Reflection

Exactly a month ago, with a few clicks of the mouse, this blog was created out of the purpose of sharing my opinions on various media and publishing issues with the readers. Then, it became more than that as within these 31 days, this blog also serve as a platform for me to learn to blog with seriousness and responsibilities. But it was not without putting some efforts in it.

To create and maintain this blog, I not only have to consider about the context of situation and cultural of the audience (Halliday & Hasan, 1985), I also need to remember the affordances and limitations of the Internet (Schriver, 1997). Why, I need to practice what I preach, right?

In the end, I would like to reemphasise on what I said previously: Blogging is the current phenomenon, and it is unlikely to change for some time.



REFERENCES:

Halliday, M & Hasan R 1985, Language, context and text: aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective, Deakin University, Victoria

Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Pub., New York, Chapter 6, pp. 361-441

Say No to Censorship

Every editor’s nightmare is not able to publish their magazines and newspapers to the public. An example would be a magazine named ‘Detik’. The magazine, which was based in Malaysia, was deemed to violate the Printing Press and Publication Act 1984 (PPPA) and denied the renewal of publishing license in 2000 on the basis that it failed to fulfil the conditions to have the permit although the truth is it was banned because of its criticism about the government (Human Rights Watch, 2007).

What is PPPA? Well, it is a Malaysian law which is related to the publishing and usage of printing presses in Malaysia. According to Human Rights Watch (2007) regarding PPPA:

…requires all print media to obtain a permit and renew it annually. The Home Affairs Ministry can restrict or ban a publication outright if it is considered "likely to be prejudicial to public order, morality, [or] security"; likely to "alarm public opinion"; or likely to "be prejudicial to . . . national interest." (Article 7(1).) If the Minister refuses to grant or renew a permit, no legal remedy or judicial review is available: "Any decision of the Minister . . . to suspend a license or permit shall be final and shall not be called in question by any court on any ground whatsoever," and "[n]o person shall be given an opportunity to be heard with regard to . . . suspension of the license or permit" according to the act. (Article 13A-13B.)

"You're write what you're told!" (Source: http://www.rockabillytree.com/)
Article 10 of the Constitution of Malaysia clearly stated that every Malaysian citizen has the right to freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and freedom of association (Helplinelaw.com, 2005). But it was clearly violated when the government misused PPPA. Hence, throughout the years, the Act was urged by many to be amended not only but also to get rid of the registration regime imposed. But it was futile as the Malaysian Home Ministry has used the Act to strike fear among the press and restrict their contents, resulting many sensitive issues unreported in the newspapers. As one of the main sources of information, it is important for the newspapers to report nothing but the truth.

However, another main source of information is not affected by PPPA: Internet. According to Schriver (1997), the difference of affordance produces different functionalities due to the mode’s special features. The affordance of Internet is it can be accessed by anyone from anywhere at anytime and in this case, it is free from PPPA as it does not require license to operate. Such website is Malaysiakini, the leading source of independent news and views in Malaysia. As it is not affected by PPPA, it carries a lot of news articles which are often neglected or censored in the mainstream media. This proves that Internet is the only channel for transparency because it is where the government has no control over it (Dearnley & Feather, 2001).

Does the government has the right to censor? (Source: http://www.huskerhavswrestlingtradingcards.com/)

There are many people from different races, religions and backgrounds in Malaysia. I understand the needs to censor certain issues to avoid riots to happen. But and a huge but, how can we trust our government when they choose not to tell us?



REFERENCES:

Dearnley, J & Feather, J 2001, The wired world, Library Association Publishing, UK

Helplinelaw.com 2005, Constitution of malaysia, viewed 20 October 2007,
<http://www.helplinelaw.com/law/constitution/malaysia/malaysia02.php>

Human Rights Watch 2007, Repressive laws, Human Rights Watch, viewed 20 October 2007,
<http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/malaysia/2000/laws-pppa.htm>

Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Pub., New York, Chapter 6, pp. 361-441

Books Being Banned

According to Kementerian Keselamatan Dalam Negeri (2007), as in October 13, 2007, there has been a total number of 69 books been banned from the public in Malaysia by the government due to its explicit and sensitive contents.

Books literally being banned (Source:http://www.censorart.com)
The figure is quite astonishing and it is even more astonishing when I found out it can still grow bigger as the year is not yet over. When I saw the list of books being banned, the first thing which came into my mind was that the authors of those banned books perhaps did not know about the rules and regulations in Malaysia. Before an author plans to release his book in a certain country, it is important for him to have a previous knowledge of that country. According to Schriver (2006), previous knowledge, which is also known as background knowledge, is the influence of knowledge, experience and values on the understanding of the people on certain issues. She also said that two different readers may make two different interpretations of the same text because of the difference in their knowledge, hence highlighting the importance to have a previous knowledge.

For example, the book ‘Murder in the Name of Allah’ by Hazrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad. While it may be accepted in England, the country where it was published, it may not be accepted in other countries such as Malaysia. Before he released the book in Malaysia, he should know that the main religion in Malaysia is Islam and that any religious remarks regarding Islam or Allah is forbidden. One good example of such situation would be the controversy of the caricatures on Muhammad. In 2006, the Sarawak Tribune newspaper was forced to seized from operation after it published the caricature in the newspapers, causing a riot in the entire country (BreakingNews.ie, 2006). This incident shows that religious issue is not taken lightly in Malaysia. Hence, it is understandable why the government is banning this book or any other books for that matter

Banned books in the US (Source:http://www.backspace.com)
Looking at the list of banned books, it caught me by surprise when I found out that several books from Malaysia were banned too. It is scandalous as the authors, as Malaysians themselves, should know better than other authors from other countries that explicit and sensitive materials are not allow to be published as they have the previous knowledge on it. The 10 books which were banned were:

• Al-Kafilah Siapakah Yang Dikatakan Gadis Puteri Izma (Mohamas Abdul Hamid)
  
• Apakah itu Ahmadiyah? (Mirza Bashiruddin Mahmud Ahmad)
  
• Bahaya Tarikat Sufi / Tasawuf Terhadap Masyarakat (Ustaz Rasul Bin Dahri)
  
• Masalah Seksual Lelaki & Rawatan Alternatif (Unknown)
  
• Pendidikan Seks Rumahtangga Kemuncak Rahsia Kebahagiaan & Kasih Sayang Sejati Rahsia Menguatkan Tenaga Batin Teknik Bercumbu dan Berjimak (Jaafar Salleh)
  
• Politik Islam membawa kasih Sayang (Ustaz Hj Ashaari Muhamad)
  
• Rahsia Kenikmatan Rumahtangga (Tabib Haji Anwar Khan)
  
• Rahsia Di Kamar & Kunci Wanita (Tok Nujum)
  
• Rahsia Nombor 1 Untuk Wanita II (Tok Nujum)
  
• Ringkasan Mafatih Al-Jinan Kunci Pembuka Syurga (Syeikh At-Tusiy)

Out of the 10 books, eight books from the list are discussing about sex while the other two books discuss about religion. How on earth these authors thought that they could publish these books in Malaysia will forever remains as a mystery to me. But do you think these 10 books should be banned? Do you think the remaining 59 books should be banned too? Feel free to share your opinions.



REFERENCES:

BreakingNews.ie 2006, Editor resigns over muslim cartoons, viewed 20 October 2007,
<http://www.breakingnews.ie/2006/02/06/story243320.html>

Kementerian Keselamatan Dalam Negeri 2007, Senarai penerbitan haram 2007, viewed 20 October 2007,
<http://www.mois.gov.my/opencms/export/KKDN/BhgPQ/senaraiharam2007.html>

Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Pub., New York, Chapter 6, pp. 361-441

Print vs Online

I just cannot seems to be able to stop myself from surfing the Internet all the time. When I want to read about news, I use the Internet. When I want to check my horoscopes, I use the Internet. Whatever I want to do, I will still use the Internet. This pattern of mine, which I am sure it is the same for most of you, is showing that online media is preferable over print-based media.

The reason why online media is preferable over print-based media is because of its affordance. According to Schriver (1997), the difference of affordance produces different functionalities due to the mode’s special features. In comparison, online media has multimodality, where it contains texts, pictures, animation, music, menu bars, frames, hyperlinks and video clips while print-based media is restricted to just texts and images (Walsh, 2006).

Online media (Source:http://www.libcoop.net/mcl/j0382584.jpg)
The print-based media is also losing out in term of immediacy. Nowadays, news moves very quickly to the extent that by the time the ink on the print-based media dried, it was considered as yesterday’s news. And unlike print-based media, online media has unlimited space and pages to insert every news from around the world and it does not waste ink or papers. Noting the great advantages of online media, InfoWorld discontinued its print version in favour of its online version as it is more efficient (Fox, 2007).

Yes, print-based media do have its affordance of being easy to carry around and unlike online media which requires the people to have Internet service, print-based media can be accessed by anyone. Another plus point for print-based media is that according to Reep (2006), results of survey shows that almost 80 per cent of users 'scan' the website. Readers only 'scan' through websites and does not read every single line as they only want the information they desired.

Print-based media (Source:http://www.newtonswindow.com/newspaper.gif)
However, a research by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press (2006) has found that in 1996, only 1/50 of Americans were getting their news through Internet while fast-forward 10 years to 2006, the figure has increased to 1/3 of Americans, showing how online media is beginning to take over the role of the print-based media as the main source of information.

In conclusion, print-based media is all but defeated by online media and it is only the matter of time.



REFERENCES:

Fox, S 2007, ‘InfoWorld folds print mag to focus on online and events’, InfoWorld, viewed 15 October 2007,
<http://weblog.infoworld.com/techwatch/archives/010942.html>

Reep, DC 2006, Technical Writing, 6th edn, Pearson/Longman, NY

Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Pub., New York, Chapter 6, pp. 361-441

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press 2006, Online papers modestly boost newspaper readership, viewed 14 October 2007,
<http://www.people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=282>

Walsh, M 2006, ‘“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

The Death of Language

According to The Times of India (Nautiyal, 2004), students were using Short Message Service (SMS) lingoes in their exam papers. This may not seem to be a serious issue, but on a long-term run it will be as this will lead us to the death of language.

A way to learn lingo - Instant-Messaging (Source: http://communicator.pulver.com/)
What is a lingo? Well, it is best described as uncommon or unintelligible language because it is not normally use during a verbal communication. It is usually practiced by people in online chatrooms and text-messaging. Over the past couple of years, the numbers of this "language" or rather text abbreviations has increased. Environmental Studies (2007) provides a few examples of such abbreviations:

• AFK - Away from keyboard
  
• ASL - Age, sex, location
  
• ASAP - As soon as possible
  
• F2F - Face to face
  
• F2T - Free to talk
  
• RUOK - Are You OK?

Other similar cases where text abbreviations was used excessively is when a Scottish girl wrote her essay using text abbreviations instead of plain English (BBC News, 2003). Both of these incidents should be handled with seriousness as this could destroy the fundamental of the English language, or any languages for that matter.

Not everyone understands the meaning of the SMS or Internet lingoes. As said by Schirato and Yell (1996), any text must be drawn upon established and shared set of meaning if it were to be recognisable and readable. And according to Halliday & Hasan (1985), the context of situation plays a role on our understanding of the language and text. In both of these cases, it is important to remember that the examiners might have problems to understand the abbreviations and acronyms used as they are not from the online context of situation. The students should not allow this bad habit of them to affect them to the extent they will use in academic papers.

Another way to learn lingo - SMS(Source: http://www.bonrix.net/)
In my opinion, this is just a habit. It can be solved as long as one has the discipline to do it. Students must be more aware on using the appropriate language at an appropriate time as this could determine the life and death of language.



REFERENCES:

BBC News 2003, Is txt mightier than the word?, viewed 4 October 2007,
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2814235.stm>

Environmental Studies 2007, Sms terms & sms glossary & sms definitions & sms abbreviation, viewed 5 October 2007,
<http://www.environmental-studies.de/SIM-Card/SMS/SMS-glossary/sms-glossary.html>

Halliday, M & Hasan R 1985, Language, context and text: aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective, Deakin University, Victoria

Nautiyal, K 2004, Btw, is sms ok in da exm ppr?, Times of India, viewed 3 October 2007,
<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/927414.cms>

Schirato, T & Yell, S 1996, Communication and cultural literacy: an introduction, Allen & Unwin, NSW, pp. 90-117

The Social Phenomenon

According to Lee (2006), Google is more than just a brand now as it is also could be used as a noun and verb. This statement is strengthened when Merriam-Webster gave recognition to the term (Ahrens, 2006). So the question is: how long until Merriam-Webster adds the word 'blog' to their lexicon?

Google's official logo (Source: http://www.google.com.my/)
If the word 'blog' were to join Google to become a colloquial or generic description, it is not very surprising because everyone is already using it as both a noun and verb. Blogs are becoming more and more popular by each passing day ever since the turn of the century. To quote from Jensen (2003), “The growing power of Weblogs, or "blogs," has hardly gone unnoticed.” The growing power of it certainly did not go unnoticed, as many Malaysians started to catch up with the trend of the century. In fact, it grew so big that the word 'blog' is chosen as the word of the year in 2004 (BBC News, 2004), signifying its huge influence on today's life. It is basically the new form of media publishing with all the multimodality available for it.

According to Walsh (2006), multimodal texts are texts which combine words and images with hyperlinks, animations and so on to attract the audience’s attention. In this case, blog is a multimodal text, where it could use other elements to enhance the webpage, especially with websites like Blogskins which allows bloggers to choose a variety of blog templates, hence making it easier to design for online. But I would not say designing for online is easier than designing for print. Although users might enjoy the sound and graphic on the Website, they usually come to the site for information (Reep, 2006).

But what is a blog? What is the purpose of having a blog? While I blog to share my opinions regarding certain media and publishing issues, other people blog for their own purposes. Some may use blogs as a diary or journal to write about their daily lives, while some may use it to voice their political views. According to Sabahan.com (2007), 28 per cent of the 50 top bloggers in Malaysia blog about personal experiences in their daily lives while 16 per cent of them blog about politics and technology respectively. Examples of notable bloggers in Malaysia would be Jeff Ooi, who blogs about his political views, and Paul Tan, who blogs about the automotive industry.

Jeff Ooi (Source:http://flickr.com)
While each and every blogger has their own reasons and purposes of blogging, it is not impossible to classify them. The bloggers can be categorized by:

• Media type – classification based on the media they are presenting such as vlog (videos), photoblog (photos) and sketchblog (sketches)
  
• Genre – classification based on the issues they are presenting such as politics, humors, travels and personal
  
• Device – classification based on the type of device they used to present such as mobile phones, PDAs and computers

Different bloggers can be classified to different categories and types because they share the common interests or purpose of blogging. And normally, they will form a blogging community out of that shared values. Examples of blogging communities would be Project Petaling Street and Bloglah.org, two prominent blogging communities in Malaysia which collects Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds from blogs in Malaysia to boost the bloggers’ blogs traffic. Other blogging communities such as Advertlets and Nuffnang are blog advertising community, where they help bloggers to earn money through blogging.

Nuffnang's official logo (Source: http://nuffnang.com.my/)
Hence, it is without a shadow of doubt that blogging is the current phenomenon, and it is unlikely to change for some time.



REFERENCES:

Ahrens, F 2006, goo•gle (goo'-gul), viewed 3 October, 2007,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/06/AR2006070601815.html

BBC News 2004, 'Blog' picked as word of the year, viewed 2 October 2007,
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4059291.stm>

Jensen, M 2003, Emerging alternatives: a brief history of weblogs, Columbia Journalism Review, viewed 27 October 2007, <http://cjrarchives.org/issues/2003/5/blog-jensen.asp>

Lee, E 2006, Google - verb, noun or trademark?, viewed 2 October 2007,
http://bloggingmebloggingyou.wordpress.com/2006/08/10/google-verb-noun-or-trademark/

Reep, DC 2006, Technical Writing, 6th edn, Pearson/Longman, NY

Sabahan.com 2007, 50 most influential blogs in malaysia, viewed 1 October 2007,
http://www.sabahan.com/2007/02/06/50-most-influential-blogs-in-malaysia/

Walsh, M 2006, ‘“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

Welcome

Hello readers and welcome to this blog. My name is Lee Seng Foo and I created this blog for the purpose of sharing my opinions with the readers, namely anyone who is interested, on various media and publishing issues which I shall elaborate more on it in the coming days. While issues discussed at here may be controversial, I believe everyone has the freedom of expression.

That's why No, You Listen to ME when you are at here. :)