Welcome to my Blog, my name is Bertha Sekgothe. Regard myself as a developing media specialist hence I am pursuing my career in media studies. I am employed by the top Pay TV Company in Africa. Having obtained a junior Diploma in telecommunications that’s where my interest in communication science evolved. Behind the career woman that I am, you are looking at very fun loving, energetic and accomplishment driven woman.
The interest in this topic was deduced from the inquisitive mind that I have and the fact that I have never found myself in a day or less not interacting in any form of media platforms, either formal media or social media. The other thing is the enquiry on the impact of media on our identification. “The power of the media” Research is not a once off study but it is an ongoing process, I am looking forward to continue with my topic until to Doctorate level. By the end of this course I am anticipating to have achieved in becoming a better research specialist and come up with continual research processes in this field of study.
The purpose of my blog as mentioned earlier is to explore the impact of media on our identification as individual and engage will fellow student in broadening the spectrum of my understanding of media research. As I am conducting a lot of research on my professional and personal level
RESEARCH PROCESS
Wimmer & Dominick 2009 argues to that research is an attempt to discover something. It is a never ending process. In most instances, a research project designed to answer one series of questions produces a new set of questions no one thought of before.
According to Priest (2010:35), mass communication research is a latecomer among other social science fields. It borrows most of its methods from other social science fields such as anthropology, sociology, and psychology – as well as history, economics another relative latecomer: political science.
TEXTUAL ANALYSIS
According to (Wimmer & Dominick: 2006) textual analysis is popular with mass media researchers because it is an efficient way to investigate the content of the media, such as the number and types of advertisements in broadcasting or the print media.
In content analysis, researchers are more interested in the meanings associated with messages than with the number of times message variables occur. ( Frey, Botan, & Kreps.1999
Another definition of content analysis argued from ( Berger 1991:25) is that it is research based on measuring the amount of something ( e.g. violence, negative portrayal of women or whatever) found in representative samples of a mass-mediated popular art form.(Fourie 2009:5)
From the above reflections of content analysis from different researchers, it can be established that textual analysis is a key research tool and best suited to analyse the effect of mass on identification of individual and society at large furthermore media research can rightfully call its own.
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
Priest (2010:6) states that qualitative research methods are designed to explore and assess things that cannot be easily summarised numerically. The method relies on the interpretation and analysis of what people do and say without making heavy use of measurement or numerical analysis as quantitative methods do.
Furthermore Stokes (2003:3) mentions that in contrast qualitative research is the name given to a range of research paradigms that are primarily concerned with meaning and interpretation. These interpretive approaches sprang the literacy studies and hermeneutics.
As qualitative research method relies on the interpretation of data and its concern with meaning and interpretation, making it a very good reason that it is used researching media and cultural studies. The method used narrative data, such as television programmes, magazines also including audio recordings and other forms of non-quantitative data.
ETHICS IN MEDIA STUDIES RESERCH
“Being ethical is the right thing to do” Wimmer & Dominick (2006:67).According to Oosthuizen (2010:5) ethics deal with the moral component of human life. As a branch of Philosophy, it focuses on what is good, acceptable and proper in the society, and what is not.
Specifically for this context of this theme “ethics” can be described as those principles that describe “good” and “effective” research in media studies. (University of South Africa 2014:46).Qualitative research can sometimes give the impression of being subjective in nature because of the active role of researchers, thus strategies to relate in an ethical way requires to be developed.
FIVE CORE PRINSIPLES OF QUALITATIVE RESERCH ETHICS
Privacy and confidentiality
Any individual participating in a research study has a reasonable expectation that privacy will be guaranteed. Consequently, no identifying information about the individual should be revealed in written or other communication. Further, any group or organization participating in a research study has a reasonable expectation that its identity will not be revealed. I would like you to think about privacy of two kinds: institutional and individual. (Ethical issues in qualitative research, Chapter4….)
Voluntarily participation in research, according to Wimmer & Dominick (2006:69) an individual is entitled to decline or participate in any research project or to terminate participation at any time. Researchers in an authority role should not manipulate participant to engage on research. For example a manager in an industrial environment should not coerce subordinates to get involved in a survey for the benefit of being recognized as a team work initiative.
Closely related to voluntary participation is the notion of informed consent, states Wimmer & Dominick (2006:69). He further mentions that for people to volunteer for a research project, they need to make an intelligent choice. Researchers must inform the participant of all they are required to know about the research and also obligated to respond to all concerns from the participants. For incase in an online survey, participant should be notified as to how many questions the survey has, also that in participating in the online survey the participant can be exempted from telephonic survey that is going to be conducted in the next two weeks.
Concealment and deception
Concealment is withholding certain information from the subject and deception is deliberately providing false information. Wimmer & Dominick (2006:72) Researchers should make sure that they provide an environment that is trustworthy. At the same time, they need to be sensitive to the power that they hold over participants.
SOURCES CONSULTED
Wimmer, RD & Dominick, JR. 2006. Mass media research: an introduction. 10th edition. Belmont, Calif: Wadsworth.
Frey, L., Botan, C., & Kreps, G. (1999). Investigating communication: An introduction to research methods. (2nd Ed.) Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Fourie, P J(Ed.). 2009. Media Content and Media Volume 3. Juta
Priest, SH. 2010. Doing Media Research: an introduction. University of Nevada,Las Vegas. SAGE. 2nd edition
Stokes, J. 2003. How to do media and cultural studies research. London:Sage
Oosthuizen, LM. 2010. Media Ethics, In the South African Context: an introduction an overview. Juta
University of South Africa. Department of communication science.2014.Media Reserch:Tutorial Letter 101/2014 for COM4802. Pretoria
Ethical issues in qualitative research, Chapter4. [Online] Available from: http://www.uk.sagepub.com/upm-data/27011_4.pdf [Accessed: 2014-06-06]
Satisfactory - the entry is focused and easy to follow!
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