Breaking down the different steps of research

• You need to know what your researching, have a little search for information on the chosen topic so you have an idea of what its about and how you should go about researching it. A good place to start is wikipedia.
• Run a quick google search and make a note of the most popular sites which come up, you may want to reference back to them later.
• Have a look at Doubleclick.com, you can put in certain URL's into the search and find out the popularity of that site, this is really usful in finsding out how many people use the site, and other sites they may use.Is really useful for finding out the demographics of your audience.

Other Forms of Research...

Experiments - Experiments are a good method of research as they usually give you a definite answer, they also give you detailed data to collect, the more people or subjects take part in the experiment the more detailed your results, however drawbacks of doing experiments are that it could be quite difficult to record (for example watching peoples behaviour), they can also be quite difficult to control.


Participant Observation - The researcher participates in the activity in order to better understand it. Benefits of participant observation are that you get a much more in depth understanding, being able to communicate with participants and react is very important, however again it could be very hard to record, if there were more than two participants it would also become difficult to get everyone involved, you may also have a bias opinion which would reflect on your participants distorting your research.Another problem with participant research is that if the researcher is actively involved, they may not be able to observe in an objective way.

Historical research -  Looking at the past history of something, studying the development of it and comparing and contrasting it to contemporary examples can be very useful in understanding why it is how it is today. however it can be quite a dated method of research, leaps in technology can also make this form of research obsolete as there is nothing to compare it to in the past, however for things such as behaviour and or social research it can be very useful

Rhetorical Analysis - Analysing the media language and how it can persuade the audience.Shows you wast the makers of a certain products think of th audience, how they advertise to a specific demographic.

Comparative Analysis - Comparing and contrasting different products in order to get a more rounded view, e.g comparing different women's magazines in order to see how to get the biggest audiences. Or Mobile phones, comparing ordinary touch screens to an iPhone to see where the can improve their product. However this can be quite a bias form of research.

Competitor analysis - Gives a fuller view of the market, what your up against, what you need to be better than and different from.

Questionnaires...

Creating a good questionnaire is difficult, you have to try and make your questions as specific as possible, getting the most information out of your participant as possible. They can be a great help for researchers as they are very quick and require little interpersonal communication. However they can be a flawed method of research if not written correctly. For example; The questions should be written in laymen's terms, allowing no room for confusion. The questions should be very specific, with limited answers allowing for quantifiable responses. You also need to think about who is filling out your questionnaire, it is no use giving out questionnaires to middle aged men if your questionnaire is about lipstick, you will not get a valid response. Also, people are taking time out of their day to fill it out, making your questions short and concise is also very important.


One to one interviews
Doing one to one interviews are very time consuming, however they are a very good method of primary research. When asking an interviewee a question you can respond of their answers, allowing the interview to flow, however this is of course dependant on your interviewee, some people can become very uncomfortable in an interview situation and that will result in very limited responsces, it is your job as an interviewer to keep the conersation flowing and get full answers to your questions. In comparison to questionnaires, one on one interviews are very time consuming, however they allow you to get much more personal and and have much more detailed answers, whilst questionnaires are much more limited in terms of responses.

Ratings / Audience Figures

Why are ratings / audience figures so impotant?
Companies spend a lot of time and monie researching audience figures and ratings for different media products, they are of vital importance to the industry as a whole. Finding out a audience figures is vital when trying to figure out where to place a certain television show in a schedule. If a station can prove it is pulling in massive audiences it can sell its air time to advertisers for a much higher price If a programmes ratings drop, it shows that the popularity of the show is dropping, this means the company will have to re think weather it is worth investing monie to continue producing the show and either cancell the show.

If you are a leading actor in a hit drama or programme, you can ask for more pay over the course of the series as the station is getting larger audiences which means more advertisers will want to place their products inbetween their programmes, which means more monie all together!

Focus Group
I took part in a short focus group with a few people from my class. We found that in larger groups there are one or two people who dominate the group, contributing the most and being much more involved, and one or two people who keep quite quiet. This method of research, is very good because it allows you to directly addres your clients and find out exactly what they are thinking, being able to choose certain demographics in a group is also vital. However i found that with larger groups, some participants started to change their opinion once others in the group had spoken, this can be a slight disadvantage as you are not always getting that persons original opinion.

Why and how do media industries use research?

Market research - finding out who their target audience is, who their competition is, how they are going to market the product or brand. In order to get funding for, say, a magazine, you need sponsors, through advertisements. Doing research is very expensive, however it is more cost effective to get your marketing spot on first time, which is why companies will spend a lot on research.

Audience Profiling and Demographics - Gender, age, occupation, level of income, ABC 1 (Social class) etc... Finding out your readers demographics is a vital. They help give information about the lives of your readers. For example In Style found that 79% of their readers thought it was important to look good and be well dressed, In Stlye readers are also twice as likely to spend a lot of money on cloths than other women, this information helps the magazine place specific adertisements into the book.

Psychographics - Personality, interests, how you think, what your values are, beliefs.

Social Media Research - Social media research is begining to put the consumer in charge of how products are viewed, sold, branded etc... Productrs are now starting to be launched as a result of social research. Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have vastly contributed to questionnair responces. Brands such as Coco-Cola have started facebook pages where fans can write coments and make suggestions, this is also a much more cost effective way for companies to get instant feedback from their consumers.The drawbacks of social media research are that it is very inpersonal,

Hargrave 2010 Media research methods

Research Methods

There are two types of research - Primary and secondary
Primary comes straight from the source, e.g. finding thigs out for yourself, e.g. doing one to one interviews or questonnaires, whilst secondary is research from the internet or from reading a newspaper article, information from a second source.

Focus groups are an excelent example of primary research, companys select a group of individuals and ask them questions on their product, what they like what they dont like, and will change their product or advertising for that product accordingly. One on one interviews are slightly different to focus groups as the interviewee's opinion can not be altered by other people in the room, the interviewer can also focus directly on the interviewee.
Observation is another example of primary research, its first hand and very direct, observing peopls behavior, watching how they react to certain productas, the name given for this kind of research is empirical research. Chatrooms are anothother example, people can log on and exchange views on different products / films / bands etc, its a good way to find out what users of a product think.

Examples of secondary research are, books, librarys, the internet articles, News papers - the media Guardian or the Telegraph Technology section are briliant resourses for new media articles, the media show on BBC Radio 4 is another good resourse.

Using both primary and secondary research methods is important as it gives you a more rounded view and allows your research to much more accurate.

We carried out a research acctivity where we were to look at different womens magazines and analise weather they represented ethnic minorities fairly. Our group looked at In Style, we counted up the number of Ethnic minorities pictured compared to the number of white people pictured, we found that through the whole magazine only 12 ethnic minorities were pictured, compared to 286 white. The majority of the pitures featuring ethnic minorities were very small, only one being a full page, the rest were only thumbnails. We used quantitative dadta in our research which was quite vauge, we could of improved it buy finding out the magazines target audience, which would reflect which people appear in the magazine. We also noticed that almost 100% of the adverets featured white women. In order to get more accurate findings on do womens magazines represent minorities fairly we would have to take many other aspects into acount, such as the percentage of ethnic minorities in the country, the specific target audience of the magazine the general representation of ethnic minorities in the media, and so on.