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

 Almost across the board, bloggers seem to agree that content is the most important feature of a blog (Rodzvilla, 2002; The Weblog Review, 2003). There are many categorizations of blogs which are differing in the content, publishing methodology, and even in the type of readers. Personal blog, or online diary, is the most famous category in which the blogger expresses his feelings. In addition, there are some targeted or focused blogs which focus on a specific subject such as news blogs, political blogs, and educational blogs (Mohtasseb, H and Ahmed, A 2009). The most common form of the classification system of blogs that I am aware of are by different genres. Blog tools such as WordPress.com offers the general method of classifying their blogs into different genres such as:

1. Personal
2. Business
3. Schools
4. Non-profits
5. Politics
6. Military
7. Private
8. Sports
9. How-to; tips and reviews

To identify different styles of blogging may seem difficult nowadays and to me, topic and style of writing blogs seem to work best at classifying blogs. Margaret Simons in my opinion made a good attempt in segregating the different kinds of blogs in a more organised method in her article called the “Towards a Taxonomy of Blogs”. The classifications are pamphleteering blogs, the digest blog, the advocacy blog, the popular mechanics blog, the exhibition blog, the gatewatcher blog, the diary, the advertisement, and the news blog. The topics according to her segregation however can come across as confusing at times considering many tend to overlap or have close relations like the advocacy blog and the advertisement blog. Some may also interlink to each other having multiple categorisations for example a diary blog and the digest blog. This may cause confusion when using this method or segregation.

Reference

Funnel, A and Simons, M 2008, A taxonomy of blogs: transcript, media report, ABC Radio National, viewed 26 April 2011, <http://www.abc.net.au/rn/mediareport/stories/2008/2372882.htm#transcript>.

Miller, CR and Shepherd, D n.d., Blogging as social action: a genre analysis of the weblog, North Carolina State University, viewed 27 April 2011, <http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/blogging_as_social_action_a_genre_analysis_of_the_weblog.html>.

Mohtasseb, H and Ahmed, A 2009, More blogging features for further identification, viewed 28 April 2011, <http://74.125.155.132/scholar?q=cache:bCFy99EHiEUJ:scholar.google.com/&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_vis=1>.

Simons, M 2008, Towards a taxonomy of blogs, viewed on 26 April 2011, <http://www.apo.org.au/commentary/towards-taxonomy-blogs-0>.

Blogs as current phenomenon & benefits to the community.

According to Sifry’s Alerts April, 2007, there are over 120,000 new weblogs and 1.4 million new posts created daily. (Lara C. Ducate and Lara L. Lomicka, 2008, pp 10). More recent surveys by Technorati have shown that the United States consists of the majority of bloggers with 49%, Europe with 29%, Asian Pacific countries with 12%, Canada and Mexico with 7% and South America with 3%. Jon Sobel, author of the findings states that significant growth of mobile blogging is a key trend this year along with the influence of women and mom bloggers. 

Blogging in Malaysia for instance with the help of new media tools seem to be drawn to political issues. Besides unveiling the dark side of politics, political blogs have also proved efficient during political campaigns, in the countries where blogging was intense enough. (Boicu, R, 2011). These reasons for exposing and to publicize have become popular in the blogosphere not only in Malaysia but other countries that are politically questioned.

With the recent political issues happening in Malaysia, political blogs happen to be very prevalent so much so that it is at par with personal interest blogs and blog shops. Korea for example is a country that highly values physical appearance thus most of their blogs concern beauty. The benefits however for these prevalent blogs to the community would be that there is a canvas filled with a variety of opinions and options. Blogs encourage feedback and represent both a reading and a writing activity. In the best of cases, this kind of online writing stimulates debate, furthers critical analysis, and encourages articulation of ideas and opinions. (Godwin, J, 2006, pp. 10-11).

References

Boicu, R 2011, ‘Discursive norms in blogging’, Romanian Journal of Journalism & Communication / Revista Romana de Jurnalism si Comunicare- RRJC, Vol. 6, no. 1, pp 54-62.

Ducate, LC and Lomicka, LL 2008, ‘Computer assisted language learning adventures in the blogosphere: from blog readers to blog writers’, Vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 9–28. 

Tomaszeski, M, Proffitt, J, McClung, S 2009, ‘Exploring the political blogosphere: perceptions of political bloggers about their sphere’, Atlantic Journal of Communication, Vol. 17, no. 2, p72-87, 16p.

Goh, JWP, Quek, CJ  & Lee, OK. (2010). An Investigation of Students' Perceptions of Learning Benefits of Weblogs in an East Asian Context: A Rasch Analysis, Educational Technology & Society.

Jon, S 2010 November 03, State of the Blogosphere 2010, viewed 20 April 2011 <http://technorati.com/blogging/article/state-of-the-blogosphere-2010-introduction/>

Document design

Reep (2006, pp 3) made known that Document design refers to the physical appearance of a document. Because the written text and its presentation work together to provide readers with the information they need. The document design that I will be evaluating on will be the power point presentation that my group has done a few weeks back based on "How prose and graphics interact- Making words and pictures work together"(Schriver, 1997).  

The first suggestion of improvement would be the written information. Certain points in the power point had more information than others as seen in comparison below in Figure 1 and 2. This is considered to be improperly balanced. Bernhardt S (1986, pp 72) made clear that the most relevant law is that of equilibrium suggests that items in a visual field strive for balance with other items in the field. Some explanations made in the slides were short while some were long winded. 

This suggestion of change can also relate to the distribution of graphic aids. Some points provided one graphic aid as example while others provided several graphics aids. The suggestion is to provide more than enough but less than too many examples for effective reading and balance the weight of information provided. Reep (2006, pp 4) suggest that page balance refers to having comparable visual "weight".

The final change would be to improve the visual consistency in the slides. Putnis, Peter & Petelin, Roslyn (1996, pp 34) states that consistency is crucial in all elements of your document and that there should be a stylistic consistency which is to maintain your style of presentation of the document. Figure 2 and 3 below show the lack of stylistic consistency and similarity because there is no uniformity with the point bulleting. Some display dashes and numbering while other slides display a circular bullet. This does not provide the readers easy flow of reading.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Reference

Bernhardt, S A 1986 ‘Seeing the text’, National Council of Teachers of English, Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 66-78.

Putnis, P & Petelin, R 1996, Professional communication: principles and applications, Prentice Hall, Sydney.

Reep, DC 2006, Technical writing: document design, Pearson/Longman, New York .

Russell, W n. d, 10 Tips for creating successful business presentations, About.com guide, viewed 8 April 2011, <http://presentationsoft.about.com/od/powerpointinbusiness/tp/bus_pres_tips.ht>

Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Pub, New York.

Purpose of my blog

The purpose of this blog post is to discuss key elements and principles of publishing and media issues. The issues may consist of design, editing and evaluation that are relevant and important in document designing. “When we write, our message is expressed not only linguistically, but also through a visual arrangement of marks on a page. Any form of text analysis which ignores this will not be able to account for all the meanings expressed in texts." 

(Kress, G and van Leeuwen, T, 1998, pp 2) 

 

The target audience that I have chosen to relate this blog to is the tertiary students that are required to create different documents based on their assignments.

Reference

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 1998, Front pages: The critical analysis of newspaper layout, Blackwell, Oxford.