Wednesday, 22 September 2010

Example of Research

The example of research I have been given is on Dubstep. 

He has used different research methods, one being background information, giving examples in the form of screen prints, from sites such as WIKIPEDIA

He found out the popularity statistics using websites like doubleclick.com.

He used his own opinion and asked himself questions:
What is the history of this niche audience?
Where online does this audience hang out?
What peripheral interests are shared among this group?
What types of offline publications are there? 

For this research he uses: 

  • Websites
  • Record labels
  • Artists
  • Blogs
  • Forums
  • Radio Stations
  • Magazines
He analyses how how people got to each website, using SERPs (Search engine results page)



Other forms of research

Experiments
The benefits of experiments are that you can provide proof.
Drawbacks, too expensive to do a  large ammount of research.


Participant observation
The researcher can go further into depth of the certain group they are studying.
The drawbacks of participant observation are that the researcher may change their behaviour, biased opinion.

Historical research
The benefits of this are that you can see how it worked compared to how it worked in the past.
The drawbacks are that with time things change so your research may not be much use now.

Rhetorical analysis

analysis of the techniques used to persuade the audience.
persuasive language encourages people to buy something. It can be wrong if phrased incorrectly.

Comparative analysis
The benefits of comparative analysis gives a fuller view of the market, what you're up against, what you need to be better than and different from.

Competitor analysis

Friday, 17 September 2010

Interviewing people about illegal downloading?

Do you download illegally?
what are your views on illegal downloading?
what websites do you use to download?
do you have friends/family that illegally download?
If so do they use the same sites as you?
Estimate how much money you would be spending a week by the amount you illegally download?
What do you download?
When did you first start illegally downloading?

advantages - you can ask more questions off of peoples answers. You can get more unexpected information.
Disadvantages - people could be making up their answers, an interview is not anon so they may act differently. you couldnt write while they were speaking, you'd have to record it then transcribe it.

It was neither better nor worse than a questionaire as both have their advantages and disadvantages.

Questionaires and their problems

Kathryn’s audience research questionnaire (aim – to find out about downloading and streaming habits among a particular age group)

1. Gender
2. Age

3. Please circle which media forms you would buy a hard copy of (eg CD, DVD):

Music Games Film


4. Please circle which media forms you download:

Music Games Film


5. Please circle which media forms you download without paying:

Music Games Film


6. How often do you download music?
7. Do you feel guilty about downloading material without paying for it? If yes please state why? _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________




9. Do you use music streaming sites such as Spotify or Sky Songs? Please state which sites you use.
__________________________________________________________________________________


10. Do you use television on demand websites? If yes, please state which sites you use.
___________________________________________________________________________________


11. Do you share downloads? ________________ If yes, please state who with:

a. My siblings
b. My family
c. My friends

This questionaire is an improved version of a questionaire we were given. The original questionaire has faults. This questionaire in particular was about illegal downloading, it asked for their name when most people wouldn't want to give that information away. When writing the questionaire you have to think about how the audience will answer, and how their answers will help. Closed ended questions should be given options to choose from, this makes people more likely to answer the question.

Wednesday, 15 September 2010

Types of Advertising

WWW.barb.co.uk
WWW.abc.org
WWW.rajar.co.uk
WWW.google.co.uk/trends
WWW.alexa.com

The top 5 most viewed programmes on BBC3 this week. (Barb.co.uk)
1 EASTENDERS (TUE 2202) 1,109
2 DON'T TELL THE BRIDE (TUE 2103) 1,098
3 EASTENDERS (FRI 2201) 1,093
4 EASTENDERS (THU 2201) 1,045
5 EDINBURGH COMEDY FEST LIVE (THU 2100) 887

looked at different research on audience figures.
Why are ratings/audience figures so important? Atleast 3 reasons.
Helps them to figure out their demographic, to see what time to air the programmes.
The larger the audience more they can charge for advertising.
Can decide whether the show is sucess and whether they should continue.

We made a focus group to discuss what advertising we take in and what advertising we ignore. It was shown that viral advertising is the most popular, finding out from friends is more trustworthy. Pops ups are associated with virus' and when you click on the advert it's usually an accident. To make a focus group you need to get the demographics of the group. Our focus group wasn't perfect because we were not going into depth on each subject so a limited amount of information was gathered. There were many different types of advertising mentioned, text, competitions, viral, pop ups,pop-unders.

Friday, 10 September 2010

How and Why does the Media use research?

Details for who it's for, how many people will buy so you know how many to make. Content, finance & funds, competition, distribution methods. USP. Freebies, advertising for funding. Target audience for advertising.
Media research costs alot.
Demographics, social class: A -MP's, Lords, Wealthy upper class. B/C - Middle class C-1 (Proffesional) C-2 (Skilled worker). D/E - Lower class.

Audience profile created for the advertisers. A description of the readership, categories from 'Uncut' magazine
Author - Chris Dicker (Ad Manager)
Year - 2007
Uncut reader profile
Available from IPC.com
Date accessed 7/9/10
Male readership: 86%
Average age: 37
Married/living with partner: 60%
Working full time: 77%
Average income: £29,263
Circulation: 74,067

By looking at the demographics helps the magazine to sell itself. 'Uncut' doesn't show what class they target possibly because it's a music magazine.

psycho graphics -values, what you think is important, how you feel, interests.

Social Media Research by Sean Hargrave 5/8/10
It states that Penderyn Whisky claims that Facebook and Twitter users contribute over 500 responses to each of the questionaires. Another example of using social networking sites to gather information is the lip balm and moisturiser products, the simple VIP club has fans on Twitter and Facebook.







Wednesday, 8 September 2010

Research Methods

Primary and secondary research. Primary straight from source. Secondary from someone else.

Primary research in media: surveys, news, market research
  • Interviews: one on one interviews are more personal, find out more information.
  • Focus groups: group of people discussing a product. Used in film, in form of screenings.
  • Observation: first hand see whats happening. Empirical research, stuff you can look at (observe)
  • Chatrooms, forums.
Secondary research in media: books, internet (Wikipedia)

  • Specialised articles, newspapers. Particularily Media Guardian (can look online) Telegraph technology section.
  • Radio 4 'The Media Show' (podcast)
Are magazines representing ethnic minorities fairly?

'In style' Magazine 2009

Black: ///// \\\\\ ///// 15
Latino: ///// \\\\ 9
Asian: //2
White: ///// \\\\\ ///// \\\\\ ///// \\\\\ ///// \\\\\ ///// \\\\\ ///// \\\\\ ///// \\\\\ ///// \\\\\ ///// \\\\\ ///// \\\\\ ///// \\\\\ ///// \\\\\ ///// \\\\\ ///// \\\\\ ///// \\\\\ ///// \\\\\ ///// \\\\\ /////\\\\\ ///// \\\\\///// \\\\\ ///// \\\\\ ///// \\\\\ ///// \\\\\ ///// \\\\\ ///// \\\\\ ///// \\\\\ /////\\\\ //
272

Black: 15
Latino: 9
Asian: 2
White: 272

Content analysis:
  • What type of research was used? Primary research was used, Empirical research.
  • What were your findings? An extremely high majority were white, which could be because of the target audience, but there is not a good mix of enthnicity, having 26 total ethnicities other than white.
  • How could you have improved your research? Looking through other magazines, from different years to see how it's changed. We could have noted down the different image sizes to see which ones had more importance and took up most of the page.
  • What was good and bad about the research technique you used? Our empirical primary research was good because we counted for ourselves, to see how many ethnicities, we could see the different range of sizes of pictures which helped us to see the sizing difference between each race. It was bad because we didn't know exactly what race they were, because make up made it difficult to distinguish between races.