One to one Interviews

The advantages of interviews as opposed questionnaires because you can ask questions based on the answer to a previous question to gain more depth and understanding of the topic in question, you also gain a visual stimulus to the topic.

The disadvantages of interviews is that as opposed to questionnaires, the interviewee is no longer anonymous meaning the person may lie or become uncomfortable with specific questions, visually we are able to see this if it is an interview situation. Also, people can either go off on a tangent and stray from the initial topic or tend to say very little making it hard for the interviewer to maintain and interesting, rewarding report.
 

' Uses and Gratifications Theory

Entertainment - escapism, relaxation, emotional release, aesthetic/ cultural/sexual pleasure, filling time

Integration and Social Interaction - identifying with other, finding a basic for social interaction, substitute for companionship.

Personal Identity - finding reinforcement for personal values, finding models of behaviour, identify with someone else (in the media), gaining insight into one's self.

Information - gaining an understanding of the world, satisfying curiosity, learning, gaining security through knowledge.'

- Bumler and Katz 1974

Using Questionnaires as a Research Technique

During our  lesson we were given a flawed questionnaire and asked to rectify it to an accurate standard which could be used as a form of research. The bad questionnaire asked very indirect questions and had little focus on the initial question which was basically 'to find out about downloading and streaming habits among a particular age group'. It used indirect and irrelevant questions such as ' Do you feel guilty about using illegal websites to download media?' questions like these fail to pinpoint the initial reason for the question, and do not actually help retrieve neccessary data/research in relation to the initial question. Asking very personal questions such as 'Name, Address etc) make the questionnaire non confidential which could make many people feel opposed to fill out the questionaire. Asking for questions such as 'Gender, Age, Status' are useful to the researcher as it gives more information as to the motives behind illegal downloading based on age, financial group based on status (employed, unemployed etc) and sex to indetify if there is a correlation between a gender and illegal download rates.

Why are ratings/audience figures so important?

Companies heavily rely on ratings/audience figures in order to asses the gradual progress of the company over specific time periods ( eg: Top 10  programmes most viewed per week).

In television specifically, the figures are used in order to negotiate time slots, advertisers, recommissions and other elements which relate heavily to the rise and fall in viewers and audiences.

Focus Group 

In an activity we formed a focus group to discuss the pros and cons of different advertisement techniques. We looked into which advertisements we actually responded/ we affected by and generally like, as well as the methods we found leant appealing. For example; we concluded as a group that mobile advertising is something we found ultimately irritating and ineffective towards our target audience.

In general the technique of forming focus groups to evalute the nature of a subject/product etc, is a good way to find out general opinions and views, as well as debate points based on the advantages and disadvantages of something. The role of 'Leader' (mediator/chairman) and 'Obsever' allow the disscusion to be managed and recorded from an unbiased point of view. The advantage of this for companies is that they gain primary sourced opinions in areas of their business/company/brand etc which will contribute to future decisions.

Why and how do media comapnys use research

Things you will need to research in the media.

Target audience/ How many people are going to buy it/ Printing expenses

Who the competition will be?

Distribution and Advertisement promotions.

Financial support/ funding /sponsors- relationship to target audience - Freebies- change is prices as a result.

Content - what will the product consist of? Relate to target audience

Audience Profiling

Magazine - NME

Source - IPC.com

IPC use audience profiling to clearly describe the audience to advertisers in order to gain fundings/sponsors to help fund and support the magazine.

From the IPC website, we are shown the different areas of audience profiling used to help define the target audience to possible advertisers for the NME magazine;

Demographics ( facts and figures in relation to media research) such as -

• Key Statistics :eg Percentage of - Age, gender, social class (ABC 1), percentage of students readers, circulation of the magazine, Readership (how many people read the magazine).

Psycographics ( social/political responses found through media research) such as -

• Mobile: promotes the use of mobile technology - advertisements.
• Music and film - in relation to the target audiences and their responses to the regular music and film updates.
• Quotes from regular readers : eg- "The NME is damn honest" - NME Reader.

Social Media Research

Social media research is a research technique used to gain product knowledge and opinions using online social netwroking sites eg: Facebook and Twitter. Companies such as 'Simple' and 'Coca Cola' have used this method in order to make major product decision. For example - Coca Cola made the decsion to with draw the distrubution and production of 'Coca Cola Vanilla' in 2006 following poor responses from the target audience. On the contray 'Simple' used social media research to request opinions on future products which lead to the introduction of new lip balm products which appealed to their target audience. The advantages of social media research is the speed at which responses are recieved and action can then be taken. As well as this the technique is incredibly cheap in comparison to other research techniques.

Research Methods

Primary Sources

A primary source is a piece of information which is an original discovery - ie: finding information from the original source

Questionnaire or Survey - varied opinions from public.

Observation - for example: to see immediate responses and reactions to things - used in film, advertising, product testing eg: video games- any research which is received visually

Focus group - used to give opinion on products for specific target audience (eg gender, age, culture etc) also used for film, to determine endings, specific scenes etc.

One on one interviews - gain much more depth, knowledge and understanding of a person or situation.

Direct contact with the producer/ author of media text - completely original responses, creates solid evidence to back up research and discoveries.

Chat rooms/forums - good way to find out the initial opinion and reaction to products from the target audience.

Secondary Sources

A secondary source is a piece of information deduced from another discovery - ie: information taken from a documentary, website, newspaper etc.

Books - Biographies, Journals, Analysis ect.

Websites - eg : Wikipedia, AskJeeves etc

News papers/ magazines - Media Guardian and Telegraph (Media section)

Radio - BBC Radio 4 - the media show (pod casts available on the BBC website)

Both methods of research are used to increase the reliability of discoveries.

Content analysis - Quantitative techniques

We were given a women's UK magazine and asked to investigate and research whether magazines represented ethnic minorities fairly.

We used a quantitative technique to calculate the percentage of the ethnic minorities represented in the magazine in comparison to the white , and also discussed the reasons and evidence to suggest the reason for this.

We also took notes on other areas which offered further evidence to help us reach a non-bias conclusion.

We discovered that the magazine 'Insight' did maintain a dominantly white outlook on fashion and the products advertised did heavily support a white ethnic group due to make up shades, and hair products. In comparison, the magazine did feature some (minimal) black and Hispanic models and fashion icons which did appeal to a wider ethnic audience.

Given more time, I think the research could have been improved through using different ways of recording our data and findings, perhaps through tally/pie charts as well as going into further depth in researching the different ethnic groups further, perhaps by creating further ethnic options as opposed to white or other - you could have white, black, Hispanic, Asian etc.

The research was good, however I found it quite limited because the numeric areas don't really compensate the social and political areas which effect the issues surrounding the magazine.