Source : Google
What comes to your mind when you see 'new media'?
Today, instead of reading newspaper, people turn to social networking sites and online newspapers to gain latest news. In this digital age, to find a person who actually sits down and read the newspaper is quite difficult.
Social networking sites has become a norm that even media practitioners engage with social media to gain readership. A report done by Yahoo Labs showed that there are 45 news top sites engage with social media (Harlow, 2010).
According to Walsh (2006), 'affordance' means 'what is made possible by the modes used'.
'Multimodal text' incorporates visual images including layout, size, shape, colour, line. Multimodal text also emphasises on visual imagery and sound effects.
Twitter - It is a multimodal text and with 140 character, we are able to convey a message. We can upload pictures and videos right on the spot for our readers to know our latest happenings which obviously has incorporated the 'affordance' element.
However, many oppose the idea of considering Twitter as a new form of journalism as it is hard to convey message in 140 characters and may twists the original meaning of the story (A new form of journalism?, 2011).
Social media includes images, videos, sound effects to catch the eye of the audiences. With the knowledge the readers have previously, they would have trigger the 'inside the head' process' and start visualising (Walsh, 2006). Twitter as an example again, in 140 characters, the audience would share the story and is up to the readers to visualise.
No wonder why public now turns to online media in order to gain latest news!
Reference:
- 'A new form of journalism?' 2011, viewed 23 August 2011, <http://richpetrie89.wordpress.com/2011/04/14/a-new-form-of-journalism/>.
- Harlow, S 2010, Facebook vs. Twitter: are people actually reading the articles, or just sharing them via social media?, Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, viewed 23 August 2011, <http://knightcenter.utexas.edu/blog/facebook-vs-twitter-are-people-actually-reading-articles-or-just-sharing-them-social-media>.
- Harlow, S 2010, Finding a place for Twitter in journalism, Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, viewed 23 August 2011, <http://knightcenter.utexas.edu/blog/finding-place-twitter-journalism>.
- Walsh, M 2006, The '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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