Wednesday, 28 February 2007
Computer ‘assisted’ researching and using spreadsheets – trials and tribulations
I marvel at the diversities of this new media course – one day I am learning XHTML coding, the next its all about how to use sound recording equipment and today I’ve been working on Microsoft Exel. This certainly is all about multi-media and exploiting every available tool which can aid the ‘new age’ journalist.
This component of the course opened my eyes to the mind-boggling amount of information on the web and the ways in which journalists can and should utilise this vast resource in a more reliable and effective manner. I have also learnt that more traditional methods and tools such as Excel have great advantages, especially when used in tandem with the often random and badly organised data on the web.
The assignment we were set, to tabulate certain crime statistics for Grahamstown, Johannesburg, East London and Mangaung (formerly Bloemfontein), led to some lessons which we all unfortunately had to learn the hard way. Basically the web does not have all the information you want in an easy-to-find and easy-to-use format. All of the new media students were in various states of hysteria, trying to find municipality population statistics – important information which one would assume the government has made available. Instead, we struggled to find the information even on the official Stats S.A website. Once we did find the information it was tabulated with codes, which first had to be accessed before you knew which statistics were for certain cities.
Once the relevant statistics had been found, it was really easy to take it across to Excel and make some useful and easy to understand graphs. One such graph (for murders per capita) is displayed above.
In terms of the results of the data, I am now fighting the urge to run as far away from Grahamstown as possible – all of the crimes investigated were by far the highest in Grahamstown over any of the other cities. In fact, Grahamstown's crimes per capita are three times higher than the next highest, which was East London. It is also interesting to note that the order of highest to lowest crime rates remained the same throughout each of the four different types of crimes investigated. On all accounts, Mangaung seems the safest place to live, as their crime rates were extremely low.
All that said, I now have to head home, in the dark, on my own and with all these frightening crime rates running through my head – thanks Jude for making me paranoid (but at the same time you taught me a whole lot)!
This component of the course opened my eyes to the mind-boggling amount of information on the web and the ways in which journalists can and should utilise this vast resource in a more reliable and effective manner. I have also learnt that more traditional methods and tools such as Excel have great advantages, especially when used in tandem with the often random and badly organised data on the web.
The assignment we were set, to tabulate certain crime statistics for Grahamstown, Johannesburg, East London and Mangaung (formerly Bloemfontein), led to some lessons which we all unfortunately had to learn the hard way. Basically the web does not have all the information you want in an easy-to-find and easy-to-use format. All of the new media students were in various states of hysteria, trying to find municipality population statistics – important information which one would assume the government has made available. Instead, we struggled to find the information even on the official Stats S.A website. Once we did find the information it was tabulated with codes, which first had to be accessed before you knew which statistics were for certain cities.
Once the relevant statistics had been found, it was really easy to take it across to Excel and make some useful and easy to understand graphs. One such graph (for murders per capita) is displayed above.
In terms of the results of the data, I am now fighting the urge to run as far away from Grahamstown as possible – all of the crimes investigated were by far the highest in Grahamstown over any of the other cities. In fact, Grahamstown's crimes per capita are three times higher than the next highest, which was East London. It is also interesting to note that the order of highest to lowest crime rates remained the same throughout each of the four different types of crimes investigated. On all accounts, Mangaung seems the safest place to live, as their crime rates were extremely low.
All that said, I now have to head home, in the dark, on my own and with all these frightening crime rates running through my head – thanks Jude for making me paranoid (but at the same time you taught me a whole lot)!
Tuesday, 27 February 2007
XHTML: love it or hate it, learning it is essential!
Why should a new media journalist understand and use XHTML?
With advanced web design programmes such as Dreamweaver available some may argue that there is no need for a new media journalist to understand and use XHTML. However, just like with any skill, one needs to understand the basics on which these programmes are built in order to really exploit the full potential of web design coding. XHTML, which stands for eXtensible HyperText Markup Language, is an advanced version of HTML, with many advantages over its predecessor. Joe Gillespie says that using XHTML allows you to “tighten-up your markup, [get] rid of ambiguities and sloppy coding” (Gillespie, 2002) thus improving the robustness of your pages across browsers. As Linda Roeder says, “XHTML is really not all that much different from HTML [it] is really just well informed HTML” (Roeder, 2007).
Now that we have established what XHTML is, we can discuss its relevance and advantages. Bud Kraus (2007) is adamant that although there are many high level web site development tools available to create web content today it is still essential that one learns how to “make web pages, ‘by hand’, the old fashioned way using nothing but a text editor” (Kraus 2007). Firstly, through knowing how to edit XHTML code, one is able to “use web page editors, like Dreamweaver, more effectively by using creative options you otherwise can’t achieve” (Kraus 2007).
Secondly, you gain a huge amount of independence by being able to make or edit a page through a basic text editor such as Notepad without relying on web publishing software. Another advantage is that XHTML allows for “streamlined, easy-to-manage, search engine-friendly web design” which creates “optimized easy-to-manage web sites that upload and download faster” (Kraus 2007). Furthermore, knowing XHTML makes learning other markup languages such as RSS much easier as it shares a common syntax.
Therefore, through developing a solid ground work in XHTML, the new media journalist is able to fully utilise the options which programmes like Dreamweaver provide. Moreover, journalists may find themselves in situations where they do not have access to a web design programme, so knowing XHTML allows one to produce a basic web page through using such a simple application as Notepad.
Works Cited
Gillespie, Joe. 2003. Web page design for designers. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on 26 February 2007:
http://www.wpdfd.com/editorial/wpd0903.htm#feature
Kraus, Bud. 2007. Why learn XHTML and CSS? Retrieved from the World Wide Web on 26 February 2007:
http://www.joyofcode.com/reasons_to_learn.html
Roeder, Linda. 2007. Basics of XHTML – why, what and how. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on 26 February 2007:
http://personalweb.about.com/od/basichtml/a/409xhtml.htm
XHTML tutorial
Retrieved from the World Wide Web on 26 February 2007:
http://www.softlookup.com/tutorial/XHTML/index.asp
With advanced web design programmes such as Dreamweaver available some may argue that there is no need for a new media journalist to understand and use XHTML. However, just like with any skill, one needs to understand the basics on which these programmes are built in order to really exploit the full potential of web design coding. XHTML, which stands for eXtensible HyperText Markup Language, is an advanced version of HTML, with many advantages over its predecessor. Joe Gillespie says that using XHTML allows you to “tighten-up your markup, [get] rid of ambiguities and sloppy coding” (Gillespie, 2002) thus improving the robustness of your pages across browsers. As Linda Roeder says, “XHTML is really not all that much different from HTML [it] is really just well informed HTML” (Roeder, 2007).
Now that we have established what XHTML is, we can discuss its relevance and advantages. Bud Kraus (2007) is adamant that although there are many high level web site development tools available to create web content today it is still essential that one learns how to “make web pages, ‘by hand’, the old fashioned way using nothing but a text editor” (Kraus 2007). Firstly, through knowing how to edit XHTML code, one is able to “use web page editors, like Dreamweaver, more effectively by using creative options you otherwise can’t achieve” (Kraus 2007).
Secondly, you gain a huge amount of independence by being able to make or edit a page through a basic text editor such as Notepad without relying on web publishing software. Another advantage is that XHTML allows for “streamlined, easy-to-manage, search engine-friendly web design” which creates “optimized easy-to-manage web sites that upload and download faster” (Kraus 2007). Furthermore, knowing XHTML makes learning other markup languages such as RSS much easier as it shares a common syntax.
Therefore, through developing a solid ground work in XHTML, the new media journalist is able to fully utilise the options which programmes like Dreamweaver provide. Moreover, journalists may find themselves in situations where they do not have access to a web design programme, so knowing XHTML allows one to produce a basic web page through using such a simple application as Notepad.
Works Cited
Gillespie, Joe. 2003. Web page design for designers. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on 26 February 2007:
http://www.wpdfd.com/editorial/wpd0903.htm#feature
Kraus, Bud. 2007. Why learn XHTML and CSS? Retrieved from the World Wide Web on 26 February 2007:
http://www.joyofcode.com/reasons_to_learn.html
Roeder, Linda. 2007. Basics of XHTML – why, what and how. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on 26 February 2007:
http://personalweb.about.com/od/basichtml/a/409xhtml.htm
XHTML tutorial
Retrieved from the World Wide Web on 26 February 2007:
http://www.softlookup.com/tutorial/XHTML/index.asp
Monday, 26 February 2007
A discussion of new media
Critically discuss the significance of your introduction to new media and journalism studies, focusing on all of the following issues:
a) The uniqueness and opportunities of ‘new’ media
b) How ‘new’ media relates to critical media studies
c) Whether ‘new’ media is just ‘old wine in new wine skins’
The evolution of ‘new’ media has brought about many exciting opportunities and possibilities for both those who provide and those who consume the news, and is constantly changing the face of media as we know it. The striking new developments are seemingly unique to all the forms of media that have gone before, but this ‘newness’ is an erroneous assumption for reasons I will presently discuss.
That aside, there is no denying the unique nature of the opportunities which ‘new’ media provides. For instance, the digital nature of ‘new’ media allows “a flexibility and creativity that more traditional formats would constrain” (Kawamoto, 2003:2). Digitality results in several important characteristics such as hypertextuality, interactivity and nonlinearity. All of these characteristics have allowed for a fuller, richer media experience and there is a clear interest in ‘new’ media, seeing that since the mid-1990s “millions of people have adopted the Internet as their primary or secondary source of news and information” (Kawamoto, 2003:24).
Such a massive development as ‘new’ media must be discussed with regard to its relationship with critical media studies and with society as a whole. Thompson (1995) critically examines the media in terms of its central role in social life and how the development of the media in the modern era “has transformed the nature of symbolic production and exchange in the modern world” (Thompson, 1995:10) in a profound and irreversible way.
One such example is that “the use of technical media enables individuals to transcend the spatial and temporal boundaries characteristic of face-to-face interaction” (Thompson, 1995:31). Seeing as this process has also been influenced by other developments social such as in transport, proves we cannot view the emergence of ‘new media’ as a stand-alone phenomenon, but rather must see it as “part of a much larger landscape of social, technological and cultural change” (Lister et al., 2002:11).
Furthermore, our critical study of ‘new’ media must examine to what extent ‘new’ media is really new versus what is just a reformation of already existing media. The newness of new media “represents a challenge to some of our ways of analyzing media and, […] gives us an opportunity to think through whether our use of media now is shifting and changing the way we relate to it” (Marshall, 2004:2). Marshall (2004) argues that we need to alter our approach “towards a more intricate reading of cultural production” (Marshall, 2004:12) and that a critical study of new media requires a close examination of the new cultural landscape which has been created and developed through new media culture’s various forms.
In examining whether ‘new’ media is really new, we need to identify some significant change which underpins all new media. Most argue that turning analogue media into digital media is where the specific change has occurred but Lister et al.(2002), warn us “although digital media is accurate as a formal description, it presupposes an absolute break (between analogue and digital) where […] none in fact exists” (Lister et al., 2002:12). For instance the digital nature of new media is really just a “continuation and extension of a principle or technique in place; […] the principle of conversion from physical artifact to signal” (Lister et al., 2002:15). They argue the reason people may conceive of the experience of digital media as a complete break from analogue media is due to the significant scale and nature of the extension.
We therefore need to be historical in our approach to ‘new media’ and remember that “new media are not born in a vacuum and, as media, would have no resources to draw upon if they were not in touch and negotiating with the long traditions of […] older media” (Lister et al., 2002:40). ‘New’ media has developed essentially through the appropriation of “some of the qualities and relationships from past media forms” (Marshall, 2004:3).
In many cases then, new media is simply ‘old wine in new wine skins’ – meaning an ‘old’ medium in new era. The term, ‘new’, is thus quite obviously misleading, and perhaps it is better to adopt Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin’s (1999) term of remediation to explain the “repurposing or refashioning of old media with new media, not just in terms of content or retelling stories but through the incorporation of old media into new media forms” (Bucy, 2005:50). They argue that ‘new’ media cannot be developed in a vacuum as the very act of remediation “ensures that the older medium cannot be entirely effaced” and the “new medium remains dependent upon the older one” (Bucy, 2005:56). In conclusion, when discussing the developments within media we must remember that “old and new are relational terms and not absolutes” (Marshall, 2004:2).
Works Cited
Bucy, E (ed.). 2005. Remediation in Living in the Information Age: A New Media Reader. USA: Thomson Wadsworth.
Kawamoto, K. 2003. Digital Journalism: emerging media and the changing horizons of journalism in Digital Journalism: Emerging Media and the Changing Horizons of Journalism. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.
Lister, Martin [et al.]. 2002. New Media and Technologies in New Media: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge.
Marshall, P. 2004. Introduction: new media and cultural studies in New Media Cultures. Arnold.
Thompson, JB. 1995. Communication and Social Context in The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media. Cambridge: Polity.
a) The uniqueness and opportunities of ‘new’ media
b) How ‘new’ media relates to critical media studies
c) Whether ‘new’ media is just ‘old wine in new wine skins’
The evolution of ‘new’ media has brought about many exciting opportunities and possibilities for both those who provide and those who consume the news, and is constantly changing the face of media as we know it. The striking new developments are seemingly unique to all the forms of media that have gone before, but this ‘newness’ is an erroneous assumption for reasons I will presently discuss.
That aside, there is no denying the unique nature of the opportunities which ‘new’ media provides. For instance, the digital nature of ‘new’ media allows “a flexibility and creativity that more traditional formats would constrain” (Kawamoto, 2003:2). Digitality results in several important characteristics such as hypertextuality, interactivity and nonlinearity. All of these characteristics have allowed for a fuller, richer media experience and there is a clear interest in ‘new’ media, seeing that since the mid-1990s “millions of people have adopted the Internet as their primary or secondary source of news and information” (Kawamoto, 2003:24).
Such a massive development as ‘new’ media must be discussed with regard to its relationship with critical media studies and with society as a whole. Thompson (1995) critically examines the media in terms of its central role in social life and how the development of the media in the modern era “has transformed the nature of symbolic production and exchange in the modern world” (Thompson, 1995:10) in a profound and irreversible way.
One such example is that “the use of technical media enables individuals to transcend the spatial and temporal boundaries characteristic of face-to-face interaction” (Thompson, 1995:31). Seeing as this process has also been influenced by other developments social such as in transport, proves we cannot view the emergence of ‘new media’ as a stand-alone phenomenon, but rather must see it as “part of a much larger landscape of social, technological and cultural change” (Lister et al., 2002:11).
Furthermore, our critical study of ‘new’ media must examine to what extent ‘new’ media is really new versus what is just a reformation of already existing media. The newness of new media “represents a challenge to some of our ways of analyzing media and, […] gives us an opportunity to think through whether our use of media now is shifting and changing the way we relate to it” (Marshall, 2004:2). Marshall (2004) argues that we need to alter our approach “towards a more intricate reading of cultural production” (Marshall, 2004:12) and that a critical study of new media requires a close examination of the new cultural landscape which has been created and developed through new media culture’s various forms.
In examining whether ‘new’ media is really new, we need to identify some significant change which underpins all new media. Most argue that turning analogue media into digital media is where the specific change has occurred but Lister et al.(2002), warn us “although digital media is accurate as a formal description, it presupposes an absolute break (between analogue and digital) where […] none in fact exists” (Lister et al., 2002:12). For instance the digital nature of new media is really just a “continuation and extension of a principle or technique in place; […] the principle of conversion from physical artifact to signal” (Lister et al., 2002:15). They argue the reason people may conceive of the experience of digital media as a complete break from analogue media is due to the significant scale and nature of the extension.
We therefore need to be historical in our approach to ‘new media’ and remember that “new media are not born in a vacuum and, as media, would have no resources to draw upon if they were not in touch and negotiating with the long traditions of […] older media” (Lister et al., 2002:40). ‘New’ media has developed essentially through the appropriation of “some of the qualities and relationships from past media forms” (Marshall, 2004:3).
In many cases then, new media is simply ‘old wine in new wine skins’ – meaning an ‘old’ medium in new era. The term, ‘new’, is thus quite obviously misleading, and perhaps it is better to adopt Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin’s (1999) term of remediation to explain the “repurposing or refashioning of old media with new media, not just in terms of content or retelling stories but through the incorporation of old media into new media forms” (Bucy, 2005:50). They argue that ‘new’ media cannot be developed in a vacuum as the very act of remediation “ensures that the older medium cannot be entirely effaced” and the “new medium remains dependent upon the older one” (Bucy, 2005:56). In conclusion, when discussing the developments within media we must remember that “old and new are relational terms and not absolutes” (Marshall, 2004:2).
Works Cited
Bucy, E (ed.). 2005. Remediation in Living in the Information Age: A New Media Reader. USA: Thomson Wadsworth.
Kawamoto, K. 2003. Digital Journalism: emerging media and the changing horizons of journalism in Digital Journalism: Emerging Media and the Changing Horizons of Journalism. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.
Lister, Martin [et al.]. 2002. New Media and Technologies in New Media: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge.
Marshall, P. 2004. Introduction: new media and cultural studies in New Media Cultures. Arnold.
Thompson, JB. 1995. Communication and Social Context in The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media. Cambridge: Polity.
Saturday, 17 February 2007
Finally....
Its taken me way too long to start my own blog so today is a good day ;) I guess i've got a lot of work to do, setting this up and making it how i like it. I'm not going to get a chance to start things off slowly either, as part of my course requirement for the New Media course at Rhodes University is that i blog at least twice a week. I'm really pleased about that - nothing like getting a good kick up the backside to make you do things ;)
Watch this space...
Watch this space...
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