Extended Proposal

            An era of new readers has arisen as a result of new technologies which have enabled digitization of content.  I will gather previous research done on the topics of through books and articles necessary to establish the correlation between digital formats and an increase in newspapers readership. I will be researching the key factors which immerse readers to engage in online newspapers. As themarketingsite.com stated, “According to the recently-released Nielsen Online Ranking Report, which reveals online readership figures for the first quarter of 2009, there has been a 28.5% growth in total visitors* from 8.6 million in the first quarter last year to over 11 million in the first quarter of this year; and a 25.2% increase in local visitors*, from 4.8 million last year to over 6 million visitors this year” (themarketingsite.com). This should be addressed because as technology has evolved it impacts the traditional methods which we were accustomed to. The newspaper has transitioned its format from print to web increasing readership. Therefore my final research paper will focus on the digitizing of newspapers and how this new medium is effective through the internet’s capabilities of interactivity and multimedia.

Sources:

Chung, Deborah S., and Chan Yun Yoo. "Audience Motivations for Using Interactive Features: Distinguishing Use of Different Types of Interactivity on an Online Newspaper." Mass Communication and Society 11: 357-97.

            This article addresses the reasons for online newspaper usage and the different tools that facilitate interactivity within digital content.

Johns, Adrian. The Book of Nature and the Nature of the Book. The Book History Reader. Routledge, 2006. 255-272.

            In this book John talks about the fixity and credit of books and how books encountered issues of piracy when print was first developed.  I’m going to use this article to compare how issues of credibility are still relevant with the digitization of content.

Murray, Janet Horowitz. Hamlet on the Holodeck: the Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1999. Print.

            The book analyzes what makes an artifact interactive and how factors such as hypermedia text deliver messages efficiently to readers. I will use this book to determine the interactivity of online newspapers specifically with reference to The Huffington Post an online news outlet.   

“Recent stats show online readership growing at over 25%. Themarketingsite.com (2009): Web. 11 Dec 2010. http://www.themarketingsite.com/live/content.php?Item_ID=9225.

            This article gives statistics regarding 2009 readership of online newspapers. I will use this source to provide available figures of the current readership of online newspapers.

Short Proposal

For the final paper I would like to write a research paper focusing on the effectiveness of content communication when digitized as opposed to traditional mediums. I would like to combine this topic with the issue of credibility which we encountered in the article by Johns, “The Book of Nature and the Nature of the Book”. It was interesting to learn how there was this problem of credibility when books transitioned from conveying the content orally to written form, and how this problem is relevant as we transition from traditional written form to electronic literature. This is a broad idea still but I would really like to research whether or not electronic form is effective and if so why does the audience prefer this medium. I will be using the recent article by Hayles and Thomas as mentioned above and other sources. 

Issues of Credit and Fixity

Both the articles, "Manuscripts" and "The Book of Nature and the Nature" deal with the issue of fixity in terms of the manipulation of words and content when copies of books were produced. By the end of the 12^th century social and intellectual changes, affected the way in which books were written copied and distributed. In addition the introduction of paper and emergence of a Bourgeois class made the mass reproduction of books possible. This new class had a need for books which were not only in their subjects but also works of literature. The shift from parchment to paper and this new class of readers is similar to the current transition from physical books to e-books.
Thomas also explored the issue of credit during this time period. He mentions how difficult it was for an author to share his book without the use of a patron. A patron much like a publishing company in today’s world would distribute the book or give it good word for others to read. “It was impossible for these writers to retain any literary rights in their work unless they jealously kept the text of their composition to themselves” (Thomas, 6). The author received credit only through the first edition of the book and continuously diminished thereafter. This is still in some terms relevant for present authors because once they publish their book than that information may be used by others to build on and may at times not even receive credit.
Johns also discusses the issues of fixity and credit in his article, “The Book of Nature and the Nature”. He specifically emphasizes on piracy and how it has affected the credibility of books over time. Piracy occurred when the copies of books were manipulated with false information. Two books from the same author were never the same, which affected the credibility of the book. This is an issue for authors today in the form of Wikipedia’s and plagiarism. He also makes the argument of fixity and how it has enabled knowledge to be shared over time. He states that fixity “is the basis on which Eisenstein’s main claim that the Renaissance and Reformation were rendered permanent by the very permanence of their canonical texts, that nationalism develop thanks to the stabilization of laws and languages, and that science itself became possible on the basis of phenomena and theories reliably recorded” (Johns, 5).
The issues of fixity and credit continue to be relevant for author’s today with the facility of amateurs to contribute inaccurate or modified information through the web. The question of trust still arises today with printed text and as stated by Johns, fixity lies in the eyes of the beholder.

Pictographs and Pictographic Logic

Communication is not limited to the use of words and text but also extends to the use of pictures, punctuation, spacing, and the medium of our message. The article "Images as the Text: Pictographs and Pictographic Logic" by Drucker and McGann states that "A true pictograph functions as an image whose meaning is communicated through its visual form as a picture of something, whether the communication is effected through substitution or translation into language or not". The article mentions clay sign-tokens used by ancient Sumer and their effective development of a system to record simple business transactions. Much like our present graphs they used pictures and a numerical notation to display how much of a certain product was at hand. Although the present graphs have become much more complex and colorful the concept used in ancient Sumer remains the same. The purpose of a graph is to display information visually allowing people to make decisions easier and in less time.

An example of the effectiveness of a graph to display information can be shown through the following graph.  We can determine that the strawberry is the favorite fruit of this specific population.  Although there are no words to directly tell us so, the pictures and numbers allow us to make the connection.

Picture links: http://rmeducation.virtual.vps-host.net/files/image/graphs.jpg

Restructuring Consciousness

Writing has restructured the way in which we communicate and process information. We have evolved different ways of effectively sharing our ideas, transitioning from oral communication to written form. With the emergence of the Electronic Age we are now adapting to modern outlets of ideas such as computers. Throughout the history of writing, the medium through which it is conveyed transitions to the best available technology. Various materials including rocks, animal skin, papyrus, dried vegetation, paper, etc. have been used to write. Currently as mentioned in "10 Reading Revolutions Before E-Books" by Tim Carmody the Electronic Age and computing has largely impacted written communication. There are so many forms through which ideas can be transmitted, “Entire new families of audiovisual media, transmitted wirelessly or on discs, cylinders, reels, and cassettes, became more essential to culture even as text continued to proliferate exponentially” (Carmody, 1). Although the medium through which we receive information has evolved it only improves our ability to learn. The transition from paper to electronic form is similar to that of oral to written form. Plato had strong feeling against writing because he believed it weakened the mind, just as what it though of the computer today. The electronic age and computing has without a doubt restructured our consciousness.

My life

Hello fellow classmates, welcome to my first blog. My name is Jessica Gonzalez I'm hoping to graduate this semester with a double major in Digital Technologies and Management Information Systems. I enjoy being surrounded with family and friends. I'm trying to finish off real strong my last semester to hopefully go on to graduate school. I'm still not sure where I will be in five years but hopefully I will have continued to discover myself and enjoy what may be my lifetime career. The fast pace trends of technology are something that I find amusing and enjoy to learn. I hope to gain further knowledge of the influences of technology on culture in this course.