us possessing devices which can connect to the Internet, we can share our thoughts, photos and videos wherever we go. This circumstance gives rise to a new type of journalism called "citizen journalism". Unlike any conventional journalism, citizen journalism makes good use of the great surge of information every day to build news stories. The idea of this type of journalism is that everyone in the society can be a journalist who witness, record and share events that mean something to him or her, with the fact that digital products and media empower individuals. Journalism is therefore not the same as that in the old days.

 

The line distingusting who audiences and journalists are is thinner than that in citizen journalism. In traditional journalistic practice, these two roles are well-defined. Conventionally, journalists refer to people who engage in the profession. Within this context, the journalist-audience relationship and information flow tend to be one-way-top-down. Unless an audience is a witness of the event that a journalist wants to cover, never can he or she participate in the news production.

 

On the contrary, citizen journalism encourages collaborative and participatory production of news stories; the journalist-audience relationship in this case is an interactive and dynamic one. This kind of journalism utilizes not merely official sources but also social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to write news stories. Social media platforms are rich sources for journalists because we tend to put everything we think is worth sharing onto them. Yet, what journalists try to yield are not our statuses but visual evidence related to the events which cannot be captured on the site or is banned from distribution by the local governments. A journalist called Paul Lewis makes remarks on the pros of citizen journalism in the YouTube video below. Using murder cases as examples, he suggests social media effectively allows journalists and the society to form a relatively more complete reality.

 

  "TEDxThessaloniki - Paul Lewis - Citizen Journalism" from YouTube

 

Last year's Egyptian Revolution is a paradigmatic example of new media facilitating news reporting in autocratic countries. Even though the Egyptian government limited greatly on its freedom of press, the incident was still well-known internationally because the Egyptian protesters and  citizen journalists used Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and blogs to share the news primarily between various local protest groups and, in turn, to the world. Photos and videos uploaded by the activists were used in news reports worldwide. From this case, the power of such collaborative and participatory journalistic practice is highly manifested.

 

From a journalistic perspective, the presence of citizen journalists is beneficial to the society. For journalists, the content of the news stories is more reliable and trustworthy because news sources are now more diverse; news is reported based on fact and evidence from vaious perspectives. As everyone of us can be a citizen journalist, freedom of press is not easily limited by the government. We can therefore use our empowered agency to fight against injustice in our society. 

 

What we gained from the advent of new media is that we can have our say in this world, so essentially we should use new media as constructive and beneficial as possible to others and the society.