As with anything that is associated with technology and the Internet, weblogs or blogs, do not take one particular or predetermined form. Actually, blogs, like many other things in the World Wide Web, are multifaceted.
The types of blogs vary and are as distinctive as the people who choose to publish them. According to Technorati.com (2008), there are six major categories of blogs, namely:
(a) blogs pertaining to entertainment;
(b) technology;
(c) business;
(d) politics;
(e) lifestyle
These major categories branch into sub-categories which adds up to 40 or so sub-categories. For example, under the category of lifestyle alone there are 11 sub-categories:
· Architecture
· Art
· Autos
· Fashion
· Food and Wine
· Health and Fitness
· Home and Garden
· Literature
· Parenting
· Pets
· Travel
Notwithstanding the categorisation, blogs are not as easily identifiable as people deem. A plethora of blogs nowadays are a fusion of the various categories.
Galvanisation
Blogs now come in a package so to speak where a personal journal, videos, political discussion, links and so on abide in the same plateau. I would usually consider the topic of a blog before actually reading it. The subject matter of a blog, more than anything else, or at least for me, is the most significant.
Nevertheless, it would be a fatal mistake to conclude that the galvanisation of various elements into one single blog is detrimental to its purpose.
In fact, this creates interactivity in a blog and ‘interactivity is highly desirable’ (Li 2006, p. ). Li (2006, p.78) also added that ‘More choices to readers may indicate the power on the readers’ side and earn a higher efficiency score.’
Virtual Connection
It is not uncommon for people with similar interests to form a club. Likewise, an online or virtual community is a group of people with common interests and practices who communicate … in an organised way using the Internet … through a common location or mechanism.’ (Averweg & Leaning 2007).
A blogging community is simply a virtual community created by bloggers from around the world. As there are various book clubs so are there various blogging communities such as MyBlogLog, BeanRocket Blogging Communities and BlogCatalog to name a few.
What these blogging communities do is that they connect various blogs and bloggers to other bloggers. For example, MyBlogLog ‘enables readers of Web pages to leave information about themselves, building a social network among fans of such things as … MySpace pages, commercial Web publications, or personal blogs.’ (Hardy 2007).
How I would create a blogging community via my blog is by creating a comment section and by providing links to other credible blogs on the sidebar.
Reference
Averweg, UR & Leaning, M 2007, Are ‘Virtual Communities’ Virtual?, The Southern Africa Institute of Management Services, viewed 29 April 2008, < http://www.mtm-association.org.za/Are%20Virtual%20Communities%20Virtual.pdf>.
Blog directory 2008, Technorati, viewed 27 April 2008, < http://technorati.com/blogs/directory>.
Hardy, Q 2007, Yahoo! Snaps Up Mybloglog.com, Forbes.com, viewed 29 April 2008, < <http://www.forbes.com/markets/commodities/2007/01/09/yahoo-mybloglog-web-tech-media-cx_0109ces-blog.html>.
Li, X (eds) 2006, Internet Newspapers: The Making of a Mainstream Medium, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, USA.
Print Design versus Web Design
Designing for print and designing for a web is as different as water and earth. But the problem is that some designers, especially Web designers, get the two mixed up and end up designing something unattractive and render their site futile.
In print, a reader reads from left to tight or right to left considering their cultural background. That is, ‘reading is linear …’ (Kress & van Leeuwen 2006, p.178).
In web, conversely, a reader does not read linearly as is the traditional way of reading but they read in the F-pattern. A reader usually reads ‘in a horizontal movement … Next, users move down the page a bit and then read across in a second horizontal movement … Finally, users scan the content's left side in a vertical movement.’ (Nielsen 2006).
Therefore, when designing for web, the content should not be flooded with information. Nielsen (1997) said that ‘People rarely read Web pages word by word ….’. He also said that ‘Reading from computer screens is about 25% slower than reading from paper.’ (Nielsen 1997).
Time vs Time
The two pictures above are that of the Time magazine. Picture (a) is the homepage of the online version of the magazine while Picture (b) is the front page of the magazine.
A reader is first “attacked” for want of a better word by the cover or front page of the magazine. This cover page has to be arresting and magnetic or in other words it has to be highly salient.
According to Kress & van Leeuwen (2006, p.210), salience is a feature or some features of an element that makes it arresting or the ‘degree to which an element draws attention to itself’.
Therefore, the design has to be in such a way that it sort of glares at a reader and draws their attention. The picture has to be big and colourful. Walsh said that responses in an audience are usually achieved by the choices of color, size, angle and so on. She called this ‘visual grammar.’ (Walsh 2006).
However, one cannot do that in web design, that is, one cannot place glaring pictures in a site because it would not be easy on the eye. Besides that, in web design, links to other articles are also included, something which cannot be done in print.
Reference
Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, Reading Images: Grammar of Visual Design, Routledge, London.
Nielsen, J 2006, F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content, Useit.com, viewed 29 April 2008, < http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html>.
Nielsen, J 1997, Be Succinct! (Writing for the Web), Useit.com, viewed 29 April 2008, <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9703b.html>.
Nielsen, J 1997, How Users Read on the Web, Useit.com, viewed 29 April 2008, < http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html>.
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.
Advancement + Internet = New trends
The advancement and rapidity of technology has given rise to novel forms of media publishing including new types of blogs. The emergence of these new “trends” is the testament to the popularity of blogs. Some of the new forms of blogs include:
(a) Moblogs
(b) Splogs
(c) Vlogs
(d) Microblogs
(e) Miniblogs
The prevalence of Vlogs and Moblogs can be accounted to multimodality which according to Walsh (2006, p.24) is the incorporation of ‘spoken or written language, still or moving images … and may incorporate music and sound’. IntuiLab (2008) reported that ‘users confirmed their preference for multimodal interfaces as against unimodal interfaces’.
Splogs are the new type of blogs, if they can be called blogs. It would be a crime, truth be told, to say that splogs are blogs. ‘A splog (spam blog) is a fake blog created solely to promote affiliated Web sites, with the intent of skewing search results and artificially boosting traffic.’ (Splog 2006).
Besides new forms of blogs, there are also other new forms of media publishing. Print newspapers, magazines and even books are now all available online. But even with these media, ethical issues arise.
The Brian Effect
A good example to illustrate this point is the Abu Ghraib prison pictures. Brian Walski, a photojournalist of Los Angeles Times, digitally manipulated several pictures he captured so that they appeared as something different altogether (Bersak 2006).
What happened was that he combined two different pictures digitally and produced a fake picture which was published in many publications.
For the whole story on Brian Walski and the scandal thereafter, click here - < http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/essays/vanRiper/030409.htm>.
For a similar story of digital manipulation of pictures of war, click here - < http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5254838.stm> or here < http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13165165/>.
Reference
Bersak, DR 2006, Ethics In Photojournalism: Past, Present, and Future, School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, viewed 30 April 2008, <http://web.mit.edu/drb/Public/PhotoThesis/>.
IntuiLab.com, Multimodality, viewed 1 May 2008, < http://www.intuilab.com/presentation/en/301-multimodalite.html>.
Riper, FV 2006, Manipulating Truth, Losing Credibility, Washington Post, viewed 30 April 2008, < http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/essays/vanRiper/030409.htm>.
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.
Whatis.com 2006, Splog, viewed 29 April 2008, <http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci1137059,00.html>.
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