New form of media publishing

The current trends of collaborative web-page tools, such as photo photoblogs, mobblogs, videoblogs offer many unique and powerful information sharing and collaboration features. You tube as the leader in internet video search serves up 100 million videos a day online. (Reuters 2006)

It shows that, today’s people are more interesting with the online information, since they are easy and quick to be obtained. However, as stated by Perlmutter and McDaniel 2005, “The rise of new media should not make the old media panic or be dismissive or fearful.” It is because, there are also have some problems arises from the new media such as blogs. Since the blogs are often produced and maintained by individuals, they can include biased or inaccurate information. Furthermore, blogs are unmediated and therefore people can easily express themselves their opinions, ideas, and attitudes.(Educause 2005)

As argued by Shriver (1997, p.362) better technology does not equal better communication. For example, in US the social networking such as MySpace and Youtube have used to election campaign. These social networking sites used to segment the voting age population which represent the next internet generation. There are some benefit of these such as “increasing the potential for candidate exposure at a low cost or no cost, providing lesser known candidates with a viable outlet to divulge their message, and allowing campaigns to raise contributions and recruit volunteers online”.

However, there are some challenges for campaign staff which is "the reduced level of control that campaigns have over the image and message of the candidate, which is of critical importance to election outcomes."(Gueorguieva 2008)

Reference

Educause 2005, ‘Seven things you should know about blogs’,viewed 7 June 2009, http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7006.pdf

Gueorguieva,V 2008, ‘ Voters, Myspace, and You Tube’ Social science computer review, Sage Journal Online, viewed 7 June 2009, http://ssc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/26/3/288

Perlmutter,DD& McDaniel,M 2005, ‘ The ascent of blogging’ , Niemen reports, viewed 7 June 2009, http://soma.sbcc.edu/users/DaVega/MAT_103/MAT_103_Articles/News_Online/AcentofBlogging.pdf

Reuters 16 July 2006, ‘YouTube serves up 100 million videos a day online’, viewed 6 June 2009, http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-07-16-youtube-views_x.htm?

Shriver, KA 1997, Dynamic in document design: creating text for readers, Wiley Computer Pub, New York