Media Issue 3: Rise of the mobile video blog

Video blogging is one of the many different genres of communicating a piece of message across. Genre can be defined as the material, content, general look as well as the physical form (Bear, 2009). The article discuses on the rise of mobile video blogs in short, taking videos using your mobile phone then doing the sufficient editing of the video, finally putting in on the web for viewers to view the video. Mobile phones now provide the required applications to do your editing on the go. Mobile video blog or in short vlog is slowly making its mark in to world of technology.


Caption: example of video blogs (Stevengarfield.com)


Caption: Video Blogging on the go.(stevegarfield.blogs.com)

There are many reasons why people are interested in video blogging. Some people capture news or stories while they are at the scene and upload the video blogs so that viewers get information and news quickly. Live broadcasting is also one of the many reason why people video blog. Live broadcasting is understood as broadcasting from your mobile phone. Video blogs which i find interesting are those with entertaining content. Some even do tutorials on a chosen field to share and theach viewers. for example, makeup tutorials.


Caption: Make up tutorial (www.webcastr.com)

Vlog is a multimodal text enabling the reader to use various senses (Walsh, 2006). Video bloggers not only share experiences but the teach their viewers and aware their viewers. People are interested in watching video blogs as pictures and movements captures attention and interest. Shepard, (1967) claims that pictures work better compared to text. In my opinion, video blogging is a very good invention as it keeps people updated fast through instant video uploads. You tube is one of the main host for video blogs.

References
Simmons, D 2008, Rise of mobile video blog, Reporter BBC Click Online, http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/programmes/click_online/7392594.stm
Bear, JH 2009, ‘Form and Function in Design and Publishing’, viewed 28 October 2009, < http://desktoppub.about.com/od/graphicdesign/a/formfunction.htm >
Shepard, RN 1967, ‘Recognition memory for words, sentences, and pictures’, J Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, no. 6, pp.156–163.
Walsh, M 2006, ‘The ‘textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts’, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 24-37
Photographs: http://homepage.mac.com/stevegarfield/stevegarfield/menu.html
http://stevegarfield.blogs.com/videoblog/2004/07/my_fifth_dnc_vi.html
http://www.webcastr.com/videos/fashion/jennifer-hudson-celebrity-makeup-tutorial.html