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).
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.
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
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