Working Together on the Web

Before having this lesson, the only thing that I know about collaborative writing is Wikipedia. I never thought that collaborative writing changes the relationship between customers and producers. Now, the relationship between customers and producers is much dynamic then before. Customers can share their ideas for fun and producers take advantage by providing channels for customers showing their intelligence. This is really a win-win situation.

In Hong Kong, there is a website which is more or less the same with Wikipedia in nature but it only includes the things about Hong Kong. It calls the Encyclopedia of Virtual Communities in Hong Kong (EVCHK) which can illustrate collaborative writing in Hong Kong. (Link: http://evchk.wikia.com/wiki/%E9%A6%96%E9%A0%81) I find EVCHK very interesting because of its ironic style. For example, the Financial Secretary Mr. John Tsang Chun Wah released the 2009-2010 Budget and there were many negative feedbacks for the budget and many Hong Kong citizens criticized Mr. Tsang. In the page about Mr. Tsang, there is picture that looks like the cover page of the Budget but the content is all changed in order to satire on the government.

Picture's Link:  

http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090227081218/evchk/images/b/b2/2009budget_kuso2.png

More than Words

At the very beginning of the lecture, the changes of newspaper were discussed. Newspaper texts are enriched with more images than before. But that’s not enough with images nowadays; we can notice that most of the Hong Kong online newspapers include a video for the news. As I read Apple Daily online every day, I’ll talk Apple Daily as an example to talk about this. Some of the news videos include CG animation which shows the whole incident or accident. Like this news, it talks about a man who swooned and fell down on the track. Luckily, other passengers save him.

 

This CG animation makes the readers feel as if they were there and witnessed the accident. People who don’t know any Cantonese can still understand what happened after watching those CG animations. On the other hand, there is a concern regarding those CG animations; they make reporting news like story-telling which is narrative more than just describing the facts. But I really think that the CG animations make reading newspaper much interesting than before.