Research Diary 1

Media and culture is different with other subjects, because technology is keep improving and the usage of in is changing by the transition of time. The media that everyone use in their daily life would be different, such us teenager would access to the Internet but elderly would not. Also, everyone may have different bearing and notion for media, so that is why there are no any absolute true for this subject. Therefore, for a deeper study in media and culture, academic research is needed to fine the scholar article and theory which is fitting with our topic, and also get the firsthand data from interviewee.

There are two ways of finding information for academic research, qualitative research and quantitative research.

1. Qualitative Research

            Having penetrate deeply interview with representative individuals, and analysis some scholar article are the ways to do qualitative research. The target people in the research would be little, usually would be one to several individuals. The advantage of qualitative research is the study can be deeper as we can know more about the ideas and notion behind of the target. Although the range of the study would be slender but we can do it more focus. Unfortunately, the notion of the representative individuals may be different to masses people, the reliability of the research may not be high.

2. Quantitative Research

            You will see lots of numbers and chart in a quantitative. The data is usually collected by questionnaire. The target of quantitative research would be tens to hundreds of people. Studying the numbers can know the trends of the masses clearly. The advantage of quantitative research is the actual numbers have high reliability. And the range of the research can be wide. However, the research cannot be deep, as normal interviewee of questionnaire would leave the survey if the questions were too hard to answer.

            To compare these two research methods, there are not any one method is better the other. It is because they are setting for different kinds of research: Different the topic, the path of the research, the situation, and different research methods has to use. And the two methods can be use together in a research.

            For my own research, I am interested to study on the TV show in foreign, to know more about the transnational consumptions behind. For having a comprehensive study, I would like to use both the two research methods in my study. Having questionnaire with people in different age groups, and pick 1 or 2 participants from every age group to have a short interview with them. Furthermore, I would search some scholar article to support my study. For making my research can be trustworthy by the numbers, and also can be deeper as details can be got from the interviewee and scholar articles.

Student Name: Tsang Cheuk Wah, iCa