The Given and the New

In Kress & VanLeeuwen's Reading Images, they talk about the idea of how everything visual comes with a "given" and a "new," and how in different types of media such as advertisements in magazines, interviews, books or whatever - there is this idea that people purposefully place things that people know on the left side and "new" information on the right side. When I read this, I felt like it was pretty obvious for things such as advertisements, but I was a little skeptical (maybe a lot skeptical...) about how they said painters back in the day such as Rembrandt used this technique in his paintings. This reminded me of when I took IB in highschool, and how our teachers emphasized certain themes or symbols in the book. For instance, they would rant on and on about how the curtains in the book were the color blue, and how the author uses it as a hidden theme to express depression and sadness. So that was my little stance on how I felt about that...
As usual, I wanted to prove these guys wrong about their theory. But after flipping through and looking at my Introduction to Mass Communication's textbook The Media of Mass Communication by John Vivian, I thought perhaps there was indeed, some truth in the "Given" and "New" thing regarding the layout. On page 176, the random page that I am now flipped to is actually an example!



On the left side of the page is a picture of the man, who although not everyone may know who he is (Marc Anderssen), its still a picture/familiar name that people may have heard in passing or something. On the other side, is full text, depicting who this man is and other information about his accomplishments and his involvement within the media industry. That, I suppose, would count as the "Given" and "New" thing, where the given is the name/picture of the man, and the new are long detailed explanations of his character and life accomplishments. As someone who merely skims through much of long text, I don't believe I've ever really taken a moment to analyze/appreciate (?) the layout of textbooks. Perhaps I'll take a better look next time when I'm flipping the pages of Cosmo or People or something...yay guilty pleasures!

Viewers Make Meaning

     This week's reading of Viewers Make Meaning for me was really hard, in the sense that there were so many arguments that Sturken & Cartwright made within this 30 page chapter. I thought it was particularly interesting that they made that notion of how companies use advertisements to target audiences, to make you feel like you are personally being addressed even though it is to a wide selection of people. It made me think of one time in high school when my social studies teacher was trying to teach us just what S & C were talking about - how ads sometimes use sex appeal in order to entice readers, subconsciously. The ad I can't find anymore, but basically when you looked up close, the model's long and super shiny hair was altered in a way that made it looked like it was forming an "S" shape, and other objects/props in the scene, when looked up close, looked like they were forming the letters "E" and "X" respectively. At the time, the innocent church-goer me thought it made no connection to marketing whatsoever, rather that it just happened to be an optical illusion not intended specifically that way.

   I began researching online on this idea of advertisements as a form of manipulation towards people, and I came across this website that had an entire page with dozens of examples of just that. For the most part, most of the examples they came up with very self explanatory in that they were obvious in the type of audience they were trying to appeal to, but then I came across one on my favorite show, Friends. Key words here are, "my favorite show," and as a tv junkie I obviously had to stop and take a look at what this preposterous website could possibly be saying about my beloved show! I so badly wanted to defend whatever they were claiming, until I realized what they were arguing was true.  This is a picture of Rachel's and Monica's apartments (two of the main characters):

This is where the six friends normally hang out, probably a little bit too much since they are all in their twenties and all (supposedly) have jobs that they love (but i'll let that slide because i love the show). Basically, what they were arguing on the website I came across was what S & C were arguing - that these producers were using these images to manipulate us, leading us to believe that these average people (people just like us! gasp) are living a better lifestyle that we are with "no monetary concerns." It doesn't just stop there though, the article claims. It says that society "shows us advertisements, compelling us to buy the lifestyle depicted in our favorite shows." 
Source: http://lifehacker.com/5824328/how-advertising-manipulates-your-choices-and-spending-habits-and-what-to-do-about-it

David M Carter, psychologist claims that this is a form of "referencing." He says that, "We reference, either intentionally or otherwise, to lifestyles represented to us (in the media or in real life) that we find attractive. We create a vision of ourselves living this idealized lifestyle, and then behave in ways that help us to realize the vision. The problem with this process is that the lifestyles most often portrayed, and ultimately referenced, are well beyond the means of all but a very small percentage of Americans. We aspire to something that the vast majority of us cannot possibly achieve. And, in this attempt to realize our aspirations, we borrow heavily, feel poorly about ourselves because we just can't seem to get there, and become addicted to a way of living that gradually and inexorably separates us from the things in life that bring us the most joy."

"Manufactured Representation of the Real"

In this week's reading of Rowe's Framed and Mounted: Sport Through the Photographic Eye, there were several aspects that he covered in which I found to extremely intriguing. In the beginning, Rowe talked about the definition of still photography, as "a form of communication that relies on the notion of 'capture', frozen for all time is a gesture, an expression, incident or landscape." With this definition, it would seem to me that still photography is capturing a real life event that couldn't possibly be altered if it is history, but Rowe begs the question of whether or not those pictures could be actually "manufactured representation of the real."

He further explains this with providing the example of a man waving a stick at a policeman, which would make for a great picture in the realm of photojournalism, but Rowe says, what if the picture was really representing something else, such as the fact that maybe it wasn't even really all that dramatic because the man may have just been waving the photographer away, something that is very plausible. With photography, I suppose you can't really make an assumption of whether or not that picture was altered a certain way without actually being there. However, with that being said, I don't know if I necessarily agree with his statement "whatever the motives of the photographer, a framed, two-dimensional image can never be 'the thing itself'"because I don't think that applies for all cases within photography.

Another aspect of this article that I found to be thought provoking was the author's comparison of sports photography and pornography. He claims that they are similar in the sense that they are "both fixated in the body, minutely examining its performative possibilities and special qualities," as well as being "concerned with arousal."

Generally, I didn't want to believe that that statement had some truth behind it, in the sense that they are both designed to provoke some sort of sexual attention, and I even went so far as to think it's almost insulting to sports photography that it can even be comparable to pornography. I decided to do some research to prove that photography and pornography were really not the same thing, that maybe it was just Sports Illustrated's Swim Suit Edition that happened to be more provocative. But then I googled ESPN's online magazine, and on google the first link lead me to the normal ESPN page with you know, pretty PG - 13 stuff, and then right below it was a link to "ESPN's Body Issue." And of course, the first thing I see on the page is that image above, which completely and utterly destroyed any and all of my argument I was going to make. Which then leads me to my next question, why on earth are humans so incredibly fixated on the human body?


Source: http://espn.go.com/espn/bodyissue

"Frozen Moments In Time"

      In light of this week's reading, I decided to explore the idea of photography ethics, as this topic was what jumped out to me the most from the reading. I found a video of The National Press Photographer Association's compilation of digital photography manipulations, and I thought it was interesting that they quoted: "As journalists we believe the guiding principle of our profession is accuracy; therefore, we believe it is wrong to alter the content of a photograph in any way that deceives the public."

    Normally, I'll admit, I love photoshop, and even the Camera Plus application on my iPhone that lets me digitally alter pictures in a way that makes it much more appealing; almost 3-D. I can even fool other people into thinking that I am a good photographer, when in reality it's photoshop and the filters that are essentially the masterminds behind the attractiveness and quality of the photograph. I do even believe that alterations of photography in some cases, aren't necessarily negative. However though, in some contexts such as war photography, I find it incredibly not only deceiving and unethical, but also a complete abuse of their job as a photojournalist. 

   As NPPA stated that their principle of profession is accuracy, I think that a photojournalists job is really to capture the story, which when done ethically and correctly can be extremely powerful. When pictures are altered such as the one below, it seems to me that they are almost in a sense manipulating history. Although that sounds incredibly dramatic for just a few differences in a photograph, I think that it is the photojournalists responsibility to report back to the rest of the world with exactly the way history presented itself in reality, because that is all the rest of us who were not at the scene of the event have to look back upon and maybe even someday use those photographs as a learning tool for other generations to come. It's also even more upsetting because the photographer who took this picture used it for his benefit to put himself higher on the photography spectrum, as the photograph ran on Page One of Times, which I would say is quite an honor. 

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/essays/vanRiper/030409.htm

     I also found another article on BBC, called "How Fake Images Change Our Memory and Behavior," about how people think of memories as a transcript - basically a compilation of everything they have experienced from when they were a child to their current experiences, but in reality our memory "is far more like a desert mirage than a transcript – as we recall the past we are really just making meaning out of the flickering patterns of sights, smells and sounds we think we remember." Science has also proved through dozens and dozens of research that our memory actually is not very reliable - when we see pictures, we remember them but not necessarily all the details so when we recall things, our imagination may be filling in the gaps of what we don't remember. In the article, there was also one study done where some people were shown photographs from their childhood, along with several pictures that were photoshopped to make it look like they were doing things that didn't actually happen (i.e family on a hot air balloon), and half of the participants said that they recalled those events happening in real life, even though they didn't.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121213-fake-pictures-make-real-memories

Blogging Brands

For the first time, I found myself generally agreeing with what Rettberg had to say regarding blogging and using it as a social platform as well as for marketing and advertisements. Personally, I only really follow blogs for reading short stories or poems and such, or for baking (yay sweet tooth!) and other cooking recipes. When I read about Manolo's Shoe Blog, I began to realize how smart this blogger really is. First of all, it benefits both sides. The blogger gets recognition, giving himself a name in the industry I suppose, and it also benefits the actual Manolo designer because it will then prompt other people to buy that designer's shoes. In this sense, it's a win-win situation. Although I am not personally really into fashion, a lot of my friends are, and therefore I heard about a website called http://lookbook.nu/, which is a social networking website where people can create profiles and upload pictures of themselves in their favorite outfits for people to see. I never thought of that as an advertising mechanism but I suppose it works that way as well.

Another interesting aspect of this chapter was Dooce's blog and how she was making money off of it. It was only when she added graphical advertisements as opposed to her text advertisements that it increased her followers and income. As someone who is a visual person, I couldn't tell you why I prefer visuals over text, and I thought I would do a little research on the statistics. I found that apparently visuals are processed 60,000 times faster by the brain than by text! (Source: Hubspot) And this statistic is pretty astonishing as well : " just one month after the introduction of Facebook timeline for brands, visual content -- photos and videos -- saw a 65% increase in engagement" (Source: Hubspot) and there were many more where generally most people prefer visuals over text. 

Journalism v.s blog

Chapter 4:

       In Chapter 4, Rettberg talks about the main differences between the art of journalism and blogging. For the most part, I have never really made a connection between the two. As a person that I suppose, has somewhat grown up in the beginnings of the digital age, I always thought of journalism as being news on print, never digital. Both my parents are the type that like to be aware of what is happening in the world, and so growing up we would always have newspapers on our table and it would be passed around during breakfast. Blogging on the other hand is something that I myself have just recently become used to, that I personally use as somewhat of an online diary.

       On page 84, the author then talks about how "blogs are not journalism, nor do their writers aspire to be journalists." I don't necessarily agree with that statement and much too bold to be claiming. I actually think that in this age, for people who want to get their opinions and voices across and out there into the world but don't have the ability to actually write for an established newspaper such as New York Times or whatever, it is a great outlet for them to do so and it is also a very smart way to get noticed. Although of course it might take a longer process for someone to approach the bloggers about a potential position in journalism, I think it is still very possible that the bloggers may have that intention.
I also thought it was a very interesting point that the author made about bloggers blogging about what journalists write about, but where they "failed to investigate or was not deemed fitting." With blogging comes much more freedom, because it allows you to voice not just what your passionate about and facts and things and such, but rather it also provides the outlet to release your opinions, which in most cases journalism does not.

        In Journalism of Verification, I liked the idea of verification being the difference between blogging and journalism, and I agree with that statement much more so. Especially when the author mentions transparency  - journalists have to stick with the exact facts, and not only that, but have to verify about a million times to make sure what they're printing is true. In our own campus furman newspaper, we have a policy that if we print something wrong, in the next issue it MUST be acknowledged and printed somewhere, so I can imagine a big newspaper such as New York Times would be adamant about doing the same. Bloggers on the other hand, aren't bound to "true" facts, and don't necessarily have to prove anything to anyone either. In that case then, perhaps maybe that is why blogging is becoming so popular and journalism is deteriorating.

"Delete"

Chapter 2:      

         This week's reading made me appreciate the art of tying all the more, especially when it comes to blogging. Having grown up in I suppose, the beginning of the "digital age," I have never once thought about the simple button, "delete," that was created by a genius and put together what we now call the computer keyboard. In the last five minutes of typing this paragraph, I have already used that button about an infinite number of times. After reading this chapter, this following sentence really made me think twice about what content I should choose to put in this space; "Words should not be cast out indiscriminately, Plato argues, they should be like seeds planted carefully in a mind that is read for them, and they should be nurtured through conversation, in dialogue." - Plato. Thinking back to before the world of blogging, mass media, and rather just anything digital - I think of blogging in a more negative point of view than I used to. When there was just ink and pen, one must've had to think rather carefully before putting that onto paper. Of course, that example is much like today, I have to think extremely carefully before I jot down my answers on a test for the essay portion. However, when there the typewriter machine was invented, one small mistake could potentially make one lose so much time to have to retype everything. At least with paper, we have correction tape and things like that. 

Chapter 3:

          For the most part, I found myself actually disagreeing with what the author had to say about social networking. He seems to think that there are connections between people when they follow each others blogs. While I do agree that it is highly possible a lot of people who blog follow their friends blog, but I'm more inclined to believe that people who follow other blogs are probably following a total stranger who happens to have similar interests in them, such as fashion or sports or whatever. For most people, I feel like if they are using blogs especially to find the latest trends in fashion or electronics or whatever, they most likely aren't going to be looking at their friends blogs - rather, probably more developed blogs from maybe even older people that have more experience than they do. 

Foxnews.com Review: On the ball or Not?

What is your first impression of the site? Think of the “3 second rule.” (pg 31)

·      Looks busy – text and images all over the place, but most of the text appears really small which makes it hard to read unless you squint 

·      When you scroll down, it encourages scanning because the font is small and makes you not want to look up close in detail

·      Most of the featured articles are of entertainment, not necessarily news events happening in the grand scheme of things

How does this site establish credibility? How does it establish trust? Or does it? (pg 28-29)

Authentic voice?

Genuine?

Transparency?

·      Hard to decipher authenticity because it’s a very well-known news station source,

·      Certain articles does not feel genuine, doesn’t have reporters name

·      One or two sentences per paragraph which encourages reading

What is the general writing style?

Biased?

Objective?

·      Generally pretty objective

Does the writer IDENTIFY with his or her readers, or not? How (or why not)?

·      Author doesn’t really put their two cents into what they are writing, mostly just stating facts

Does the writing style get to the point?

·      Yes, short and concise

How is it arranged? Is it arranged in reverse pyramid style?

·      Not really, pyramid just goes from big headline to everything else in around the same

Is content shaped for scanning? How is the content layered? (p 32)

·      Yes because they’re all written in short concise paragraphs that make it easy to read, not overwhelming

·      First few sentences and headline pretty much already sums up the gist of the entire article

·      Starts with categories, which brings you to dozens of more articles within that category which you can then click on

Is the tone or rhythm of the site consistent throughout?

·      It stays pretty consistent in regards to tone because they are all spewing out facts and not really giving opinions, staying objective.

How does the site use headlines?

·      First article has a big headline that is in all capitalized font

·      Supported by a picture which gives us good information on what the article is about

·      First line is all capitalized and using very little words, with a supporting sentence underneath which I think attracts peoples attention to the article

How does it use links? Effectively or not?

·      When you click on a certain article, on the right hand side it’ll give you a list of more links to videos but they are not always relevant to the article which could be a drawback

·      It can be effective in the sense that, for example when we clicked on the pizza article link, on the right hand side it’ll give you a list of other articles within the Lifestyle category which makes it easier to navigate if you are only looking for articles in Lifestyle.

How is multimedia used? Is it distracting? How is it displayed on the site? Does the multimedia tell the same story as the text, or a different side of the story?

·      Not exactly distracting because it doesn’t pop up unless you actually intentionally click on it

·      It doesn’t always really give us a different side of the story, it seems like it follows the article, doesn’t really add anything different

How does the site “package” stories? (pg 36)

·      Doesn’t always show additional information relative to the article, only shows how many people shared it on Facebook or Twitter

·      However, certain articles will have additional links to other sources

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/09/05/up-to-100-cars-crash-in-pileup-on-fog-shrouded-bridge-southeast-london/?test=latestnews

How are graphics used?

Too cluttered?

Are the graphics consistent through out the site, and consistent to the brand?

Do they encourage or discourage use, and how?

·      Each article has its own picture

·      Pretty effective in the way that they structured it on the page, having it right under each of the article’s headlines

·      Graphics are quite consistent

Can each page stand on it’s own?

·      Yes, every page is pretty much formatted the same way which is very helpful and makes it look and feel organized

How is the navigation? Do you get lost? Do you always know where you are? How (or why not)?

·      Navigation is good, links (Home, Lifestyle, Video, News) on every page that allows you to return or navigate to other sections on the website you want to go which is effective and useful

How does the site incorporate/interact with its audience? How does it embody the social aspect of the internet (or does it)?

·      Gives audience a wide range of news, including events and things happening in the entertainment industry, not just politics and science and things like that.

Headline

        In Chapter four of Carroll's book, he continues on the previous discussion of the importance of aesthetics when producing websites. Specifically what he touches on in this chapter are the small details of the websites, such as headlines, and just about every aspect of text in general that there possibly ever could be (font, size, color, bold/underline/etc). That lead me to do some research of my own, and I began comparing news sites that I often visited to see what was not only aesthetically pleasing to me but also one's that are more easily navigate-able.

         Normally, I receive my news from the news stations that I am subscribed to on Facebook such as Huffington Post, Shanghaiist (for news in China only), BuzzFeed (does that count?) and New York Times etc, but for the sake of this chapter I went to each of the news stations actual website.

The first one I visited was Huffington Post...and I was shocked to see that their Breaking News articles were all sort of clumped together in a blob..

If I had actually gone to their website as a resource for my daily news, I definitely would not return!

Next, I went to Cnn.com, which I found to organized, easy to follow, with a lot of information but not in an overwhelming sort of way. I also like that the featured news articles can be found at the very top in a straight line in a bar, easy to navigate and also easy to read:

In Chapter 7, Carroll's distinct decipherment of the differences between blogging and journalism - basically, blogging is seen as "postmodern form of expression and pursuit," while journalism seeks to be as objective as possible. It seems to me, that even while writing this, blogging allows me the option of being biased and also provides me a platform for my personal thoughts and opinions on several matters. Having been a writer for the Paladin newspaper here on campus, because I was merely a reporter on events such as concerts and musicals, there really was no room for opinions, and it really wouldn't even be relevant.

Three Second Rule

Chapter 2: 

             In Chapter 2 of Carroll's "Writing for Digital Media textbook," he explored the differences between reading novels or articles on print and reading online on a blog or website. Specifically, under the section of "Readability and Scan-ability," I found his statement, "If there is a lot of content to present, it should be layered, or arrayed to permit drilling, skipping and scanning," thoroughly interesting. I began doing research on the blogs and websites that I turn my attention to and if that applied to the websites that I read articles on. For example, there's this online digital magazine called Thought Catalogue that I believe is catered towards a younger generation, like 20 and 30 year olds. When I first began following the articles on that website, a lot of them would be written like a book or essay would be written - an entire page filled with text and little to no images. 
             Now, as I am exploring through a lot of their more recent articles, I noticed that a lot of them are now being written in bullet point form instead of just paragraphs of paragraphs of text, and in addition to that, they are also often adding large images or even videos in between the texts. The article that I am currently looking at by the way, is called "11 Life Hacks for The Emotionally Struggling 20-something." In this article, even though it is still written in paragraph form, the author has chosen to highlight and bold the key points of the paragraph, perhaps intentionally in the way that Carroll says is for the purpose of "permitting drilling, skipping and scanning." Anyway, after doing some research, I found some interesting statistics that may be why online writers are trying to write in list/bullet form as opposed to long paragraphs. In this one particular study, they developed five different types of versions of the same website - meaning all of the content was the same, just that they would structure it differently.

Source: http://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-users-read-on-the-web/

        When I got to Chapter 3 to the part where Jakob Nielsen conducted a research that showed Web users read 25% more slowly on screen than on paper, I wanted to explore more on Neilsen's discovery and see what other studies had been done to prove that. I ended up surprising myself, not finding research to back up Neilsen's research, but rather watching an interview conducted by New York Times on a family and their opinions on digital reading versus reading paper. The parents of course, were more traditional and read newspapers, magazines, books etc and were very much regulars at the local library. Their son however, was an active online reader. I thought it was really interesting in his interview that he brought up the fact that he finds online reading appealing because of the conversations that many websites allow you to have with other readers. I do think that there are pros to that because talking to other people about it might make you think about what you read in a different way, in another perspective that you wouldn't have thought of otherwise. Some of these pros include better development of cognitive and critical thinking and also writing skills as well.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/books/27reading.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Just for fun:

I also found this video titled, "A Magazine is an Ipad that Does Not Work"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXV-yaFmQNk