Blog4

People's Appraisal of the Local News Media
https://www.hkupop.hku.hk/english/popexpress/press/index.html

Article Summary:

It’s a large scale survey done by the  HKU POP site, and I have studied some  statistics that are related to my research project, for example the “Credibility Rating of Hong Kong News Media in General” , ”Most Trustworthy Source of News” and “Satisfaction Rate of News Media in General”. From the most recent released date of the survey, which is September in 2015,  the credibility of the local news media is rated at 5.86 out of 10, meanwhile people’s satisfaction of local news media had a huge drop from 67.8% to 45.2% from 1997 to 2015.

The above figures showed that the current credibility and satisfaction of local news media are declining gradually in recent years, which I can make use as a reference to my research project, assuming the credibility and satisfaction is in negative status and the reason behind.

Research progress:

After considering the feedback from Franky on my previous blog, I would like to retain the focus group to be the young generation as they are having the most frequent rate of participation in different kinds of news media, but I have decided to make my research focus on the reasons for young generation's perception and interpretation of local news media, how they consume and absorb the news reported from local news media. In order to interpret whether the background of publication owners is the factor affecting their perception and interpretation.

After the change I made on the focus of my research project, now I would like to carry out in-depth interviews with 4-6 young generation people around 18-23 years old, to question them about local news media consuming habits and thoughts, also some reasons behind. Meanwhile there will be students studying in communication major and normal young people, as to obtain information from both with and without professional knowledge, to investigate whether there are any meaningful phenomenon behind, by asking the same set the question and studying the difference from their answers. The in-depth interview with interviewees who are studying in communication major are already scheduled to be held by the end of this week. Meanwhile the in-depth interview with interviewees who are normal young people will be scheduled soon. And I am currently customizing the questions to be asked during the in-depth interview to make the interview more valuable.

Blog 3

What is the refined research question that you are setting out to answer? (Please be specific in your research topic)

How the young generation trust the content of printed publications?

How does this develop themes and debates explored within the lectures of this module? (Please put down the revised short introduction to your project based on the one in blog 2. Remember that the introduction should include the purpose of your research project, significance and key concept(s) that may be useful for your analysis.)

The aims of my research is to identify the reliability of the selected publications in young generation’s eyes nowadays. In this digital era, people can be able to receive information and news through the Internet, especially the young generation, who having the most frequent rate of participation on Internet through their digital gadgets. There are numerous tunnels for them to get know about a particular news in different ways and angles, hence the truth and reality are more easily to be found, for example the original video clip of the corresponding news, people can understand and comment on the case on their own rather than only absorbing filtered information and stance from the printed media. So people can identify whether the printed media contents are being distorted or not as they are knowing the truth from Internet. The significance of my research is to classify or identify reliability of selected publication’s content, distinguishing which of them is reporting in most neutral way, while keeping the truth and least adding own stance. So people can choose the more reliable printed media through my research.

What critical methodologies are you going to use? How are you going to produce the evidence you’ll need to answer your research question?

1) Online questionnaire targeting netizens(young generation)

2) In-depth interviews with printed media editors and journalism students

Reference:
Survey on media credibility by Chinese University in 2013:

Photo Source: http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1395930/publics-trust-hong-kong-media-sinks-all-time-low-credibility-poll

Name: Mak Ka Tsun

HKU SPACE Student Number: 10641722

Research Diary2

Regarding to the last research diary, the research topic that I have proposed for my final project is the “Media ownership and media content”, I would like to conduct a content analysis of some local printed media, in order to compare and contrast the ownership and the content among these publications, whether are there any political and economic factors affecting the content of articles through ownership. The proposed research question would be : “ How the young generation trust the content of printed publications?”. 

The aims of my research is to identify the reliability of the selected publications among the young generation nowadays. In this digital era, people can be able to receive information and news through the Internet, especially the young generation, who having the most frequent participation on Internet through their digital gadgets. There are more and more tunnels for them to get know about a news, the truth and reality are more easily to be found online for example the original video clip of the corresponding news, people can understand and comment on the case on their own rather than only absorbing filtered information and stance from the printed media. So people can identify whether the printed media contents are being distorted or not as they are knowing the truth from Internet.

The significance of my research is to classify or identify reliability of selected publication’s content, distinguishing which of them is reporting in most neutral way, while keeping the truth and least adding own stance. So people can choose the more reliable printed media through my research.

I am going to use the quantitative research method to execute the research, by designing a relative online questionnaire to collect data I need. As my proposed research question is focusing on young generation, who have high participation on Internet, it would be easier to collect data online rather than doing printed survey.

Student Number: 10641722

Name: Mak Ka Tsun

Research Diary 1

Media and culture, which both word “media” and “culture” have their own meaning in dictionary for sure, however they are related to something not stable, do not have an absolute constant that could change and grow from time to time, as the diversity is board for both “media” and “culture”. Media would change in terms of form and medium depends on technology development while culture would change regarding to the changes among people, society and the whole world. Hence, academic researches are required for media and culture related topics, in order to study the history and experience as reference to explain and analyse their changes also some theories and symptoms.

Furthermore about doing research, approaching either quantitative or qualitative research method would make a big difference of outcome due to their own properties. For  quantitative research, for example surveys, all collected data are quantified, using mathematical statistic to analysis pattern of relationship and interpret through specific question and choice of answers. Its’ strength is that a large amount of data can be collected and the outcome are independent regardless of the researchers him/herself and researchers can limit the scope of answers to obtain wanted data from the research to make it more useful. However the random sampling sequence, would affect the reliability and reality thus weakening the accuracy of this method.

Oppositely, the strength of qualitative research is that data is collected in naturalistic setting, the content is more humanized, providing information in-depth and capable for complex phenomena, for example through personal in-depth interview, however qualitative research is more time consuming for both collecting and analysing data and results could be easily influenced by researchers’ oneself. Also the accumulated data would be not related to each other at all as questions asked are open-end usually.

For my own proposed research topic, i would like to study on media ownership and media content, as my family do buying and reading different newspapers and magazines till this digital era. Meanwhile young generation do read news online and having a high participation in media. And I would like to adopt the quantitative research method as to reach a larger group of people to obtain larger amount of data. As well as this topic is quite straightforward that whether the ownership have affected the content of selected publication or not , which I think that mathematical statistic supporting yes or no within a few common reasons is more important, and I can customize the questionnaire to only obtain the data I needed.

Student: Mak Ka Tsun, KT