Blog 5

1. Progress report - How many interviews did you do so far? And/or how many materials (i.e. media texts) did you research, and how did you research on the texts – textual analysis, genre study, etc.?

Up to now, I have interviewed two female and two male teenagers on the 4th April 2016.  They are aged between 18-23 years old.  The interviews hold around 20-30 minutes.  

In the interview, I have asked about 4 main questions: 

1. Why do you like playing GTA 5? 

2. Which past/ section in GTA do you like play the most?

3. Do you think that GTA 5 is a violence game?

4. How often do you play GTA?

Then they had an small discussion after each question.  I jot down their key points and find out some resources are useful to answer my research topic.  Moreover, there will be another two interviews on 10th April 2016.  I will interview a female who aged 21 and a male who aged 20.  

Besides, I have researched some materials that related to violence video games, the players' review about the GTA 5 and Hong Kong teenagers' attitude toward violence.  For example, I found that there is a game call "Sleeping Dog".  The playing method is similar than GTA 5.  As in the interview, an interviewer has mentioned that he loves playing different kind of violence video game, but GTA 5 is the most favorite game for him.  Therefore, I tried to research the game that he has played and see the difference between those games and GTA 5.  Also, there are some articles about the Hong Kong youth violence, it is useful for my research because I discover that there are some similarity reasons they play violence games and be violence.  And I will continue to find some related and useful materials as to enrich my research.

2. Preliminary findings – What do you discover up till now? (For example, what are the commonalities amongst the texts/interviews?) How do your findings help you answer your research question?  


After the interview, I discovered that they think that GTA 5 is a violence game but it is acceptable for them.  Although there are many shooting, killing scenes in the game, they still love playing the game.  Also, GTA 5 caused great excitement for them because they can do what they like to do in the unrealistic would such as make a tattoo on their body and steal a luxury car in the street.  These behaviors cannot do in the real world.  Therefore, GTA 5 can fulfill their desires and wants.

Furthermore, I noticed that there are some difference reasons on playing the game between male and female.  For the male, they love racing car in the GTA 5 as they cannot race car as fast as possible in the real world.  And they will die when they have a car crash, but in the game world they have unlimited life, they can race as fast as they can.  No matter there is a car accident, they can still race the car.  It shows that the male hope to experience the exciting things, for example, catch by the police, kill the people to get back money.  On the other hand, for the female, in the GTA 5 they can choose the gender of the character, most of them like choosing to be a male.  As they wish to act as a male in the game and hide their exact gender, they think that male is more powerful than a female and hope to use a male angle to see the world.

The above findings are the basic findings and I will analyze the data more deeply as to find out more information.

Student ID: 10585161
Student Name: Tang Yee Ting

Blog 5

1)     Progress report - How many interviews did you do so far? And/or how many materials (i.e. media texts) did you research, and how did you research on the texts – textual analysis, genre study, etc.?

 I had interview one people and researched 3 - 4 eassies about self-censorship of News medias including

1. Self-Censorship and the Press in Hong Kong  https://martindale.cc.lehigh.edu/sites/martindale.cc.lehigh.edu/files/Shemwell.pdf
2. Hong Kong ' s news media five years after the handover: Prospects for press freedom

http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1081&context=apme

3. The Effect of self-censorship on news credibility: public' s perception of Hong Kong newspapers after the 1997 Handover

http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4846&context=etd

These eassy analysed the statement of “the Joint Declaration of the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Government of the People's Republic of China on the Question of Hong Kong”, and the credibility and shareholders change of the News media in these years. These eassy let me know more about the situation of Hong Kong and the reason of why their standpoint and points of views are so different. In addition, several opinion polls about how Hong Kong citizen think to the News media have analysed. Moveover, the background of the News medias group have included for drawing the findings.

I decided to focus on the “Ming Pao”, “Oriental Daily News”, “Apple Daily” about how these three newspaper describe “Fish ball revolution” on the 8 February, 2016. To see the standpoints of these newspaper group.

2)     Preliminary findings – What do you discover up till now? (For example, what are the commonalities amongst the texts/interviews?) How do your findings help you answer your research question?  

After reading these essay, I discover press freedom has declined with the development of closer economic and political ties with Mainland China after the 1997 handover. "Several media owners are current or former members of the National People’s Congress, China’s parliament. Many have significant business connections in the mainland. Therefore, it is perhaps not surprising that news stories reflect mostly the interests of the dominant class. Even those that do not receive direct funding from Chinese businesses choose to stay away from stories that may cast the mainland in a negative light (Lee & Chen,2009). Self-censorship is now common in the newsrooms of Hong Kong." " Media critic Zhang Tao (2006) says that more and more self-censorship happens in Hong Kong because some media outlets have been acquired by big businesses with economic ties with China. Thus, they now serve their owners’ interests instead of functioning as advocates for the general public’s concerns."
Those are the reason why self-censorship happens in HK.

Blog 5

As my search topic was Pornography, I did ask over 25 person to help me to do the interview. but only few person would help me to do it. So, for now, i have only did 3 interview with those interviewees.  

In those interview, I did ask each one of the interviewee the same question, like how did you defend “Pornography”, How they feel about “Pornography” and asked some of their Background information. I believed that their background will be the key of how they decode the Pornographic media. 

In my research, I would like to find out how people think of pornographic media. Different people will have different point of view to that. So I defined that as a “decoding research”. The way how those interviewees think of Pornographic media is the matter of my research. According to an article which called “Encoding/Decoding” form Stuart Hall, He thought there are three hypothetical position of decoding message. The first one is “ Dominant-Hegemonic position”, the second one is “Negotiated code” and the last one called “oppositional code”. I believed that these three hypothetical position of decoding message will help me to find out how those interviewees consume the pornographic media. 

On the other hand, three different interviewees were mention same topic coincidentally. It’s about rape porn video. They did have different point of view about rape, but when I asked their opinion about pornographic media, they just carry out this topic. I believe that must be meaning something or there is connection between Pornographic media and media violence. That’s why those interviewees are mentioned that topic coincidentally. One of the interviewees was talking about how he despise any rape porn. He thought that sexual behavior should be mutual consent. If not, that should not regarded as normal and it will become a crime. 

After I did the interviews with these three person, I didn’t expect that they will mention about rape porn. Therefor I will search some articles about media violence or any reading had mention the relationship between pornographic media and media violence. 

Last but not the least, there are few more interviewees will help me to do the research, maybe they will mention the same topic about pornographic media, or they will cary out another whole new topic. So I decided that when I was interviewing them, I will use recorder to record the content they had mention. If there are any new topic comes out, I can use those record as a basic information and search the supporting article to do my research. 

Student: Yuen, Hoi Wang Patrick 

Student ID: 10643061

Blog 5

Progress report - How many interviews did you do so far? 

So far I have conducted 4 interviews on players of the table top role play game of Dungeons and Dragons. The interview consists of 10 questions.

The questions include;

1.    Do you believe that your dungeons & dragons character represents you?

2.    What aspects do you usually take in consideration when choosing creating your character?

3.    Do you pay attention to how your character is represented with the equipment or attitude that you give? 

4.    Do you believe you will be able to get along with a person in real life if you’re in-game characters’ work well together?

5.    Does it reflect your relationship with the party members in real life?

6.    What do you think attributes to the identity of the team as a whole?

7.    How important is D&D to you?

8.    Do you change yourself to fit your character? How?

9.    Do you think people play rpg to compensate what is lacking in real life?

10. Would you cosplay/ act out your character in real life? Solo/group.

As of yet, most of the interviewees have opposing ideals and tend to answer the questions vaguely. Therefore, interview questions may be further refined to better communicate with the interviewees. And 4 more interviews have been scheduled for 9^th of April, 2015.

For the literature review, I have only found 1 that relates greatly and directly to my topic. The book is called Shared fantasy: Role-playing games as social worlds by Gary Alan Fine. As this book seem to be very compatible with my research, I have chosen it to be my primary source of information for my literature review.

The data is continuously being compiled and have yet to be completely analysed.

Preliminary findings

A few parallels and commonalities have been observed thus far.

From my weekly observation of the game of Dungeons and Dragons so far, it seems that many of the players take the game personally to a certain extent. For example, many of the players would sometimes call each other by their real name rather than their character’s name while playing the game. It seems from the examples that most players do not realize that they take the game so seriously, sometimes forgetting that it is all just a game. Another example is when a player accidentally kills a side character in the game and gets angry at the game master for allowing his death.

A few preliminary findings from my interviews include the fact that the players do agree that to some extent, their characters are a representation of themselves as a lot of personal interest parallels with the characters they play. And most interviewees, even casual players of the game, consider Dungeons and Dragons as a means to socialize with other gamers.

Blog 5

1) Progress report - How many interviews did you do so far? And/or how many materials (i.e. media texts) did you research, and how did you research on the texts – textual analysis, genre study, etc.?

I have finished all the interviews already. There are 4 interviewees having different employment status and gender, but all of them are ages in 20-24. I have totally asked around 14 short questions in each interview (7 of them are about the feature of the ways of interviewees in the Korean wave, another 7 are about the trend of them to purchase Korean products.) The findings from interviews had been noted clearly by writing an exhaustive table. A simple rating has been done for separating the extent of interviewees addicted to Korean wave.

A preliminary analysis have worked, an obvious purchasing pattern have shown in two exceeding results from the two male interviewees. Now, I am working with the genre and contents of the Korean shows that the interviewees have watch, to find the ‘frameworks of knowledge’ in decoding of them. After that, the prices of the product that the interviewees have / wanted to purchase would be found for studying the purchasing state of their different economic status.

2) Preliminary findings – What do you discover up till now? (For example, what are the commonalities amongst the texts/interviews?) How do your findings help you answer your research question?  

The first finding is the frequency of females to watch Korean drama is obviously higher then males. From the result of the interviews, girls spending more time to watch Korean dramas (watching around the clock at holidays or watching at every working day) while boys watch them passively (watching only while extremely bored). In addition, girls are always focusing on the latest Korean drama while boys only know some extremely hot drama, such as ‘My Love from the Star’.

Secondly, the extent of touching Korean wave is influence the level of teenagers to purchase Korean product directly. One of the male interviewee loves Korean entertainment show, K-pop music and follow all the news of his idols. He shows his deep love to Korean culture from his way to purchase Korean product, also the desire of him to visit Korea and learning Korean. Another male interviewee knows nothing about K-pop, and he watches Korean dramas and entertainment shows rarely. He shown his lack of interest to Korean products in his speech, ‘My old Samsung smart phone is the only one Korean product I can come up with.’

Student number: 10585624

Student name: Tsang Cheuk Wah, iCa

Blog 5

Topic: How and Why teenage in Hong Kong enjoy playing the series of Resident Evil (Biohazard)?

           I have changed my topic and i will only focus on the series of Resident Evil. It's because of the result come out will more accurate and clear. If I do not change my topic and I will focus on all the violence game, because of there are many kinds of violence game and the result come out will become inaccurate. That's the reason that I change the topic.

Questionare: 

1) Which series of Resident Evil you have played before?

2) Why you enjoy to play Resident Evil?

3) If you are free at this moment and you are playing the Resident Evil, How many hours do you want to play?

4) Do you have any friends also enjoy playing Resident Evil and will you usually play with him or her together?

5) Do you think you are fans of Resident Evil?

6) If there is a new Resident Evil released, will you buy it immediately?

           I have interview a teenage aged 20 and he is a fans of Resident Evil. He has played 5 series of Resident Evil. The reasons of he played 5 series of Resident Evil are because he enjoys the story of the Resident Evil. Also he think the pictures of killing zombies are exciting. He thinks he will play the game until he finishes the game if he is free. He has lots of friends also enjoy playing this game and lots of them are his classmates from secondary school. He thinks he is fans of Resident Evil but he will not buy the game immediately if the new series release because he thinks the game are boring if the game do not improve.

          And the preliminary findings are that the fans of Resident Evil is one of their childhood memory. The first game of Resident Evil was released in 1996. And the first game of the interviewee played was Resident Evil 0 and that is the fifth game of Resident Evil. And he was played with his classmates. And until now he is still playing with his friends in secondary school. But he has graduated already. And i think that is a linkage with his classmates. 

          This is a new point of view that i think the teenage enjoy playing violence game. I think teenage enjoy playing the violence game is because they enjoy doing something they cannot do in real life or to release their pressure in real life before the interview. So I think it will provide a new perspective to me to finish the research.

Blog 5

1) Progress report- How many interviews did you do so far? And/or many materials (i.e. media texts) did you research, and how did you research on the texts- textual analysis, genre study, etc.?

Interview questions:

How long have you been listening to K-pop?

What are the charming part of the singer/group you like?

Which you think is the most important thing that makes you get into K-pop, idols or songs?

How much you put on K-pop?

Do you think it is worth it to pay those prices on K-pop?

Do you think the K-pop culture can affect last more longer?

I have done three interviews in the past two weeks, and the last will be next Monday finish.

Done

The first one is my friend (girl, 22 years old) that listen Korean music for about 5 years and her basis is the idol group BIGBANG. She will buy their CDs and go to concert when they came to Hong Kong.

The second one is my cousin (girl, 18 years old) that listen Korean music just 2 years and her basis is the idol group EXO. She will buy CDS, photo book, or whatever the product produce by the official entertainment.

The third one is my friend (boy ,21 years old) that like to listen and dance Korean music, always go out performance. He don’t have any basis idol group but he like to listen Korean music and think it is fashion.

Going to interview

The last one is also my friend (girl, 22 years old), that listen Korean music for 5 years and her basis group is Girls’ Generation but will also follow other girls groups. She always goes to Korea or other country to watch their concert and like to buy presents to her idols.  

2) Preliminary finding- what do you discover up till now? (For example, what are the commonalities amongst the texts/ interviews?) How do your finding help you answer your research question?

As I have interview three teenagers, I discover that when I ask them about what is the charming part of the singer they like, they immediately tell me that “the face”, they think the idols is so charming, so they can have energy to follow their news.

Although they think they don’t get understand about the language of Korean music, they still get enjoy it. The melody like them easy get into the music, match with the music video, it is perfect to them.

Their interviews let me discover that how the entertainment put such effort on the idols group to get attention on people, their face, the melody of music, and the music video.