Another Australian man charged over brutal Sharia law whipping - GlobalPost:
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Friday 9 September 2011
Thursday 8 September 2011
What makes for good web design?
What makes for good wed design? How can a website deliver its clear message and purpose to users? The following video answers the questions that have been asked since the beginning of the Web.
Christopher Merrill is a prominent web designer who dedicated his work on designing webs since 1999. He specilises in web site design and is working closely with his client to provide high quality web site design. He’s designed over 200 web sites worldwide and he is a popular figure in social networking sites such as Youtube, giving advices on how to create a good web design.
In the video he argues that a web design should please the users and not the creator. He highlights that a common mistake that web developers make is that they try to “Wow the users” and put too much information on the front page of their screen. A good web design according to Mr Merrill is “Clearn, crisp and honest” delivering a clear message to users who visit their site. It is not the website you want to impress users with but rather the message it tries to convey.
References:
Social Media Marketing and Web 2.0
Social Media Marketing is a new, emerging concept, which started with the foundation of Web 2.0. Networking allowed millions of people to be connected and it allowed individuals to interact with one another, forming a new kind of relationships online. In present day, companies promote their products by joining these networks and/or forums and it has largely impacted the marketing industry and their strategy.
Google is one of the pioneer business corporations that successfully integrated their marketing scheme within the web. The design of the Google Search for example displays a mass number of advertisement by AdSense. AdSense is a marketing tool created by Google to give advertising opportunities to individuals and companies. It dedicates a space in Google Search to expose products to consumers to provoke purchase. Users of Google Search will most likely be affected even by a glimpse of ads thrown to their screens. In 2011 1st quarter, Google earned US $2.34 billion through AdSense, which is 28% of the company’s total revenue. The figures are growing and are proven to be effective in implementing social media as their marketing tool. It is regarded as one of the highly successful business model today. If a user types ‘Tah’ it automatically shows ‘5-star Tahiti Resorts’. Google fetches the ads from their AdSense program and promptly delivers it on the right side of their search site. The web design of Google is what triggers the users to be covertly brainwashed.
Social networking sites such as Facebook also implemented this model, only more engaging. As a social networking site, it allows products to further engage with users. Facebook not only has their integrated AdSense within the website, but also a Facebook page dedicated to brands and manufacturers displaying promotions of their products. Users can also ‘Like’ the page, similar to ‘Follow’ in Twitter, and get various update feeds about the company or product the user has chosen. Furthermore, by commenting or posting, all of the users’ ‘friends’ connections are able to view the message, thereby reaching more people. Social networking sites act as word of mouth, approaching more and more people by simply placing an advertisement or creating a page dedicated to their product. I believe Social media marketing has enabled companies to interact with individuals and it granted a feeling of loyalty to users that are connected to the their marketing.
Web 2.0 and Interactivity
Flew defines interactivity as “the capacity to easily connect interactions across different networks” (Flew 2008, p.29). Our web feature will encourage users to interact, engage, learn and discuss the content on the site and also through links to our social media pages. Interaction channels will allow users to write opinions and foster debate, similar to this “comments” section below. This will seek to drive more users to our feature. In Flew’s context of the ‘new’ media he believes that interactivity “stands for a more powerful sense of user engagement with media texts, a more independent relation to sources of knowledge, individualised media use, and greater user choice” (Flew 2008, p.28.) This definition is very much applicable to us as we are essentially designing our web feature within this context that is the ‘new’ media with competition against other journalistic and feature based sites that have already covered the Tahrir Sqaure protests. In this “greater user choice” context, we must make our web feature unique and different, taking a new investigative stance on the story.
Comments section from a existing documentary feature website “Go Back To Where You Came From”
http://www.sbs.com.au/shows/goback/
References:
Flew, T, 2008, “New media an introduction,” 3rd ed., Oxford University Press, Australia.
http://media.sbs.com.au/sbscorporate/documents/240104_online.pdf
Tuesday 6 September 2011
Who To Target?
Our target publication is the SBS. The Egyptian protests – a social media revolution – fits the mould of a type of story that SBS would cover. Whether a television documentary or online feature; the story is solid. However, for the purpose of this assignment, we propose an investigative web feature.
SBS’s digital media unit allowed for the expansion of SBS news programs and documentaries online, which currently comprises of more than 150 individual websites. In 1997, SBS Online had seven websites and each month recorded an average of 35,000 page impressions (SBS). In today’s 150 websites, there is a monthly average of about 6 million page impressions (SBS). This growth online has been particularly rapid within the past five years.
The SBS “documentary” section (hyperlink from SBS homepage)
http://www.sbs.com.au/documentary/
With all this in mind, our web feature will serve as an extension of the SBS network, specifically from the “documentary” section of SBS. Our focus on social media as a powerful democratic tool in the Egyptian context, will be another website adding to the list which currently stands at approx 150. Noting the rise of online participation, particularly within the last five years, our web feature targeted for SBS users will seek to enhance their knowledge on the Tahrir Square Protest and give the story a new meaning. This in-depth focus on the use of social media as means for communication amongst citizens to collectively overthrow a corrupt government will give users a new side of the story to consider.
Furthermore, SBS websites act as an extension from aired television programs by the station. Research indicates that a total of 94% of website users watch the corresponding SBS television program. Interestingly, only a small percentage of users (5%) speak languages other than English. Whilst the SBS network does cater for various audience ethnicities, specifically Italian, Mandarin, Dutch, Croatian, Syrian, Arabic, Vietnamese, Greek and Cantonese, our web feature will simply focus on the international language of English. SBS websites aim to “both initiate and reinforce viewer/listener attachment to particular SBS programs and to the SBS brand” (SBS). Recent data reveals that SBS television’s largest demographic is people over the age of 40 (49%), however it is interesting to reveal that 74% of the users of the SBS websites are in fact under 40 years old. Clearly younger audience members are engaging in the online world, as according to Flew (2008) they represent “digital natives”. However, one cannot simply omit the older audience members when creating a web feature, who’s to say that are not or will not become technologically savvy?
References
http://media.sbs.com.au/sbscorporate/documents/240104_online.pdf
Monday 5 September 2011
Egyptian Online Timeline
Kefaya Movement, 2007Activists and bloggers begin to undertake early steps to change
April 6th2010 Youth Movement
Maximise use of blogs to counter state control of news
Arrested April 6th 2008 Ahmed Maher, co-founder of the April 6 Youth Movement, civil engineer and co-founderWaleedRashad, has a degree in commerce. Youth Movement protest in Alexandria where he and 14 members of the movement were arrested.
Tensions emerge too
January 18th Asmaa Mahfouz produces this rally video
January 18th Asmaa Mahfouz produces this rally video
January 22nd We are all Khaled Said page produced by Google Executive,Wael Ghonim http://www.facebook.com/elshaheeed.co.uk
February 2Twitter produces 'Speak to tweet' technology.
Protesters more efficiently post statements through this new Twitter technology
http://twitter.com/#!/speak2tweet
January 25th Egypt’s Day of Rage
Protest culminates in massive turnout, Tahrir Square, central Cairo
January 27thInternet is shut down
The Associated Press also confirms widespread Internet outages in Egypt..According to Resney’s, a US Internet monitoring company, Egypt's four main internet service providers cut off international access to their customers in a near simultaneous move at 2234 GMT on Thursday.
January 27th: Facebook, Twitter and Blackberry Messenger services are disrupted.
July-August 2011: Ongoing broadcast of Mubarak trials streamed on almasryalyoum.comand other sites
Tahrir Square
Tahrir, Castells and the emergence of a new, technology enabled 'Public Sphere'
Manuel Castell's 'The New Public Sphere: Global Civil Society, Communication Networks, and Global Governance
Castell's explains in this text, that
*Without an effective civil society capable of structuring and channelling citizen debates over diverse ideas and conflicting interests, the state drifts away from its subjects (Chapter 2, p 38)
*'Civil society’ is an organised expression of the views of this public sphere, and it is through the public sphere that diverse forms of civil society enact this public debate (Chapter 2, p37)
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