Era of New Media ...

The rapid development of media and technology over the past decades has marked the world’s entering to the new era of media. Nowadays, technology is undoubtedly an impartible part of our daily life. Entering the MTR train, you may find that over 50% of people playing with their iPhone or iPad. Most of us even spend much time on using computers and online communities every day.

Facebook, one of most well-known on-line communities in the world, for example, has nearly 4, 00000000 users. Apart from Facebook, online social spaces such as Twitter, Xanga and MSN which provide Internet users with a convenient channel to communicate with their friends and other Internet users, have become more and more prevalent among Hong Kong people, especially youngsters. As people spend more time on online communication by using these virtual tools, the chance of face to face interactions has inevitably decreased in our society.

Participating in online communities allow us to learn communication pattern and discourse system within these sites, which can further help us to communicate with others and integrate into these online communities better. I also think the practices of different online communities are not exactly the same even though they belong to the same kind of media.

What I expect to learn from this course is not only communicating and chatting with others through bloggering, but also to dig out the linguistic features, culture and social practices of "blogger" and other media. Later, I will share what I have learnt, as well as useful or interesting things related to this course here. Finally, I hope I can enjoy the course with all of you in this semester. Let's start our digital media life!!!=]