Agnes’s Weblog

Instant Messaging (IM) is a popluar computer-mediated communication in recent decade. Today, there are many different Instant Messengers provided by different companies. For example, MSN, Yahoo! Messenger, eBuddy and ICQ etc. As Instant Messenging has become an universal online activity, many scholars have done different reseraches on it. Relationship between Instant Messaging and youth literacy is one of the significant reseraches in recent years. 

Obviously, young people are the major users of Instant Messengers. Login to the Instant Messenger account has become a “must do” activity in everyday life. If you are a user of Instant Messengers, you will notice that Instant Messengers communication has created a new form of language among young people. This new form of literacy is generated by using abbreviations, homonyns and symbols etc. For example:

Participant A: How r u 2day?

Participant B: not gd! im sick

Participant A: omg!

Participant B: sry, im gg out, ttul

Pacticipant A: ok, bb!

This languages in this conversation are common in nowadays Instant Messaging communication. And, it raises the concern about the impact towards youth literacy. David Craig who wrote the article Instant Messaging: The Language of Youth Literacy, indicates that “Instant Messaging, according to many, threatens youth literacy because it creates and compounds undesirable reading and writing habits and because its particular lowbrow vernacular damages students’ abilities to employ regular, formal literacy skills.”

In my point of view, I agree David Craig that Instant Messaging has the potenial negative impacts on youth literacy.  The followings are the majors negative impacts:

• As people are used to using these IM languages, their spelling ability of words may decrease.
• Grammar may become worse
• Literacy barriers between users

In this week’s lecture, Dean mentioned about media convergence in terms of mobile phone. He indicated that “mobile phone has become a micro-personal computer, it is no longer just a phone”.

In my point of view, this statment is very true to describe the trend of mobile phone usage in recent years. Diversified function is one of the major criterias for today’s mobile phone users. Looking back for few years ago, functions such as music player, images storage, internet access, video recording and radio could be only used with a computer. However, all of them have become the “must included” functions in nowadays mobile phone.

Indeed, if we think of the ways or habits that we use mobile phone today, these reveal that mobile phone is not merely a device for calling people. Personally, I use mobile phone as my alarm clock, calculator and schedule reminder. I have given up to use my alarm clock and calculator at home since mobile phone inlcuded these two functions. Moreover, I used to mark down the important meetings on a little notebook before I had my own mobile phone. My mobile phone usage’s experiences and habits undepin what Dean’s said: ” mobile phone has become a micro-personal computer, it is no longer just a phone”.

So, except the calling function, how are you using your mobile phone?

If someone asks me to recommend a video sharing website, YouTube would be the first one I can think of. Today, YouTube has become one of the popular website in the world. Almost everyone has seen videos from YouTube and many people from all around the world have uploaded videos on the site. But when you look back on its history, YouTube was launched in Feb 2005 and it has only been operated for 3 years. I think that the following reasons drive the success of YouTube:

• People can create their own contents and deliver their own messages through the site (Freedom)
• Free Service
• YouTube is very user-friendly
• Cheap way to spread messages but it can approach to wider audiences

While YouTube is becoming more and more popular, criticisms on YouTube are emerged. Many critics say that YouTube should be banned in the online environment, because the freedom provided by YouTube results in many problems. One of the issues is about copyright. Although YouTube does warn people to not upload other copyrighted contents on the site, many users just ignore this caution. Despite YouTube will sometimes delete some video clips, but experiences showed that this action just happened when they received complaints. Obviously, YouTube is lack of control about the videos which use the copyrighted contents or materials.

I found an article from arstechnic.com, it questions about “Do Google and YouTube have ethical responsibility for their video services?”. It explains why YouTube has little actions to control the materials or contents of those video clips against copyright law:

“…..sites like Google Video, SoapBox, and YouTube are generally protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which grants “safe harbor” to the sites so as long as they are not the “publishers” of any illegal material and take it down immediately when requested.”

Some people think that YouTube should have a system to filter the contents of the video clips, but if it happens, the soul which is freedom of the site will be disappered. Therefore, people has questioned “Should YouTube be banned in the online environment?”.

I found that this question is really hard to answer, because YouTube is a kind of useful source in terms of learning. For example, in all my classes throughtout my bachelor study, almost every class showed videos from YouTube. Moreover, YouTube really helps us in self-learning, for instance, sometimes we don’t understand a term or technique, we can find an explanation video or demonstration video on YouTube. So, if YouTube is banned, it might be a loss for us. However, the copyright issue still exists as it is a serious problem in the society, and many people, businesses and organisations might be affectd by some copyrighted videos uploaded on YouTube. So, a contradiction is generated.

But personally, I don’t want it to be banned. Thus, the only way to deal with this contradiction this moment is that people need to behave themselves to not upload any copyrighted contents or materials on the site.

Many said that the emergence of hypertext is very useful for online environment as it brings a lots of benefits to the web users and designers. Some of the advantages include:

• Readers control – readers can navigate the web contents in their own ways.
• Intextextuality - hypertext can creat a link to another writing or web content which has been used.
• Ease of Research Time – readers can find the relevant infomation more faster with using hypertext.
• Precise Web Content Structure – website author or designer never get lost of their contents under the clear menu with using hpertext.

Although hypertext seems making our use of web more convenient, some other people criticize that it does has its disadvantages.

• Information mssing – as readers have control of what to read on the website, they would skip or scan the pages very fast, therefore, they might miss out some important information.

Other disadvantages cited from H.Gosse, H. Gunn and L.Swinkels

Well, I think hypertext is still a useful and a good convention for the online environment even it has disadvantages as above. Because what people need when they searching on the web is quick, accurate and relevant, and hypertext really provide these features to them.

“Symphonic Literacy”“Symphonic Literacy” is our topic in this week’s lecture.In my view, many people have high symphonic literacy is a common trend today. Everyone has at least a few practices which reveal this literacy, for example, publishing video on Youtube, making a fan fiction and distributing story through weblog etc.What I noticed is that young people ususally have high symphonic literacy. It is worth for us to think about why this happens.There are two reasons I can think of: 1) Today is a technology era, almost everyone uses at least one technology product such as moblie phone and computer. As human has become more relying on technology, it is a must for young people to enahnce their knowledge in different technology forms.2) The improvements of technology over past years have provided a great extent of freedom for young people. Different media types, digital content creation tools and distribution channels provide them choices and differernt ways to construct, express and distribute their ideas. These also provide diversified communication ways for them.Vitual SpacesIn the tutorial, we also talked about “Virtual Spaces” which means “Second Life”. It is my first time to hear about this term and I don’t understand why people love this virtual spaces. But I could get some senses after I watched this video from YoutubeWhat I concern here is that:Will this trend (second life) affects people ability of socializing and communicating wtih others in real life?What are the advantages or disadvantages of second life?