In doing this weblog, I able to clarify and analyse some of the issues in publication and designs. There are many issues that happening, I have chosen four issues to discuss about. The first issue is about the industry of publishing. The issue happened to the publishing industry is that they are facing problem that the books sales from the industry is stagnating. So, the people in the publishing industry learn the multimodality theory to overcome the problem. However, the problem was not totally resolved but at least it can help a little.

The second issue is about the media law. In the publishing industry, it does have their own restrictions also. There are a huge number of books actually being banned in many countries due to their sexuality content, violence and etc. This is also indirectly restrict the idea of the publishing industry and narrow down the books being publish in country. In other words, this will lower down the sales for the books.

Continuously, the third issue is about the media ethics. In the media industry, many companies neglect ethical issues whereby they take photos and publish according to the public or celebrity preferences. Perception of the audience on photojournalism varies depending on individuals. The American Society of Magazine Editors has allowed editors to continue regulating themselves. It is now essential that editors practice ethical principles in future publishing.

The fourth issue illustrates the upcoming usage of e-books. E-books provide far more benefits and now cover a larger proportion of the American market as compared to printed books. The start of the e-book era leads to a better ecosystem, and preserves sustainability by saving trees. E-books are expected to show high growth in the Asian markets in the near future.

To conclude, I have learnt the importance of ethical principles within the publishing and media industries. The media industry can be very misleading and may influence consumers into believing “artificial reality”. It is important for authors, editors and publishers to fully understand readers’ expectations but maintain good ethical principles to ensure healthy competition and a healthy industry.

Ebook

In the past, product focused success depended on exploiting capabilities in branding, manufacturing, distributions, etc., to deliver the best product. Today, companies focus on carrying over relationships, with best consumers and partners to deliver the best experience. The introduction of the Kindle Fire by Amazon pressed forward with a full-fledged ecosystem strategy. Amazon concentrates on a new business model, differentiating itself from Apple in both its footprint and profit model.

The introduction of the e-books is a new business model preferred by many publishers and readers to protect the ecosystem and save costs. Furthermore, it creates great convenient to consumers being able to read more than ten books by carrying a mere Apple iPad. Quality authors who kept the rights to their work realized that it is an advantage to publish themselves on Kindle rather than begging for contracts from major publishers. This reflects the beginning of a new model of mainstream book publishing.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said, “Invention comes in many forms and at many scales. The most radical and transformative of inventions are often those that empower others to unleash their creativity – to pursue their dreams. These innovative, large-scale platforms are not zero-sum – they create win-win situations and create significant value for developers, entrepreneurs, customers, authors, and readers.....”(Dignan 2012).

B&N is Amazon’s main competitor in the e-book space (Webb 2012). The expansion of these companies into the e-book model further explains the transition of the world market to this new business model whereby the traditional “hard copies” will no longer be preferred in the near future.

To conclude, the introduction of e-books benefits readers in many ways. Not only does it create a better ecosystem, it increases the convenience of users needing only to carry a tablet instead of dozens of books and includes videos and full coloured illustrations as well as links to websites which increases the level of interest of the readers. These hypotheses are supported by the increasing competition between major companies such as Amazon and B&N. According to the Association of American Publishers, in the first quarter of 2012 the e-book market overtaken printed books in the American market. Although currently e-books are not highly preferred in the Asian market, it is believed that there will come a time in the near future where e-books will dominate the world publishing market.

Reference

Webb J 2012, ‘Publishing News: B&N improves its ecosystem’, toc.oreilly.com, viewed on 7^th November 2012, <http://toc.oreilly.com/2012/09/publishing-news-bn-improves-its-ecosystem.html)>.

Dignan L 2012, ‘Amazon’s Bezos: ‘Even well meaning gatekeepers slow innovation’, www.zdnet.com, viewed on 7^th November 2012, <http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/amazons-bezos-even-well-meaning-gatekeepers-slow-innovation/74116>.

Wikert J 2012, ‘Why used Ebook Ecosystem makes sense’, jwikert.typepad.com, viewed on 7^th November 2012,<http://jwikert.typepad.com/the_average_joe/2012/08/why-a-used-ebook-ecosystem-makes-sense.html>.

Media Ethics

Visual, situational and cultural contexts play an important role in influencing audiences to believe what can be perceived from the published article, news or video. Different combination of these approaches may lead people into having had different understanding or interpretations about the meaning of an image although they are basically looking at the same image. Well, it happened to me a few times. 

As explained by Kress and van Leeuwen (2006), visual communications can be understood differently within a community because of the differences in ‘social semiotics’ that each individuals in a particular community has. Hence, it explains the reasons why we might have different interpretations towards an image.

The article discusses the techniques used to “improving” articles published to satisfy the major stakeholders. These stakeholders include the published icon, celebrities with certain demands, the readers and personal satisfaction of the photographers. With the ability and motive to create such “improvements”, different photographers and/or editors take on different approaches.

In fact, imagery plays an important role in depicting a situation and it helps people to stimulate their thoughts regarding an issue. Immediacy revolves around images as they immediately capture the attention of people hence evoking a sort of emotion from it (Hansen, 2011).

Schirato and Yell (2000) explained that audiences interpret the context of a text based on the aspects of the situations, which include; what is going on and where, those involved the role of the text in the situation, the other texts which are related to the current text, the wider social and cultural context.

As discussed in the previous article, it is important to define to what extent should “improvements” be allowed and how much deviation it will cause to its audiences that will lead them away from the actual message or even from reality. Strategies should be developed to prevent and detect ethical violation, imposing strict regulations and guidelines.

To conclude, the perception of the audience is out of the photographer or journalist’s or photographer’s control. It is however important to maintain photojournalism ethics to promote a healthy media industry, providing accurate visual, situational and cultural context to readers. The American Society of Magazine Editors have allowed editors to continue regulating themselves, therefore it is essential that editors carry along ethical principles and ensure publications are no mere deviations from reality.

Reference

Cynthia RK n.d., ‘Ethical issues in writing and publishing’, www.ons.org, viewed on 5^th November 2012, <http://www.ons.org/Publications/CJON/AuthorInfo/WritingSupp/Ethics>.

Hansen, L 2011, ‘Reading the world's mind: Political, socioeconomic and cultural approaches to understanding worldwide Internet search queries’ The International Communication Gazette , vol. 73, no. 3, pp. 233-251.

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 2006, Reading images: the grammar of visual design, 2nd edn., Routledge, London.

Schirato, T & Yell, S 2000, Communication and culture: an introduction, viewed 7th June 2011, <http://books.google.com/books?id=x0eCjzs0bhwC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false>.

Wilkins L, & Christians CG 2009, ‘The Hand Book of Mass Media Ethics’, Taylor and Francis, UK.

Media Restriction

All countries have their own restrict rules and regulations. Regulations sometimes even happen in a family, schools, company, or industry. However, some of these rules and regulations are set informally. For example, in a family, parents set rules for their kids to restrict them from coming home late. There are also some formal ones like in a company and industries, subordinates actually need to sign a contract during interviews or entering the firm.

In media, there are also some rules and regulations took place. According to Prasad (2008), there will have two main aspect to be concern in the media industries which are ‘1) media laws about the publications of a story which many relate to libel and defamation; 2) media laws about permissible comments on legal proceedings which include contempt of court’.

In a news article written by Yeo (2012), there are many books banned in Malaysia due to some of the restrict rules. He analyse the books in Malaysia and came out with a result of total number of banned books are 1,517. This even includes a book written by a former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir with his book’s name, ‘The Malay Dilemma’. According to The Economist (n.d.), the reason for the book is banned is due to the racism factors. He added some content of the book by saying that the book is about the ‘deals with the relations between the two main races in Malaysia; the so-called indigeneos Malays who formed roughly half the population and the so-called immigrant Chinese who make up a third’. However, when Dr Mahathir takes charge to be the Prime Minister, the book is back on shelf for people to view it.

On the other hand, the factor that affects the media in some countries being published will be the sexuality factor. In some countries, media with sexual content are often being unviewed to the country. As stated by Yeo (2012), the word ‘banned list’ is another way of asking people to read. This is because people often curious; therefore, people will just view it to have a glance.

Reference

Prasad K 2008, ‘Media Law and Ethics: Readings in Communication Regulation’, cyberjournalist.org.in, viewed on 4^th November 2012, <http://cyberjournalist.org.in/medialaw.html>.

The Economist n.d., ‘The hypocritical Malay dilemma… Hypocrisy would be a better word’, malaysia.jbdirectory.com, viewed on 5^th November 2012, <http://malaysia.jbdirectory.com/The_Malay_Dilemma>.

Yeo I, 2012, ‘Interesting Reading: The banned book list’, themalaysianinsider.com, viewed on 4^th November 2012, < http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/books/article_book/interesting-reading-the-banned-books-list/>.

Publishing Industry

In the world now, there are plenty of search engines in the internet. People all around the world tends to share out their articles, journals, online books, newspaper and other publications. This has been a major concern for the publishing industry. According to Robinson (2012), ‘book sales are stagnating, profit margins are being squeezed by higher discounts and falling prices and the distribution of book buyers is ever more polarized… etc’. This evidence shows that it will give a huge impact to the publishing industry.

In a blog written by Picard (2012), he has declared that there is a reduced in the number of newspaper production to the response of the market changes and economic conditions. Therefore, some of the newspaper publication has actually changed their days in publishing. With this decision, the publication company actually publishes their digital publications and producing the papers only on the days where the advertisers have interest in. This will also help to have a better financial view for the company.

The theory of multimodality can be applied in this situation. According to Kress and van Leeuwen (1998), multimodality theory applied ‘as the use of several semiotic modes in the design of a semiotic product or event, together with the particular way in which these modes are combined’. So this theory will help the publication company to actually attain the customers by attracting them with the use of images and designs. According to Laja (2012), images will grab the attention of the readers rather than only having a load of words on the publication.

Editors carry a high responsibility in the publication industry. If the editors came out with a bad publication, this might lead to the leakage of customers. Customers will just flip over or not even bother to start reading it as they already have a negative perception towards the publication. Written by Edwards (2009), he said that ‘bad editors are not only bad for morale; they’re bad for business’. To conclude, multimodality theory needs to be applying to grasp the attention of readers as well as editors play a high responsibility in the publishing industry.

Reference List

Edward L 2009, ‘Content Creation FAQs’, blogspot.com, viewed on 03 November 2012, <http://laurenedwardssv.blogspot.com/2009/10/how-to-cope-with-bad-editors-who-are.html>.

Kress G and van Leeuwen, T 1998, ‘Front Pages: (The Critical) Analysis of Newspaper Layout’, Ch.7, pp 186-219, Blackwell, Oxford 

Laja P 2012, ‘8 Things that grab and hold website visitor’s attention’, ConversionXL, viewed on 03 November 2012, <http://conversionxl.com/how-to-grab-and-hold-attention/>.

Picard RG 2012, ‘The Media Business’, blogspot.com, viewed on 03 November 2012, <http://themediabusiness.blogspot.com/>.

Robinson C 2012, ‘Ten Ways to save the publishing industry’ Guardian.co.uk, viewed on 03 November 2012, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/12/ten-ways-to-save-publishing-industry>.

The Purpose

Contexts are being present in different kind of ways. Purpose of the blog is to discuss on the issues that exist in the publication and design. My readers for the blog are for those who are interested in doing publications as well as to have a better understanding of the subject matters.

Blogs as Current Phenomenon & Benefits of Blogging to the Community

Blogs in the world now are being one of the most important domains. People are getting more and more aware of the use of blogging on the website. Blogs are basically a website similar to forum or social bookmarking site (Scocco 2008).

The size of the blogosphere is roughly about 31 million bloggers only in the United State in the latest update on July 2012 (Johnson 2012). It further illustrates that out of the 31 million bloggers, 43% of them use for wordpress, 35% normal blogger, 16% use for tumblr, typePad and posterous and the remaining 6% is using the blog for other purposes. ‘

According to NS(2008), in Asia included Malaysia, there are about 112.8 million blog being tracked and more than 250 million pieces of tagged social media, cited in Technorati (2008). He further state that there over 175 thousand new blogs appearing each day. This has proved that blogs are one of the most trending website among the people in the Asia.

There are many type of blogs such as corporate blogs, personal blogs, podcast, videos and more. However, in Malaysia, a personal blog and a corporate blog is prevalent. Not only in Malaysia, but these blogs are also prevalent in Europe as well as in the Asia.

In my opinion, a political blog is somehow beneficial to the Malaysian. This kind of blog will help the citizens in voicing up as a freedom/ free speech against the government. This is supported by Ramadass(2006), she stated that about 20% of the people in Malaysia voted on blogs which focused in the politic matters.

Reference

Johnson Z 2012, ‘State of the Blogging World in 2012’, blogworld.com, viewed 13 September 2012, <http://www.blogworld.com/2012/07/25/state-of-the-blogging-world-in-2012/>.

NS 2008, ‘Blogging Trends affecting Penang & Malaysia’, slideshare.net ,viewed 13 September 2012, <http://www.slideshare.net/myPajamanation/blogging-trends-affecting-penang-malaysia-presentation>.

Ramadass, V 2006, ‘Blogging phenomenon sweeps Asia’, 28 November, Lowyat.NET: Malaysia’s Tech Enthusiast Resource Community, viewed 13 September 2012, <http://www.lowyat.net/v2/latest/blogging-phenomenon-sweeps-asia.html>.

Scocco D 2008, ‘What is a Blog?’ dailyblogtips.com, viewed 13 September 2012,  <http://www.dailyblogtips.com/what-is-a-blog/>.