Final reflection blog

Out of the past 4 blog, I think the most effective blog is “Visual and Text Analysis of Dior and Facebook” as in that post, I have fully applied Kress & van Leeuwen’s work to analyse the images and draws. According to Wiki, Digital literacy is the ability to effectively and critically navigate, evaluate and create information using a range of digital technologies. To me, specific elements having to do with idea/ concepts of new literacy from the course are creativity and multimodality. Having diverse multimodality can make “our story” that we want to tell to be full. Our creativity to put different elements like picture, wordings and video in different order can give different impression to the viewers. These elements can make the new literacies stand out and attract others’ attention.

In the past, I only used Kress and van Leeuwen’s work to analyse the Dior’s advertisement. However, I think only use “Spatial Map” to analyse the picture is not enough now. There are much more information and message behind the picture. We can understand the picture deeper though investigating pictures’ interpersonal function, textual function, colour and ideology.

Let’s view the Dior’s advertisement again.

 

In terms of interpersonal function (distance), the long shot and indirect gaze of the woman encourage feelings of emotional detachment and address the reader indirectly. The long shot, which the camera is far away from the subject(woman), the setting(the whole room) rather than the subject(woman) is emphasized. What I did not consider before is from a distance, the whole setting like a skull. Thus, the photographer is suggesting “poison” and death by including a skull as an intertextual referent for the design on the image. The whole setting is related to the perfume’s theme—poison. Kress & van Leeuwen, have identified the Gaze is a relationship, between offering and demanding Direct gaze is a demand. If a person or character in the frame (the participant represented in the still or moving image) is looking directly at the viewer and making eye contact, then our attention is demanded. Indirect gaze is an offer – the person or character represented on the page is not aware that the viewer is looking at him/her. In this advertisement, the advertiser is using indirect gaze— subjects (woman) deflect emphasis to other people or objects in the scene. This may be a strategy to move a viewer’s eyes from one subject (woman) to another subject (perfume in front of the mirror) in the advertisement.

Another aspect of interpersonal function is visual modality. Modality is the truth value or credibility of statements about the world (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996). Visual modality is culturally and historically determined. It is represented by a complex combination of visual cues/markers which include the use of:

1. Colour saturation and differentiation
2. Background details, depth, quality of materials
3. Illumination and brightness

According to these visual cues/markers, the Dior Advertisement is low modality and unrealistic. The colour saturation is high, background details are unclear and the illumination just focuses on the middle part. Creating an unrealistic world may increase the feeling of mystery and the viewers’ curiosity. This is an effective strategy for Discourse of brand advertisement

In terms of textual function, the composition of the image (i.e. overall arrangement) brings together the way in which the ideational and the interpersonal elements relate to each other and the way in which they are integrated to create the whole image. The placement of the wordings in different parts (left/right, top/bottom, centre/margin area) serves as an indication of the information value in an image. In the advertisement, we can observe that the relative size of the word “Dior” is larger than the word “poison”. That implies the advertiser wants the views’ first glance at “Dior”, following by “poison”. The brand name is much more important than the theme name.

When it comes to colour, every colour has its symbolism. Colour symbolism means the connotation and denotation of colours. Colours have universal denotations and meanings but sometimes different cultures have different interpretations of colour. Color has a powerful subconscious effect on every part of our lives, without even saying a word; an understanding of color meanings in business gives the advertisers an invaluable tool to get the best response to marketing and promotional efforts and ultimately to create a successful business. The Dior advertisement is mainly composed of white and black. Black is the colour of the night, and of “evil.”Black can also be a color of elegance or class (such as a black-tie only event, and black evening gowns.)  Black represents ideas such as power, sexuality, sophistication, formality, wealth,, fear, evil, unhappiness, depth, style, sadness, remorse, anger, and mourning. Black can also represent a lack of colour, the primordial void, emptiness. According to Henry Dreyfus, Black, is the colour of mystery and solemnity; the colour of the night. Black expresses the depths of the unknown, and encourages the imagination of a different world from that of daylight realities. In this case, I think the advertiser want to use black to present the product as high class, powerful, elegant, mystery, style, evil, empty and wealthy. If the viewer feels empty and wants to be a stylish, elegant woman, using this product can make them become the fancy group. The black colour creates a room for the viewer to further their imagination. White is color at its most complete and pure, the color of perfection. The color meaning of white is purity, innocence, wholeness and completion. In this case, the middle part is mainly white in colour. I think the advertiser wants to make the viewer connotate that the woman who uses the product is pure, simple and like a perfect princess. Both white and black are cool colour. Using cool colour has a calming effect: comforming and nurturing. They are beneficial for businesses selling luxury, elegance and sophistication.

An ideology is a set of ideas that constitute one’s goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology is a comprehensive vision, a way of looking at things (compare worldview) as in several philosophical tendencies (see political ideologies), or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to all members of this society (a “received consciousness” or product of socialization). When it comes to the ideology, the advertisement creates an image that the role of the young elegant woman in the picture is our perfect goddess and who we want to follow. The whole environment is dark, but once using the Dior product, it will make a difference and it can light up our world like a magic.

I have thought about these new elements to Dior’s picture after my professor commented on my blog. My professor said that a skull can be seen from a distant. Frankly speaking, I really didn’t discover it initially. Through others’ comment, I can view what I couldn’t view and look. It is true that the interaction in a blog can gather different people’s wisdom and we can learn from others’ perspectives and intelligence. It broadens my horizons and trains me to think critically and objectively. After professors’ comment, I find more aspects to analyze the visual world in digital literacies. I have discovered that Kress & van Leeuwen do not only have “Spatial Map” theory, they have also interpersonal function and textual function theories that are useful to analyse visual Discourse. Nowadays, more and more advertisements use fewer and fewer words. See belows.

 

These make me rethink the interaction between the textual and visual elements. Is it really enough to present the ideas of a product through using a few wordings? In Dior’s example, I think it is true. Even though there are only two words in the advertisement, we can get the message behind it. Kress & van Leeuwen(1996) mention that in written discourses, no word, no communication while in visual discourses, if there is something that we wish to depict whatever we want through images. Words are relatively vague, often nearly empty of meanings while images are relatively full, “plain” with meaning. Picture tends to have a more immediate effect and we tend to “believe “picture more readily.

 

In my other post which mentions my favourite online game – Tales Weaver I want to add something in too. I have written that this game has taken down twice but “reborn” again and again may due to““interactivity” factor and “multimodal” factor. But now, I think there are more factors contribute to this. They are the affordances of being, doing, meaning, relating and thinking. I have changed my opinions after I saw my classmates’ group presentation on online games. After that, I understand that all the online game worlds are different to the real worlds in terms of these five aspects.

Being

In Tales Weaver, the players can choose their own sexuality, occupation, survival aims (i.e. what they are pursuing in the game, Wealth?High popularity?High power?), etc. These may be difficult for them to choose in the real world (e.g. you are born to be a boy in the real) world due to environmental factors but these can be done by simply clicking a mouse in the virtual mouse. Like an actor, as long as the players like, they can create a character that is totally different to themselves in the reality, no matter the outlook or the characteristics.

Doing

In before, many games are decided for one player or maximum two players to play. In Tales Weaver, more than ten thousand of players can play together. Players can also enjoy the teamwork by grouping together to complete different missions. It changes us that we can have more interaction and discussion with the people who play the same game.

Meaning

In Tales Weaver, the communication is through textbox to type words. It changes the way we communicate every day. As we do not know each other in the virtual world, this way of communication can protect our privacy and we can be more free to express ourselves and less embarrassed to talk. This way of communication also fosters a new form of friends making.  

Relating

The games have a lot of relationship settings like the real world, i.e. master and apprentice, teammates, couples, friends. Having this relationship, the online community makes much more commitment in the game because the relationship makes us feel closer to each other.

Thinking

In Tales Weaver, it change the way we organize time and space. Through the textbox communication system, we can receive the messages instantly and check back the communication history so do not missing some important message. In the real world, it is impossible to trace back what the others said. The only way is using our memory to remember people’s saying. In the game world, as long as the computer has Internet access, then the players can access it no matter they are in America or in China. Space is not a problem for the game playing.

These five aspects are what I reconsider and read in the textbooks after writing that old posts. I think players in Tales Weaver are attracted by those five elements very much.

When I write a blog and analyze something next time, I think I had better do some research and take more others’ perspectives so that I can have a more all-round description and understanding. It is very easy to miss out something if we only use our own eyes to see the world.

Facebook Relationship

Some believe networked society leads to more exchange of ideas and greater diversity; others think the opposite. To me, I support the thought of Keith Hampton (2011) : “ Our online connections tend to foster lasting and more diverse social connection”.

Do you remember and keep in touch with your high school classmates, or even primary school classmates? Nowadays, we contact and maintain a relationship much easier than the old days because of the social network site. For example, we are easily to find our old friends by simply searching their names. People usually hold gathering and events to maintain their relationships, no matter strong ties, weak ties and strong weak ties. The following is the photos showing that there are some ex-primary school students set up groups in Facebook to support their school or hold some events or gathering among the groupmates.

We can simply put “Join”, “Maybe” or “Decline” to indicate our willing. It is really comfortable to invite people to join activities in Facebook rather than phoning them one by one which is time-consuming. Living in a busy community, time is very precious. Some people may deem phone the people with weak tie one by one is invaluable and therefore, they would rather choose not contact. Now, the transaction cost of using Facebook is low so Facebook users are more willing to spend time on creating activities to keep relationships.

The functions of Facebook help us to group the friends into different categories like “best friends, college friends, colleagues, etc. To me, I don’t want to show all the things on Facebook to all friends. This function can effectively help me to hide something to some kind of people. Like posting a photo that taken with my boyfriend whom my parents do not know, it helps me to keep the secret from them. Therefore, it is true that Facebook is a “web-based services that construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system”.

One of the biggest concerns of Facebook is the “privacy nightmare”. Beating up on Facebook’s privacy policies is a pastime beloved of the technology media.( http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/nov/15/facebook-email-gmail-killer) For the privacy setting, even though we lock the photo for only our Facebook friends to view, if the friend comments on that “locked photo”, the friends of friend can view it too. Also, when we play games in the Facebook, the games always need us to provide our personal information before clicking “accept”. It is very unsafe that our personal information may be taken by the advertisers for commercial use.

Relationship in Facebook is complicated and it can be divided in three types: strong tie, weak tie and strong weak tie. Each tie represents different strength of a relationship.

Strong tie

I deem my classmates, my best friends and my relatives as strong tie as I usually communicate with them in my daily life. For the people with strong tie, I use informal tone to communicate with them and dare post something strange on their wall because they are familiar with me very much.

Weak tie

I deem my teachers, the old schoolmates, people met only once before and the friends who seldom contact as weak tie. For the people with weak tie, I use formal tone to communicate with them to show the politeness and respect as they are not close to me.

Strong weak tie

I deem the friends of friends as strong weak tie. They are the people whom I may not know very well, but I trust them more than completely strangers. Although they are not close to me, sometimes I need their help and they help is so powerful. Apart from job hunting, when I need to conduct a survey like “investigating the shopping habit among Hong Kong City University’s students”, friends of friends who come from Hong Kong City University help me a lot. I can finish doing this survey in a short time due to the great number of students.

No matter which ties we develop relationship with, It is no doubt that the social network site lets us make more friends than before. According to a survey conducted on Dec 31^st 2011, the average Facebook user had 234 friends. ( http://www.quora.com/How-many-friends-does-a-Facebook-user-have-on-average-and-what-is-the-distribution-of-friends-numbers ) In terms of Dunbar’s number, the maximum number of which human brain can keep track of in a social network is 150. So, the number of 234 friends exactly exceeds that number. We cannot concentrate on too many friends but why we still add friends? I opine that it is because we may think that every friend in the friend list may have the use one day. Also, out of curiosity, we can keep track on others’ gossip and get the useful information from others. How about you? How many Facebook friends do you keep now? If your number of Facebook friends exceeds 150, why do you add so many friends in your Facebook? Please feel free to discuss.=))

Online Game——Tales Weaver

Playing online games is very common in this era and I support the idea that it can teach us: to take in information from many sources and make decision quickly; to deduce a game’s rules from playing rather than being told; to create strategies for overcoming obstacles; to understand complex through system through experimentation; to collaborate with others.(Prensky, 2003)

Today, I want to share one of my favorite games—Tales Weaver. Tales Weaver which is a Korean online game (MMORPG) is popular in Korean, Japanese and Korean. It is an amazing game that it has been take down two times in Hong Kong but it will be set up again in this December. What factors make it “reborn” again and again? It is not only the “fun” factor, but also the “interactivity” factor and “multimodal” factor.

Interactivity

In Tales Weaver, there is less “rules” or constraints more like real life. Although it is fixed to choose twelve characters, you can choose your own hairstyle, items and clothes you wear. You can also choose different gestures that you like too, like sitting down, clapping the hands, nodding, etc. Some people, due to their occupation like being a professional, can’t do something silly that may destroy their image in the real world. So, in the virtue world, they have more freedom to express their “real me”. Take me as an example. Without social cues, I pretend to be a boy and flirt with the female characters in the game. It is quite funny to know that the others completely believe you are a boy, isn’t it? We can also express our thoughts through putting some words above our characters’ head. Some sellers in the game make full use of this function to put the advertisement words above the head to attract customers.(see below)

In this game, we can team with different people and form a party up to 30 peoples. People who desire for friendship may gain satisfaction from this system. We can learn how to communicate and collaborate with the strangers by interacting with the teammates. Like the real world, apart from friendship, we can also develop “love relationship” and get married through “marriage system”.

Multimodal

There are more ways to make meanings like real life. In this game, there are different missions for you to accept. You can choose to accept or not. And when you talk with the NPC, you can make different choices (usually three to four choices in a conversation). Different choices may lead to different story plot of your character. In the process of carrying out the mission, you will learn the problem-solving skills. Even though you can’t solve the problem, don’t worry. You can ask your friends in the game world or read the articles which are post on the forum are other players’ discovery information in the game. Actively search and take useful information to use is what we should learn in this era. You can walk your own way in the game. Actually, the game has its storyline. The game plot is based on the Korean novel—Children of the Rune. The novel is very famous and attracts many readers to play this game. And on the other hand, many players love this game very much and start to read the novel because of the game. Some creative players draw the pictures of the game characters and make the machinima. Below is a video clip that shows the pictures drawn by the Tales Weaver’s fans.

The colour of the game is mainly warm colour that makes us feel comfortable when we play it. And the visual of the game is so cute. Even the monsters that we must kill in the game do not own a terrible face. That makes the females willing to try it owing to the cute style of the game world.

The sound effects and background music is so excellent that they give people a feeling of calmness. Although this game is taken down in Hong Kong again and again, it recalls players’ memory when they listen to the music. A lot of Tales Weaver players in the world play the piano piece of it and also share the music notation unofficially. Below is a video clip that shows a fan playing one of the piano music in Tales Weaver.

If you want to take advantages of playing games, Tales Weaver is what I highly recommend! Let’s play together in this Christmas!^^

Visual and Text Analysis of Dior and Facebook

Kress and van Leeuwen point out that visual layout can be divided into different region: the left and the right, the top and the bottom, and the centre and the margin. They suggest multimodal texts organized using the spatial logic of the image often following a structure like this:

To what I have observed, no matter the posters or the websites, many designers make use of Kress and van Leeuwen’s spatial map to draw the attention from the viewers. Let’s see Dior’s advertisement below:

The vector of the poster is clearly towards the middle. The woman looks at the mirror which places in the middle of the poster. Also, the room is full of dark and the brightness in the middle part makes it stand out. It’s obvious that the advertiser wants us to focus on the middle part and it is the dominant part compared to the others. The Dior products are placed on the table and the advertiser wants to imply that if you use their products, you can be a mature and sexy lady like the model too. Your world will become charming and you make a difference surrounding you.

When it comes to the other elements, the logo of Dior is placed at the top of the left margin which means given and ideal. As we all get accustomed to this brand, Dior, it doesn’t need to use a lot of words to describe itself. Just show its brand name is enough and make you buy it to become a fancy member of the customer group.

We can observe that the bottom of the right margin shows the close-up of the new product which is called “poison”. The region of right and bottom represents real and new. That means this “poison” is the new series of Dior and it is available for the customer now. This advertiser encourages the customers to get it for real. I love this name “poison” very much. It seems that when you use, you will unavoidable get addicted to it. And the black color of the perfume bottle give you a feeling of mystery.

 

Some eye-tracking research (Nielsen, 2006) indicates that people approach the reading of a webpage in a number of horizontal and vertical movements which approximate an “F-shaped” pattern. It follows that the text in these regions (top, middle, left) is more likely to be noticed by readers of webpage. I fully support to the writer’s viewpoint that many web designers seem to understand this and often use the top and left of the screen to locate the information that they consider most important. Take facebook website as an example.

The top of the webpage is the logo and login form. It presents that becoming a member of facebook is ideal and the position of the members is at the top of facebook. It seems that being a member of facebook is privilege. It encourages the non-members to aspire to the “ideal” condition of membership. The social networking site facebook is famous nowadays and nearly all the web-users know it. Therefore, the logo of it puts on the top left that represents the information is given and assumes people have a brief image about it. As facebook assumes that we have cultural knowledge about it, we can observe that it doesn’t have any words to describe its function and how to use.

When we focus on the middle part, it is a sign up form. The text size of the form is larger than that of the other part and the sign up form is very simple that it only contains a few questions. It is not surprising that what facebook really concern is how many people sign up and use it. Attracting new potential users to use it is the most important so it put the sign up form in the dominant part of the webpage (the central). The combination of the use of the word “free” and simple design of the sign up form makes the non-members of facebook feel less pressured and it seems that it is easy to join the membership.

Moreover, the left hand side of the middle part shows a picture of mobile phone and using a few words to transmit the message to us that we can stay connected facebook by using mobile phone. It gives us the impression that facebook is known as being really convenient in our life. You can use it no matter where you are. At the bottom of the facebook, they are the information about the company, advertising and privacy etc. Those are what we are rarely interested in so they are placed in the position that is not often noticed by the viewers.

 

In our commercial world, we contact with different advertisementevery day. To the advertiser, how to convey the message that they intend to tell us is very important. Understanding the visual relationship can help them make the advisements more appealing and out-standing. I think every successful company surely has their success reasons. And mostly, they have good structure of advertisements like poster and website that can catch the viewers’ eyes quickly.

Tablet PC for students to school – affordances and constraints-

In “UNDERSTANDING DIGITAL LITERACIES”, it suggests when new ways of doing, meaning, relating, thinking and being start to develop around new media, it’s natural for people to feel insecure and to worry that their old ways of doing, meaning, relating, thinking and being that are used to are being lost and marginalized. I fully agree to this viewpoint as no matter how the inventor emphasize the wonderful and powerful aspects of the new media, we are still bounded by the traditional thoughts and hardly believe the anticipate future. People are worried about the uncertain future that they can’t control.

Take tablet PC as an example. It’s no doubt that it affects our affordances, constraints and social practices in terms of doing, meaning, relating , thinking and being. For years, some educators and computer vendors suggest the idea that the students use the tablet PC instead of the textbooks as the tablet PC aids learning a lot. “Back in the 1980s when PCs first became affordable, technology was considered something to be taught, but now is considered an essential medium by which students learn.”( Details: http://www.pcworld.com/article/114383/article.html)It seems that Tablet PC brings a lot of advantages that a textbook cannot achieve before.

Doing

It acts as an electronic book that you can store thousands of books inside it. It can be edited, looked up the dictionary and read by the sound system at the same time. It can access the internet so the schoolwork can be shared instantly.

Meaning

As using it is paper-free, it makes learning become an environmental-friendly action compare in the past using a lot of printing materials. It is convenient that it’s small and light so learning become an action that can happen anytime, everywhere.

Relating

The traditional teaching mode is one-to-many: one teacher teaches many students at one time in the class. Now, tablet PC opens the areas for the students to flow out their thoughts and questions instantly through the apps for the whole class discussion. It makes the relationship between teacher and students or between classmates and classmates more interactive.

Thinking

It is easier for the students to preserve their ideas and transport them over long distance and time through using tablet PC. It is durable for the teachers to put the resources on the Internet and shared them among the others. Students can thus access the Internet to get the information quickly.

Being

Using tablet PC instead of traditional textbooks shows the students are richer and more technology-oriented compared to the others. The school seems so updated as it provides the education that not the usual schools do nowadays.

The following is a video that shows how iPad provides educational textbooks App that makes studying fun

 

As our textbook mentioned, people have always had strong feelings when it comes to new madia. When it comes to introducing the tablet PC into the primary school, this issue is still wondered whether it is really necessary. Some parents may think that electronic products make the children more introvert. They point out that many children nowadays close the door to play the computer once they return home, which makes the communication between them worse. They are afraid if their children use the tablet PC at school, it will make them more rely on the computer and thus, they would rather be alone.

Another worry is that some parents may not be able to pay such a high price to pay for a tablet PC. Then, they need to buy the traditional paper textbooks. However, lots of the Ebooks emphasize themselves that they are different from the traditional paper textbooks as they contained some interactive elements. When the students use the traditional paper textbooks, they may feel a little bit “education discrimination”. It’s really a subtle difference, though.

(The following is the news about parents’ worries to tablet PC for schoolwork: http://unwire.hk/2012/06/25/hk-elearning/column/ )

Some teachers also worry that the students’ writing ability will decline as the students spend a lot of time on Tablet PC just for reading and typing. They are afraid they will become less willing to write on a piece of paper. And Tablet PC has an inbuilt correction system that when people type wrong, it corrects the words immediately. Therefore, the teachers fear that the students have less chance to learn from error as every error is corrected automatically.

To me, I think the worries of every new media are inevitable. However, I think the advantages of introducing tablet PC to the school overcome the disadvantages. Traditional teaching materials are dead but the teaching materials in tablet PC are alive and ever changing. The teacher can edit at any time as they like. And what is the most important is the students’ interest. Don’t you think it’s more interesting to play games, watch the video or animation than just read the article and pictures while studying?

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