Census Mapping Tool, UT Libraries

This is a useful tool for analyzing and mapping census information, FYI.
I've linked the path below.

Libraries --->  Research Tools ---> Government Information --->  Census ---> Social Explorer

The Pros & Cons of Amazon Mechanical Turk for Scientific Surveys

Sounds like a fairly promising online survey service option:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guilty-planet/2011/07/07/the-pros-cons-of-amazon-mechanical-turk-for-scientific-surveys/

Writing an Online Survey Questionnaire

Using the guidelines discussed in class and your readings for writing valid survey questions and response categories, write at least 10 questions about a topic of interest to you. Your survey questionnaire should also include the following:

a.  Specify the title that reflects specific focus of your questionnaire, and include a short description of your sampling frame.

b.  An opening paragraph introducing your survey.

c.  At least one contingency question.

d.  At least one matrix question.

e.  At least one open-ended question.

f.  At least one nominal level question.

g.  At least one ordinal level question.

h.  At least one ratio level question.

i.  Demographics. 

k. Questionnaire closing. 

You may use the survey questionnaire in Appendix A2 as a guide for a correct questionnaire format.  Please label the following in your questionnaire:

(1).  Open-ended question.

(2).  Contingency question.

(3).  Matrix question.

(4).  Ordinal question.

(5).  Ratio question.

Labels should be placed adjacent to the question referred to.

                                                                                                                       

Proofread your questionnaire so it will be free of errors.

You are encouraged to use your free account on Qualtrics to complete this assignment. Sign up at: http://www.qualtrics.com/academic-solutions/university-of-texas-college-of-communication/

Turn in a hard copy in class on Thursday, Oct. 3.

Video: Michel Teló - Ai Se Eu Te Pego

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcm55lU9knw

I have a question

Using the data set from the twitter research group, I'd like to answer the question of "What type of frame were political journalists establishing through mention of religion in the last presidential election?" "Were the tweets, mentions, and RTs positive or negative?"

First Thoughts: Research Topics

(New topic) 
1) The messaging behind drone attacks. I'd like to look at how drone attacks carried out overseas in Pakistan and Afghanistan have been reported domestically and also the messaging behind these attacks from government sources. Targets have often described as 'militants' for being male and within a broad age range, while many civilians have been killed in the process. The Obama administration ramped up the number of drone attacks throughout his presidency and I'd like to see how these operations have been covered, and what the public opinion has been as a result. 

I'd like to do a data analysis of articles and look at broadcast stories covering drone attacks. Tone, questions asked and the amount of information presented are all things I'd like to focus on. Has the government tried to make attacks seem automatic and not with a human element? What is the benefit of that messaging? I may also look at articles about drone technology in general and how related issues (privacy, security) are covered.

Links:
Covering Obama's Secret War
Columbia Journalism Review

Drone Warfare: Blowback from the New American Way of War
Middle East Policy

2) I'm interested in exploring the use of Twitter in political movements/elections in developing countries, and the lasting effects. From Venezuela to Iran to the many Arab Spring movements, Twitter played a major role in connecting people and inciting them to join together for a common cause (or hashtag). I'd like to look at Twitter effects in demonstrations and uprisings versus elections. 

Have these political movements and political hashtags come from average citizens or are there now more political players that have access to the general population, thus creating more divisions in those societies? I could do a content analysis of tweets and hashtags from various countries. 

Also, I'd like to explore the longevity/likelihood of these movements and what this means. 

Some links: 

Gatekeeping Twitter: message diffusion in political hashtags

Media Culture Society March 2013 vol. 35 no. 2 260-270
http://mcs.sagepub.com/content/35/2/260

Pakistan testing powerful Internet filtering software
Al Jazeera America
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/18/pakistan-testingpowerfulinternetfilteringsoftware.html

'Citizen Journalists' Evade Blackout On Myanmar News
Wall Street Journal, 2007
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119090803430841433.html

Preliminary Research Topic

     My research interested lies in that how mobile phone/tablet change the media structure, dynamic of competition between traditional news media, online news media and news on mobile phone/tablet.

  

     According to an annual report on American Journal (The state of the news media 2013), people with mobile phone/tablet spend more time consuming news than they did before. That is to say, mobile phone/tablet are becoming the major media for people getting news. Our habit of consuming news is changing rapidly with the launch of mobile phone/tablet. According to the same report (The state of the news media 2013), “Most mobile news users are not replacing one platform with another; they are consuming more news than they had in the past.” It also raises my interest that will there be “cannibalization effect” of mobile phone/tablet on online media and traditional media? 

  

     In addition, since the current trend of getting news is toward mobile phone/tablet, can media companies make profit on the advertising in mobile phone/tablet?  In order to answer these questions, we may need to know that, how to define media structure, how is the competition relationship between traditional, online, and mobile media?  Based on previous study on online news, it is modality, not content that influences reader’s usage of media (Thurman & Myllylahti, 2009), here comes to my concern that how about mobile phone/tablet, will it be the same as people consuming online news?

    Traditional media is struggling, online media was thought to be the future of traditional media. Here comes the rapid growth of mobile phone/tablet, ultimately, I want to figure out that will the mobile phone/tablet be the solution of the demise of traditional media?

     The scope of my research topic is still broad. Either newspaper on mobile device or cable TV on mobile is considered to be the objects of the research.

Some related article:

Chyi, H.I.,& Huang, J. S. (2012). Demystifying the demand relationship between online and print products under one newspaper brand: the case of Taiwan and the emergence of a universal pattern. Asian Journal of Communication. 21(3), 243-261.

Chyi, H. I.,& Sylvia, G. (2010). Are Long-Distance Users an Inconvenient Truth? Profiling U.S. Newspapers’ Online Readership in the Dual-Geographic Market. The International Journal on Media Management, 12:93–112.

Cha, J.,& Chan-Olmsted, S. M. (2012). Substitutability between Online Video Platforms and Television. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly.89: 261-278.

Thurman, N., & Myllylahti, M. (2009). Taking the paper out of news. Journalism Studies, 10(1), 1-18.

The state of the news media 2013. Retrieved from: http://stateofthemedia.org/2013/digital-as-mobile-grows-rapidly-the-pressures-on-news-intensify/

Preliminary Rearch Proposal

New Media and Sensorial Time Travel – New media as a whole has created a myriad of options for keeping abreast of current issues and news stories, but what of its arguably inadvertent development as an archival depository for sights, sounds, and events of the past?  My research proposal would examine the question of whether we are as likely, or possibly more likely, to use new media as a conduit for indulging our inner time traveler as for creating awareness of the present.  The hypothesis backing such research is that we, as humans, have an innate, sometimes nostalgia-fed desire to experience sensorial stimuli from our youth, or possibly from a point in time prior to individual existence and consciousness of such stimuli because of its unfamiliarity.  New media has become a provider for this type of “time traveling,” utilizing older, traditional media to provide a connecting point in a fashion similar to a wormhole in theoretical physics.  The research would evaluate the likelihood of a new media user to go back in time versus dwelling in the present time with regard to online content.

Here is an example of the concept provided by Rebecca J. Rosen:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/a-guy-who-saw-lincoln-get-shot-was-on-a-tv-show-in-1956-that-is-now-on-youtube/263800/

Blog author Jason Kottke has come up with the term “human wormholes” to describe the underlying phenomenon of human experience compressing seemingly large spans of time:

http://kottke.org/12/01/human-wormholes-and-the-great-span

Impact of digital technology on journalists’ work

My research interests focus on the impact of digital technology on journalists’ work.

Question: What significant changes have Colombian newspaper journalists experienced due to digital technology when researching, gathering and producing information?

Method: Using an online survey, last year I asked this open question to 134 newspaper journalists who are working for major newspapers in Colombia.

I have organized their answers in five themes: Mobility, access to information, collaborative work, use of new tools-social networks, and information immediacy.

Some academic resources I found:

Fengler, S., & Russ-Mohl, S. (2008). Journalists and the information-attention markets: Towards an economic theory of journalism. Journalism, 9(6), 667–690. doi:10.1177/1464884908096240

Good, K. D. (2013). Why we travel: picturing global mobility in user-generated travel journalism. Media, Culture & Society, 35(3), 295–313. doi:10.1177/0163443712468608

Harries, G., & Wahl-Jorgensen, K. (2007). The culture of arts journalists: Elitists, saviors or manic depressives? Journalism, 8(6), 619–639. doi:10.1177/1464884907083115

He, Z., & Zhu, J. -h. (2002). The ecology of online newspapers: the case of China. Media, Culture & Society, 24(1), 121–137. doi:10.1177/016344370202400108

Huxford, J. (2007). The proximity paradox: Live reporting, virtual proximity and the concept of place in the news. Journalism, 8(6), 657–674. doi:10.1177/1464884907083117

Jha, S. (2008). Why they wouldn’t cite from sites: A study of journalists' perceptions of social movement web sites and the impact on their coverage of social protest. Journalism, 9(6), 711–732. doi:10.1177/1464884908096242

Krause, M. (2011). Reporting and the transformations of the journalistic field: US news media, 1890-2000. Media, Culture & Society, 33(1), 89–104. doi:10.1177/0163443710385502

Martin, V. B. (2008). Attending the news: A grounded theory about a daily regimen. Journalism, 9(1), 76–94. doi:10.1177/1464884907084341

Olsson, E.-K. (2009). Rule regimes in news organization decision making: Explaining diversity in the actions of news organizations during extraordinary events. Journalism, 10(6), 758–776. doi:10.1177/1464884909344477

Reich, Z. (2013). The Impact of Technology on News Reporting: A Longitudinal Perspective. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 90(3), 417–434. doi:10.1177/1077699013493789

Statham, P. (2008). Making Europe news: How journalists view their role and media performance. Journalism, 9(4), 398–422. doi:10.1177/1464884908091292

Preliminary Research Topic

  I would like to research why non-Koreans like K-pop music videos on Youtube even though they don't understand the lyrics of the songs. There has been an influx of Korean popular culture throughout the world since the last few decades. “Hallyu (Korean Wave)” is the phenomenon called for the popularity of South Korean pop culture in other countries, especially Asian countries. When Psy’s Gangnam Style music video became a huge hit around the world including the US, I began to wonder why non-Koreans would like the song and its video while they have no idea what the song’s lyrics are about. 

  This is yet a very early stage of a research process. However, I plan to analyze the research topic by using content analysis: analyzing the comments posted on Youtube. By doing so, I hope to figure out how popular music portrayed on media (in this case, on Youtube) can attract and affect international fans regardless of its lyrics. The research can give a clue to the understanding of how sustaining local identities in the global context can successfully work towards the globalization, particularly in the realm of popular culture. Some of the articles below gave me the idea of this research topic.
 

Jang, G., & Pail, W. K. (2012). Korean Wave as Tool for Korea’s New Cultural Diplomacy. Advances in Applied Sociology, 2(3), 196-202.

Shim, D. (2006). Hybridity and the rise of Korean popular culture in Asia. Media, Culture & Society, 28(1), 25-44.