Working as a photo edit this week, i read three classmates’ story and give some suggestions to their job as following.

To Lindsay

1) There may be some problems when people see your slideshow by using IE. So it would be necessary to give a note to the readers and tell them to read it under Firefox. (I guess it could be useful since I read it without any problems)

2) For the rest photos which illustrate your text, I suggest it would be better to resize those photos in similar size for a good visual effect.

3) I notice that you mentioned some theoretical concepts on Fengshui like “Ying and Yang” and I think it may be cool to add some photos or pictures in order to illustrating those concepts which are hard for people especially foreign readers to understand.

To Tamara

1) It may be better t to have a consistent on the photo-size.

2) I notice that you added text captions to some of your photos, and it would be better to give text caption to the rest too, especially to the photos which are not related to your interviewees, say, the first one. It will be easier for reader to understand them.

Besides, I’d like to remind please take care about the copyright thing, but I guess all the photos are taken by you.

To Du Ting

1) It would be better to add specific text captions to the photos. Although you have already use one sentence to express what you shot, it seems too general for reader especially ones who have never been Hong Kong.

2) As a photo essay, I suggest it would be better to use more categories of photos on the city’s charming characters as you did. What you have put may be too general for the readers.

3) I am sorry but I didn’t find the “splendid light at nigh” part.

4) I suggest it may be more workable if you try to use slides to show your photos.

As I planned last week, my final project is mainly going to use the text, photos and audio as the basic types which present the homosexuals in Hong Kong over the past ten year. According to my arrangement, I detailed the forms of my final project this week.
Text and photos
Because I am still relying on the text content in my project, I divided a whole story into four or five short parts (depends on my interview progress) in order to tell the story easily and clearly. For each part, I have a relevant topic of homosexuals in Hong Kong basically categorized by the interviewees’ opinions and standpoints. Basing on the text, I illustrate each part with several photos (at least two) related to the topic I discussed in the part. For instance, I am talking about the activists of homosexual action in Hong Kong so in this part, readers will see short paragraph with more than two photos about this topic. The form relying on text with graphic illustrations is quite common for people writing blogs today. The most popular blog in mainland China “Lao Qu” is generally using this kind of form. To me, it’s a easy understanding and casual design for people to read. However, since my project is not a personal blog but a online journalism project, I try to tie the text closely with photos in order to attract viewers’ continuing reading.
For the length of the text, both Foust and Mindy emphasize “the shorter the better” principle. It’s true that short paragraph will be more available for drawing readers’ attention than long ones do in the age of online journalism. But to me, compared with short text, I’d like to focus on “writing tight” principle that Mindy mentioned in his tips.

My online final project is about the homosexuals in HK. Since the topic is still sensitive in the city, it’s necessary for me to design a suitable combination of media types for my project, which firstly can attract more readers and then still need to help me to avoid some sensitive issues. I am going to analysis some of the types and try to find the best way to combine those types.

Text
As Foust said in his book “despite the Web’s great potential for delivering a multimedia experience with sounds and visuals, words are still the most important element of online communication”, I will still focus on the text in my project. Considering the readability of online text, I believe that long text story is not available compared with some short series of stories. Besides, if I interview some people, using series of short stories is better to tell their story respectively and clearly.

Photos
I strongly agree with Foust on that photographs can help us see the things that words can’t cover, but on the other hand, to me, photograph can’t tell the whole story even powerful ones. That is to say, photograph is an indispensable element in my project; however, I will not make a stand-alone photograph essay. For this project, as I mentioned at the very beginning, it’s still sensitive for some people in this city, so there are limitations for me to use the photograph, for example, it’s not very easy to post homosexuals’ photos in the internet with their permission which will reduce the readability more or less. Anyway, I still want to add some photos inside to illustrate the stories.

Audio
To me, all of the media types should be used to help tell stories, according to the principle, I need to consider whether my stories can benefit from sound. For my project, I think the interviewees’ voice will be indeed attractive if he/she is glad to tell their own stories, however, the audio can’t be too long. If it is possible to use their voices, I am eager to select several powerful sentences to help readers understand the stories but don’t make it looks like a voice record file.

Video
Video is quite a powerful tool which enhances the readers to understand the stories. But sometimes, video is too powerful compared with text. According to my online reading experience, if an article with video inside it, all the other elements including text, graphic and audio will lose utility. Therefore, in my project, I decided to use text as the lead type, thus video will not put in consideration.

Interaction
The most charming point of online journalism is that it can get feedback quickly and it provides possibility for the author to communicate with the readers more smoothly. For me, I am very glad to see the readers leave comments and discussions after my works. It’s the easiest way to know what they consider about it. And I am glad to link it to the bloggers in order to attract more readers and more discussions.

Juliet’s final project is about the influx of mainland mothers to Hong Kong. The above photo took by her is the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, which receives a steady flow of women from mainland China.

Researching on the topic for her master project, Juliet found the phenomena that more and more mainland mothers’ influx these years has brought many social problems to Hong Kong. For example, because hospital wards crowed with mainland parturient, the local mothers-to-be were protesting in the street for their own right. Besides the impact of local people’s benefits, Juliet also thinks that the government’s attitude towards the mainland mothers’ issue is considerable. Under the pressure from the prevailing voice in the city, the government enforced a new measure on February 1 this year to limit the current influx. But the measure didn’t work well; new term of protest is under planning.

Juliet exploring the issue considers the social discussions and conflicts brought by mothers’ have an inevitable relationship with people’s attitude changes in this city over the past ten years since handover. She holds the opinion that Hong Kong people start to pay more attention to the government policies and actions meanwhile become aware to express their own opinions compared with ten years ago.

She has already collected much information about the topic and interviewed some mothers from mainland as well as the local mothers-to-be to complete her project. Here comes the audio that Juliet talked about her new media final project.

mainland-mothers.mp3

joyce.mp3Morning class audio testing…

A hubbub broke out recently between RTHK and the Broadcasting Authority in Hong Kong. The Broadcasting Authority’s labeled of an RTHK television programme on gay marriage as unsuitable for family viewing hours on Jan 20^th. This TV rule caused hot and open debates over the issue of homosexuality in this city.

Many homosexual groups and civil rights activist groups, such as Rainbow Station and In-media are condemning the action of broadcasting and they consider that this rule “had hindered civic education in Hong Kong.” The Rainbow Station, a website for lesbians, even started a protested action over internet called “one person one protest” in order to fight against the discrimination over homosexuality from government. Lots of local commentators and writers also react to the news. Large numbers of articles and voices on the topic of homosexuality are published during last mouth.

For me, it’s an interesting and considerable phenomenon which tells us the changes of the attitude towards homosexual issue in Hong Kong. From 1991, male homosexual behavior was legal in Hong Kong. Since then, the debates over the same-sex marriage have never stopped. But homosexual supporters’ actions upgrade and become more public step by step in recent years. For example, in 2003, the Catholic Church of Hong Kong released an article condemning homosexual marriage. As a result, a group of protesters rushed into a church and interrupted the service. Those actions (including the latest protested issue) demonstrated that during the past ten years more and more gays and lesbians in Hong Kong are “coming out” gradually. Meanwhile, more and more supporters of homosexuality make voices today in Hong Kong.

But although they made great progress during the past several years, the homosexuals and their supporters in Hong Kong still have thousands of obstacles in front of them. So I am curious about firstly whether the changes of this issue are related to the handover of Hong Kong, so after 1997, HK residents including the homosexuals are aware to fight against for their own civil rights; or secondly, the handover actually plays a negative role in the development of those social actions. Because, in fact the same-sex marriage has become legal in the UK since 2005 and there are 13 countries and regions in the world admitted the same sex marriage.

A large numbers of people complained that they could not log in websites or could not update their blogs when the earthquake in Taiwan disrupted the internet access. Nowadays, many people can not live without internet which really plays a significant role in almost all the fields in citizens’ lives. To me, internet doesn’t only provide abundance of information or widen the space of journalism. What’s more, it changes citizens’ expression habits even living habits. And this change can be seen obviously in mainland china these years.

First of all, citizens get more chances and freedom to express themselves than any other periods. In my opinion, human being has the nature to express his/her own opinion towards the issues around them. But the traditional media were controlled by professional journalists, editors, and TV and radio participators. Thus the freedom to talk and expression is actually dominated by few people before the age of internet coming. Common people do not have a legal space (in mainland china, the situation is more serious) which is big and convenient enough to challenge the reporting and opinions from newspaper, magazines as well as TV programs. We get used to listen to but not think when things happen. However, web provides the space. Just like Keith W. Jenkins said in his article that “web is a tool to talk to another”. Internet indeed gives the roots a forum to express themselves, meanwhile stimulates the citizens to observe the world more seriously and deeply. In the past ten years, countless internet forums were built in China, such as Xicihutong, Tianya, and thousands of people log in those forums more than one times to post their articles and read the other’s stories every day. To the year of 2004, the blogs has become hot, and more people join the troop of expression themselves. It is said that there are about 17.5million bloggers in China today. The citizens who are the actors and actresses of news that journalists reported in the past are writing down their own stories via internet. This tool helps the citizens to think and write as journalists. They challenge the journalism; what is more important, they get the wisdom and right to challenge the authorities.

This phenomenon reduces the power of traditional media and asks for higher quality of journalism. Because of the political situation of China, the freedom of expression is still under control of the government. Although citizens could contribute to newspaper and magazines and so on, people’s voices are supervised by the rulers, and the supervision was easy to achieve before the coming of internet That is to say people only knew the issues that the government wanted you know; and just say what the government wanted you to say. So in the past, for many cases, victims had no idea to redress an injustice and get the support from public. But internet overcomes the problem partly.

More and more people start making use of the internet to state their conditions that can not be published in the traditional media and fight for their own rights. “Heaven Garden( blocked yet) ” is a website built for the female victim , Huang Jing(黄静) who died at home last year. The local police treated her case as naturally death but her parents pointed out some doubtful points which were accepted by policemen and court. Some of the protesters built the website to fight against the government’s behavior. Although the website was blocked, the influence of the case has already spread out. And there are also some successful examples like Liao Mengjun’s(廖梦君) case. His father still maintains the blog and fight for his son. (The EastSouthWestNorth, an English blog, excerpts some parts of his blog too). Those are no longer little-known cases, via internet, more Chinese start to pay attention to these stories and think about the things which happen to the people far from them. So to me, internet is widening the citizen’s eyesight and is changing people’s (including journalists’) thinking step by step in China.

Enhancing the readers’ power, internet requires more from the journalists actually. I strongly agree on one comment that said after Keith W. Jenkins’s article “Professional journalists still do more original reporting than bloggers do, but the pros don’t do as much as they think they do, and the bloggers do more than they get credit for.” To me bloggers can’t replace the journalists, because of the limitations of time, resource and energy. But with the supervision and competition of readers, journalists should be more professional and credible.

Friday morning.

New Media Class.

JMSC,HKU

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