Reflection

Creating a weblog was made easy through the theories and the numerous step-to-step guides available on the Internet. The theories learnt from this subject were also needed to apply while designing this template and layout for the blog. The few points that were needed to be taken into consideration are that “every mode has its own affordance due to the modes' special features” (Schriver 1997), framing is one of the key elements of a good composition (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006), multimodality which encourages interactivity and engage readers with the organization itself (Walsh 2006) and last but not least, ‘The more focused your content, the more focused your readers’ Jakob Nielsen (2005).

Besides being able to apply those theories into work, there are issues which came around to be realised. Some of which are ethical issues. A blogger has the responsibilty just like a journalist to be responsible of what he/she wrote or published on his/her blog. Accountability is really vital as offensive statements or pictures can cause misunderstanding and create chaos.

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Reference:

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 1998, ‘Front pages: (the critical) analysis of newspaper layout’, in Bell, A & Garrett, P (eds) 1998, Approaches to media discourse, Blackwell, Oxford, chapter 7, pp. 186-219.

Nielsen, J 2005, Weblog Usability : The Top Ten Design Mistakes, viewed on 2 November 2007,<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/weblogs.html>

Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Pub., NY.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.