Quiz

6th-week-quiz

Topic: Media Science

All research starts with:

• a question

• an hypothesis

Next step:

determine the best way to test the hypothesis or answer the question

What are you researching?

• Messenger?

• Message?

• Audience?

What is your method of research?

• Historical view?

• Interviews?

• Textual or visual analysis?

• Content analysis?

• Experiment?

Original research (your project)

Previous research (what others have found in their project theory)

General areas of media research:

• Social sciences (quantitative)

• Humanities (Qualitative)

Guest lecture by Dr. Rob Potter (Wednesday, Feb. 19th)

Media Science tries to precisely and systematically analyze what is in media, how people use media, their attitudes toward media, and how media affects people.

Some goals of scientific observation:

• To describe

• To explain

• to predict

Research methods

In most social science, these goals are achieved using three main methods:

1. Content analysis:

• Deciding the time frame, the population frame, and the sampling technique

• using trained coders to systematically quantifying media content

In media science, it is very important that you are clear about definitions.

2. Survey:

• asking people to self-report information about the media (and other things)

• Behaviors, attitudes, opinions

• Mail, face-to-face, phone, web

Extract what you do understand, and leave what you don't alone.

3. Experiment:

• trying to establish causal relationships between two or more variables