Citizen Journalism

    With the growth of society, journalism is no longer involves the only professional reporter or journalist, which need training and rich with profession knowledge. Otherwise, general public are allowed to collect, disseminate and analyze the news and information in society today, especially through the means of the internet. Such phenomenon, termed as citizen journalism has gradually becomes common due to the modern technology. For instance, blogger considered as the most famous platform for the production of citizen journalist in internet environment. 

    How the citizen journalism differ with traditional or professional journalism? The central difference between both of these journalism is profession verification regarding to specific knowledge. Besides, the professional journalism is generally working with media industry that provided with financial source, and so its objectivity is focus on its own interests. Professional journalism is especially essential with the existence of financial and economic support.

     Nonetheless, citizen journalism and traditional journalism are similar in the presences of bias element. Regarding to the financial support, professional journalism usually publish or post something after the filtration to protect their own benefit. Also, citizen journalism is contains the stereotype and prejudice because everyone allowed to express themselves with their view of point in social networking site, where the information is always partial and difficult to verify.

Undeniably, citizen journalism provides an opportunity for everyone to have freedom of expression, and it provides a few good outcomes in reality. The best example can be shown from Asian tsunami flood disaster that occurred on 26th December 2004. The real situation of disaster was reported by an ordinary people with phone video before the presence and action of professionals. As citizen journalist is those who actually capture the happening current events and then share it to the rest of the world, the news or information is significantly important. 

On the other hand, the major problem of citizen journalism is lack of regulation. Since individual could make declaration without any control and forces, the statement or post made might predisposition to own belief. Individual could alter the meaning of story based on their perception and view of site. This indicates that the statements posted are usually self-proclaiming. 

For instance, Wee Meng Chee, who also known as Namewee had becomes popular after the releasing of controversial song attached with national anthem of Malaysia, Negaraku. Does he really doing right or provides good contribution to this society from his work? In the late of October 2009, Namewee made a video clip that highlighted about the blackout night in his hometown exclude local TNB (Tenaga Nasional Berhad) remains lit. The video storied about the process that he went to TNB to look for answer, but escorted out from facilities by security. The scene included the happened quarrel and scold. For standing on neutral position, the action of Namewee considered as aggressive and means to attack TNB, even though his motivation may be kindly want to seek for truth. The video can refers as below:

      Citizen journalism is good and bad at the same time. It is good to inform the world about the happening event, but we do not know whether their motivation is derived from good or bad thinking. Or else, they just want to gain popularity? To create crisis? Citizen journalism is good as it allows the freedom of voice for everyone. However, the responsibility is needed among the writer and reader, where the writer should realize their power that could unintentionally influence the opinion of others, while reader responsible to identify the credibility of source, whether the writers are truly knowledgeable or simply post for fun. 

Is The Internet Killing The Printed Newspaper?

Journalism nowadays is changing due to the shift of culture. People no longer depend on newspaper solely but alternative sources of news endangered printed newspaper (Huff, 2012). The advance of technologies especially internet is the main reason whereby the circulation of newspaper fall. The internet had provided the readers alternative sources of news such as online news (e.g. Malaysiakini) and blog news (e.g. Malaysia Unplug).

The online news provides the readers instant news where they could receive the news anytime and anywhere. Unlike printed newspaper, it only distributed once or twice a day. The online news is more updated and efficiency than the printed newspaper. Fedor (2014) had figured out Why A Mobile Newspaper Trumps An Online Marketing Plan: 

1. Top of mind, all the time.

2. Reach your readers faster

3. Reach a wider geographical area

Social network site like Facebook is a good example. The Facebook users often obtain news from Facebook. The news spreads fast in social network sites and the credibility of the sources does not matter. This is because it is human nature to pay more attention to an issue rather than the sources of the issue.

Some might think that it is impossible for the extinction of newspaper. The situation in Malaysia might not as serious as Western but it is happening. Printed newspaper is no longer the first choice of the people.

When it comes to the next generation, how many newspapers still survive?
Is the internet killing the printed newspaper?

Online News

1) What constitutes good and bad practice in online news?

       Online news can be presented in more interesting way such as multimedia displays and video; it could increase the attractive and understanding of readers. Online news is also available for instant updates; it provides a platform to the readers to give comments based on their opinions. For example, in news blog Where Is Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, Tiara stated that she dislike people simply posted unverified news regarding MH370 to social media and this news blog also allow public to comments whether you agree or disagree with her statement.

       Besides that, information can be transmitted more fast and wider through internet. Readers are able to access the news at wherever and whenever they want by using smartphone or tablet computer. For instance, they can immediately get most up-to-date emergencies, breaking news, wonderful stories or event. In addition, online news also can save money for paper, ink and cost for traditional newsroom and delivery. Readers can access to news without any charge.

       However, a study conducted by Pew Research Center showed that online news site only received 21 percent of credibility rating, which is a big drop from 29 percent in 1998. This is mainly because online news is without editorial stuff; there is no more ability to delve deep into investigative issue. Compare with online news, printed newspaper is more detailed and has in-depth information. In addition, some of the rural areas might not have internet connection and old generation does not have IT knowledge to read news via internet.

2) To what extent are online news readers allowed to comment on the news?

       News blog such as Where Is Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 is considered as private platform to voice up. However, official news site is considered as public platform, which mean everyone can read your comment and opinion. Online news such as Malaysian Insider allow people to click like and also give opinion to other people comments  According to Human Right, people have freedom to voice up, but some comment still might be charge under some law or act. For instance, making comments on internet against the Malay-Muslim can be charged under Sedition Act.

3) Which sites would you recommend to other people and why?

       I would recommend online counterpart of a print newspaper such as The Star. In my opinion, I think get news from online is more convenient especially students like me can easily access to up-to-date information through social media without any charge. I would choose counterpart of a print newspaper rather than an online –only news site because I feel more verified and higher credibility to the information.  Counterparts of a print newspaper will not simply published news because they need to protect their fame and maintain the sales of printed version newspaper.

Digital Behavior Pattern

Gender

Are you a member of social network site?

Which social networks you had registered as member?

How you access your social network site?

Do you accept strangers add you as friend in social network site?

How long you spend on social network site per day?

Do you think you addicted to digital device?

How long you have been using social network site?

Why you use social network?

  Do you agree than social network site is an effective channel in education field?

Do you agree social network can bring negative impact to the user?

Do you think digital device had affected our lifestyle?

Do you think digital device had affected your relationship with your family and peers?

From the statistics of our survey, most of the respondents had registered for Facebook account.

Do you know?

Social Media Today website had mentioned Facebook is the MOST popular social networking sites of the world, in which everyone can register for free to browse and join this network. 

About 8% of our respondents said that they will accept friend request from stranger in Facebook, while 57% will only accept them based on some conditions. 

                                         

Do you know?

According to Daily Mail (2012), millions of users share their data such as birth date, sexual preference, drinking habit and half of Brits will accept a friend request from stranger.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg also mentioned in 2010 that privacy is no more a “social norm”, as nowadays people are not fully understand the impacts. 

Also, 70% of the respondents said that digital device had affected their relationship with family members and peers. 

 

Do you know? 

Accoding to KOED, our digital device are ruining our relationships with others and it is a rampant epidemic spreading all over the world. 

Close the Divide: Digital Consumption and Digital Inequality

The growth of internet and new media has created a new place for people to interact, and communicate with others. New media also serve a lot of purposes such as business, entertainment and information resource. New media and internet have been increasingly affecting our daily life. Today, new media is quite common for people, even for some people, it that become a daily must. In global context, it was reported that internet population has reached a vast population. Based on the statistics, internet population has increased tenfold from 1999 to 2013. In 2014, the number of internet users reached third billion globally.

However, for some people access to internet or new media still is a problem.

This phenomenon is called

Digital divide can be defined as the gap between individuals, societies and different location at different socio-economic background and it affects the opportunities to access new media or information and communication technologies (ICTs). Digital divide would rise up the problem of digital inequality. Digital divide and digital inequality will affect individual’s academic performance, career life even the quality of life.

In the context of Malaysia, Malaysia government has put many efforts to reduce and avoid the digital inequality in the country. Malaysia government carry out several projects, one of the project namely “1 Malaysia free netbook”. In the project, Malaysia government spend out more than 10000 unit netbook to lower income students in rural areas.

This is the free netbook distributed by Malaysia government to lower income students in rural areas.

Of course, having a computer does not mean the children know how to use it. In primary and secondary education, Malaysia government also implement students have learn about computing and use of internet. Teachers and professional trainer will assist and help reinforce students in computing learning.

Do you realize that we actually living in this digital divide society or not? Do you think the implementations by Malaysia government effective? Or do you have other solution for this digital divide and digital inequality issue?   

Lastly, let’s watch a short video to know more about the digital divide. For further information, can refer to the link: digital divide and digital inequality . Enjoy! 

Ways to Preventing Children from Using Electronic Devices

   

   The invention of technology has change the way society live from time to time. People are getting used to the electronic media and depend on it in their daily life. Although some effort has been try like digital detox zone or having a one week detox camp, all this seem not work as they start back to their usual life again. They feel inevitable to put down their devices they are using and change to the old method way of delivering messages or communicate. Just like what the video had show, we used electronic device from the day we wake up until we sleep and children nowadays are a very good example in showing the impacts of introduction of electronic device to them.

   Nowadays, we can easily found that children with age of 2 and above own an electronic device and seen playing with it anywhere. Not only the video games that make them cant stay apart from their gadgets, it is also includes television, smart phone application, computers, tablets and etc. They just stay in one place and play with their gadgets without going out to the playground and play with other children like the children in 20 years back. Their childhoods are not with the toys but with the influence of electronic devices. Those devices and games tend to keep those children out of reach of the reality. Apart from that, those electronic devices had impact the children to spend less time for outdoor activity with family and friends. When they are spending too much time on devices, they tend to less concentrate and focus in their school works and therefore it may affect their studies and academic results as well. Moreover, the addiction on spending long time on devices and gadgets may develop unhealthy lifestyle and poor eating habits for those children.

   Although it is impossible to totally eliminate children from exposing to those electronic devices nowadays, but there are the ways to minimize the negative impacts on the children. Parents play an important in managing their children’s electronic devices consumption. They have to understand the rating of the games and the television program in order to prevent their children expose to those violence games and programs. Besides, parents should avoid from setting up any electronic devices in the children bedroom in the sense of preventing the excessive usage of electronic devices which affecting the children’s sleeping time and health as well. Furthermore, all parents should impose media rules to the children by limiting their consumption of electronic devices each day and restrict children from exposing to online games. Apart form that, they should monitoring their children’s media usage such as video games, television, movies and Internet and make sure to always give supervision on their children Internet usage as much as possible. However, communication between the parents and the children is the best prevention for children from getting addicted on electronic devices. Parents are encourage to sharing views with their children while observing they play video games, television program or movies.

   Children are not able to differentiate the pros and cons at the early age and thus it is important for them to have a guardian, which are their parents and teachers as well in guarding and managing their electronic devices consumption. They should take this precaution step in order to prevent their children from exposing to the negative activities brought through electronic devices and harms the society. 

Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC)

“Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) is the process by which people create, exchange, and perceive information using networked telecommunications systems (or non-networked computers) that facilitate encoding, transmitting, and decoding messages. Studies of CMC cab view this process from a variety of interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives by focusing on some combination of people, technology, processes or effect."- John December

CMC is divided into synchronous and asynchronous modes.

Asynchronous

• Not real time/not live. Participants are communicate at different times (depend what is convenient to them).
• E.g. online individual or group discussion

Synchronous

• Real time/live. All participants are communicate at the same time.

• E.g. online chat

Advantages and Disadvantages of Asynchronous and Synchronous

Asynchronous way need more period of time to talk or discuss with another because it depends heavily to the level and space between one and another people. For example, when we received  email from other people there are not compulsory we need to give feedback to them.

While,  synchronous is like we communicate with other in the chatroom. Basically, new generation is more active with social network (such as wechat,  whatapps, facebook and instagram) to communicate with others. People are more interested in communicating through social network sites because it is easy for them to contact with others.

Hyperpersonal CMC

The hyperpersonal model of CMC (Walther, 1996) proposes a set of concurrent theoretically based processes to explain how CMC may facilitate impressions and relationships online that exceed the desirability and intimacy that occur in parallel off-line interactions.

The model follows four common components of the communication process to address how CMC may affect cognitive and communication processes relating to message construction and reception:

(1) effects due to receiver processes

(2) effects among message senders

(3) attributes of the channel

(4) feedback effects

For more details, please refers to the link:

Theories of ComputerMediatedCommunicationand Interpersonal Relations by Joseph B. Walther.

World System Theory

World System Theory is an approach developed by sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein in 1974 that expanded from the theory of dependency regarding the world history and social change of a world economic system in which some of the countries taking an advantage while some others are exploited. It is separated into three-level hierarchy, consisting of core, periphery and semi-periphery. He stated that, the semi periphery countries exploited the periphery countries for the raw material and sell the semi-manufactured good to the core countries; after that, the core will finish the production and sell it back with high price to the semi-periphery and periphery countries.

The diagram above shows the relationship of the core, semi-periphery and periphery countries.

Core countries

According to the WST, core countries refers to the dominant capitalist countries which have the characteristics

1.      Strong in military power,
2.           High level of education,
3.        High salaries,
4.      Advance in technology
5.     Control the world economy

Examples countries: US, Japan, Germany, Europe

Core countries are powerful, and this power allows them to pay lower prices for raw goods and exploit cheap labour, which constantly reinforces the unequal status between core and peripheral countries.

Semi-periphery countries

Semi-periphery countries serves as a buffer between the core and periphery. It is exploited by the core but exploit the periphery. This countries have the potential to be promote and be the core countries because they are mostly capitalist countries and industrializing nature. For me, it is described as over the ‘periphery’ but not yet reach the ‘core’.

Example countries: South Korea, Taiwan, Mexico, Brazil, India, Nigeria, South Africa

Periphery countries

Those countries were described as the third world countries. These region generate less wealth in the world economy. Other than that, it also lack of strong central government and they might be ruled by other states. They had been exploited by others for the raw material and they are dependent on the core countries for capital because of their underdeveloped industry. They characterized by:

1)      Poverty

2)      Low education level

3)      Lack of development

4)      Economically backward

5)      Low standard of living

Example countries: most African countries and low income countries in South America.

A world map of countries by trading status, late 20th century, using the world system differentiation into core countries (blue), semi periphery countries (purple) and periphery countries (red). Based on the list in Dunn, Kawana, Brewer (2000).

Malaysia is rich of natural resources such as petroleum, timber, and gold. In addition, Malaysia is an industrialized country and high education level. So, Malaysia should be classified as core, semi-periphery or periphery country?

Lastly, lets look at the video described the WST theory in detail. have fun =)

Shift 2020

It is an amazing shifting of the technologies. Through this video, it gives us the chances to foresight how technologies will influence, shape and impact our daily life. Everything becomes more convenience for human beings and many problems can be solved by modern technology. Nothing is impossible. However, with the shifting of technologies, most of the work will replace by robotic. According to the research from Oxford University, 50% of the people will be unemployed in the coming 10 years and more companies would be eliminated due to the results of inability to cope with the accelerated changes of technologies. The changes of technologies bring both advantages and disadvantages.

Through the Shift 2020’s video, it has explains how the transformation of education, internet, business, household and others will ease our daily life in coming days. It will be so exciting to think that when all of this really happen in the near future. However, it is quite hard to imagine that in the future, most of us will own a robot just like how everyone has a smartphone. Robot will help us do most of our work and robot will be our companion just like how smartphone accompanies us all the time today. However, if robot be our companion in the future, will it bring any effect to our society as how smartphone dominate our life?

Future: Human and robot

Besides this, the 3D printing technologies that mentioned in the video is quite impressing. It is so awesome because of the amazing function of technologies that will allow us to make everything possible to turning into real subjects from graphics. For instance, we can obtain the makeup accessories such as lipstick or eye shadow in reality through 3D printers by online purchasing. Before this video, my first impression of the 3D printing was in the movie, CZ 12: Chinese Zodiac by Jackie Chan. It is unbelievable that 3D printing was really exists and even applicable for food! One question came to my brain before ending. How do we know what we are actually eating in the future?

3D printing technologies in the movie CZ12: Chinese Zodiac