Help with interviews

Any topic related to class is a wide-open blog topic. I think my biggest concern at this point is how to do the interviews I would like to do for my dissertation. I know I want to do interviews in an effort to allow those effected by the phenomenon to make sense of the data for me. In essence, I don’t want to speak for them, I want them to tell me what they think the data means. As a reporter, I want quotes to back up my information. However, I’m having a hard time figuring out exactly how to do the interviews.

For those of you who don’t remember, my dissertation topic is if journalists are affected emotionally by covering day-to-day traumatic events. I began studying trauma through a Victims in the Media course at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond. I took the course as part of my emphasis in journalism during my education master’s work. The course was sponsored by the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, which is the primary resource for information on the topic. Through my studies I discovered that one of my editors at The Oklahoman, Joe Hight, is extremely involved in the Dart Center and actually helped UCO obtain the grant to teach the class. He has become a wonderful resource for me in my quest for knowledge on the topic.

It was in the same class that I was introduced to the textbook Covering Violence by William Cote and Roger Simpson (2000). The book provides a foundation for thinking about covering violence and how it affects those who are covered and the reporters covering it. Reading the textbook helped me identify three main researchers in the field: William Cote’, Roger Simpson and Frank Ochberg. From continuing to read works by those scholars and cross-referencing their reference pages I have found a variety of scholarly works on the topic. I also have identified a variety of articles in Quill, the Society of Professional Journalists’ magazine, that have been useful in identifying scholars in the field.

My initial methodology is to use the Society of Professional Journalists’ membership list to randomly identify working reporters and editors to whom I can send an electronic survey. I will set up the survey through Survey Monkey. After the information is gathered, I would like to do 10 to 20 depth interviews in an attempt to “make sense” of the data. This is where the questions begin. As I see it, I have two options: (1) Do nationwide interviews via telephone, (2) Do regional interviews so I can travel and actually interview the people in person.

There are several benefits to interviewing respondents via telephone. First, I won’t have to limit the people I interview because of location concerns. I would rather be able to make the interviews truly random by interviewing journalists from all over the country. Second, I won’t have the expense of attempting to travel and interview people. If I decide to keep the interviews regional, I’ll drive to the locations where I perform interviews. This could get expensive, especially with gas prices as they are today. The expense too would limit the number of interviews I’m able to do. Instead of doing 10 or 20, because of expense and location I’d probably be doing more like five at the most.

There is one overwhelming reason to interview the respondents in person – better responses. I think I can build a rapport with the respondents and receive better information if I do the interviews face-to-face. The greatest problem is that I’m reluctant to do that because I don’t want the limit my pool.

I would love to hear your suggestions.

THE BODY OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE INTERNET

The Body of Knowledge and the Internet

by JR

I’’ll admit it-since I have started graduate school I have not physically handled one journal to find my research. How many people in class have? I’ve gone to the library to look for books but I have yet to actually crack a spine on a journal like this one or this one. I won’t ask for a show of hands to see if I am the only one who hasn’t but I would bet I am not alone.

Connecting to the body of knowledge begins with connecting my computer to the Internet. Like many others in class I also use Google, Google Scholar, and LORA for my research. Part of my development as a researcher has been in refining my Article1st, and EBSCO keyword selection. I use Google and Google Scholar because the search functions generally yield better results than the libraries databases. What has this done to my ability as a researcher if I haven't dug through dusty tomes of knowledge in the back of the library?

I wanted to bring up another idea that is related to key word search for journal articles. I believe that it was in Conceptual Issues class that we talked about journals and conferences and the perceived notion that some journals and conferences have more prestige than others. What happens to this idea of prestige and credibility when a generation or two of researchers have grown used to research by key word rather than journal?

In Conceptual Issues class we also talked about journals vs. conferences. I have seen that the debate of which is a more desirable method to connect to the body of knowledge depends on the field of study. In JMC, getting published in a journal is the goal of many researchers and conferences hold sort of a 2^nd tier status in the body of knowledge. In my work with RISE, which is concerned with underrepresented minority students in engineering education, conferences are the goal for researchers and journal articles generally fall into the lower tier. The best explanation that I have been given for this preference is that education conferences are looking for ideas, practices, and theory that can be directly tested or implemented in an educational setting .

For my topic, advergaming, I have used journals that are found in a traditional print version as well as online only journals. The Journal of Interactive Advertising was founded in 2000 and is an online refereed journal that is open to submissions and is free to access. This is a different model than the online sites of many print-based journals that require a pay per download or subscription to access. Like many others in class, after Google has done its work, I switch over to LORA to find an appropriate database to find the article since I have already paid (through my school tuition) to access the journal and download the research for free. Is free the way of the future?

Having access to online journals and print journals available online I believe is beneficial to the development to the body of knowledge. Being able to tap into the work of the field anywhere, anytime makes it that much easier for people to enter the academic conversation in a way that was not previously possible.

P.S. play this Indiana Jones-inspired advergame from Legos-it is harder than it seems (check out the Lego-skulls in background!)

Connecting to the Body of Knowledge

As a graduate student, the body of knowledge daunting and even overwhelming at times, and finding your place within the vast body of knowledge can be difficult. The process of finding your place within the ominous body of knowledge you first must begin with your own interests and ideas. From there the process continues with basic research on the topics that emerged from your areas of interest.
In the beginning stages of research, I know that I was overwhelmed because though I had several ideas on research topics that I found very interesting I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to focus on. Last semester I focused on the effects thin-image media has on young girls and this semester I am focusing on brand image, but I am still not one hundred percent locked into a topic. I still struggle with this because I am doing the project option and I find it hard to decide on a research topic without knowing for certain that it will be able to be disseminated to a broader audience or a specific client and be of benefit to them. I want to do an ad campaign and that is hard to finalize your plans when you don’t have a specific client in mind.
I think that really the best way to conduct research in a way that connects to the body of knowledge in journalism and mass communication studies is to research and read past studies until you find a topic or study that sparks your interest. A good way to make your research really connect to the larger body of knowledge is to look at the limitations and suggestions for future research that is presented in past studies. A couple of good places to find scholarly articles are Google Scholar and the OU library and Lexis Nexis. This is an easy and logical way to tie your research to the basis of a past study and build off of the already known findings. It is important to connect your research to other researchers work, because the work of others provides a good foundation to build your own studies. Also connecting your work to others research is a way of validating your work and showing to readers that you are knowledgeable on the topic.
The pros of connecting your research to the body of knowledge are vast. As I mentioned earlier, connecting your research with other researchers’ work give you a good foundation for your own study. It also helps to validate your study if you use previously published or validated work to build your own study.
The cons of connecting your research to the body of knowledge are few to none. The only major con, which isn’t really a con at all, only an annoyance, is that it takes a lot of time to conduct the research. Also if your study contradicts the previous findings on a topic, you may have a much harder time getting people to accept your study as valid. Really neither of these are cons, they are just a part of the process of conducting research and writing a thesis or project.

Working on a Research Topic

I am still working on figuring out exactly the problem that I want to study for my thesis or project. I have thought about working on a professional project since I would have a tangible product to include on my resume.
One project that I have been thinking about would be developing a plan to improve the website for my wife's sister's business. She and her husband run a few skateboard shops in San Diego. They have a pretty well run brick and mortar business but their website could use some work and designing the site based on marketing, advertising, and CMC theory would be a resume building project.
As a Chickasaw, I am interested in investigating public relations or advertising issues in Native American tribes or nations. The Chickasaw Nation has multiple business enterprises. While the casino and gaming businesses are perhaps the best known, there are other ventures the tribe is involved in. CNI is a Chickasaw corporation that bids for government contract work, and Bank2, is a consumer and business bank wholly owned by the Chickasaw Nation. The Chickasaw Nation also owns and operates a radio station and even a fine chocolate retail operation. The "stockholders" in these operations are the Chickasaw people who then see the "profits" from these businesses in the form of expanded health care, housing assistance, care for elders, educational initiatives, historical and cultural preservation efforts and jobs for both native and non-native people. I first became interested in these issues in college when I spent a summer in Washington D.C.; first as an intern for former Sen. Don Nickles as a Morris K. Udall scholar then as a staff intern in the office of the Ambassador to the Chickasaw Nation.
However, I have am also interested in academic areas of study in advertising and the internet. From reviewing some of the available literature it seems like the field is wide open. User-created advertising, like the ipod Touch ad for Apple that was originally created by an 18 year old kid in Great Britain, would be a nearly unimaginable phenomenon in the pre-internet era. Advergaming, interactive activities online, social network promotions are just a few of the broad areas of interest that someone studying advertising could research.
I took Dr. Yoon's Non-Traditional Media class last semester. One of the best things about that class was the number of guest speakers from the advertising field. Almost all of the advertising professionals said that most of the people in the field knew that the internet was a different place and a different way to do business but that there wasn't yet a consensus on how the internet was different. In a lot of cases, the speakers weren't 100% exactly how people were going to get paid for providing content but everyone knew that not setting up content on the web wasn't an option.
I am going to start working for the RISE project next week as a research assistant. I wanted to work on this project in the hopes of becoming a more confident researcher. I think some of my worry about a final project or thesis is making sure I know what I'm doing. This project is studying minority students in engineering, math and science. The research group conducted a ton of interviews a couple of years ago and is now in the process of evaluating the mountains of data they collected from the interviews. The project is now using some qualitative software to sort and categorize the data and some mixed methods work to make some larger connections about how these students adapt, survive and thrive on campus as students.

Developing My Research Topic

Developing My Research Topic

Developing my research topic seems to be an on going process that has only just begun. Though this is only my second semester in graduate school, I feel great pressure to select my project topic. I often feel that I am behind because I have not made my final decision.

Of course I have no problem thinking of topics that interest me. Last semester I devoted all of my research to the cognitive effects of sexualized images in the media on preadolescent girls. Two prominent research groups on this topic are Sands and Wardle (2003) and Harrison and Hefner (2006). I find this topic very interesting (and sad). Sometimes as students of media and media practioners, I think that we forget or underestimate the power the media actually has over the mindset of the consumers. While this topic is very interesting to me, I don’t see it as my final project topic. I am also very interested in cohesive branding of companies or brands. I find it very interesting to watch new businesses come to town and either do phenomenal (eg- Rusty’s) because of a branded and focused image, or flop (does anybody remember the brief life of Dairy Boy on Lindsey Street?) because of the lack of focus on creating a distinct image. Starbucks and Panera are prime examples of the success a company can have by simply having a good quality product and creating a distinct image for the entire look and feel of the business. This is why people are still flooding into these businesses ready and willing to pay four dollars for a cup of coffee and eight dollars for a sandwich (myself included). Yet another topic that I am interested in is event sponsorship and brand partnership, which are two very different things but both involve two separate entities coming together to promote a product. I am interested in why some partnerships are golden (eg- American Idol and Itunes) and some are destined to fail (eg- Vera Wang and Kohl’s). Both of these examples are purely my opinion, only time will tell whether or not I am correct. I would like to know more about what the variables of good partnerships and sponsorships are and what the key signs that the partnership will fail are.

While all of these topics interest me, I am looking forward to doing a professional project that will help me gain experience in the professional realm. Like I said in my earlier post, my undergraduate degree was in advertising and I am extremely interested in working for a non-profit organization , so I am trying not to stay solely focused on advertising. I want to broaden my knowledge of public relations so that I can have more to offer a non-profit agency.

While I often feel that I am behind because I have not nailed down my research topic, I also find it hard to finalize a topic for an applied project. It seems to me that if a project is meant to be implemented by a company or agency, it is quite hard to have a topic finalized until you have established a relationship with the company or agency that you want to use your project. To me, until I know what the company wants or needs I won’t have a finalized topic.