Use of Social Media for Getting Real-Time News by Young Adults - Assignment Example

Use of social media (Twitter) for getting real-time news by young adults (17-21 years) Date submitted Name Table of Content Use of social media (Twitter) for getting real-time news by young adults (17-21 years) 1 Executive Summary 3 1.1 Introduction 4 1.2 Audience/Public Background 6 2.1 Research exercise 1 8 2.2 Research Exercise 2 10 2.3 Research Exercise 3 11 3.1 Discussion/Analysis Synthesis of findings from three exercises 13 4.1 Research Idea/Proposal 19 References 20 Executive Summary 1 page max. - summarise key findings, analysis & conclusions The advent and the evolution of the social networking sites have become one of the essential medium for procuring personalised news and can be termed as analyst puts it a “personalised news wire”. This has been as the last five years, the revolution of the community sites or networking has proliferated to become more conscious towards keeping users updated on the recent happenings around the world. The concept of youtube or facebook or even myspace has given a lot of freedom to the consumers to post their post which was otherwise restricted to the news channel or newspaper. The shift that has been seen towards personalisation has been the core of the study that has been undertaken. The study tries to analyse the aspect of news aggregation or news emanating through the networking sites and the impact of the content on the global audience. The dwindling the use of newspaper has been seen in the age group of 18 to 30, which has been the main reason for the shift. Identifying some of key topic such the impact on the news organisations which saw a shift have been enlisting users to provide content than “editors” to whack their writing skills. Although the news consumption has been shifting towards the social streams, media sites have also learning the fact and have started experimenting the ways in which readers could be provided with the customised experience. Global players such Google has seen a shift in the business prodigy already, wherein they are developing their platform Google Television which would also have user generated content. The company has seen tremendous change in terms of design or functionality from aggregating news and now producing the content. 1.1 Introduction The present day scenario makes it a little unbelievable when a young adult are still seen glued to the newspaper each morning or even watch Television for catching up with the news. With the evolving society, the reliability on traditional news has been dwindling. The young crowd rely basically rely on the social media for updating themselves on that real-time basis for sourcing information or news. Being equally important to be connected with the friends, but the frequency for keeping themselves abreast of the happenings around them, the social media platform is proving to be very beneficial. (Wheeldon 2010). Social media is not just for individuals. News channels, municipal groups, churches, non-profits and schools are all gaining presence in social media. Besides the ability to share news and information with those in our network, we can use Twitter and Facebook to get updates directly from news channels. No more waiting around to watch the six o’clock news. We now get up-to-the-minute information as soon as it becomes available. Social media is no longer just a means to communicate with friends. We now have an endless supply of real-time news and information right at our fingertips (Wheeldon 2010). The individual feature of Social media has been to be diminishing off lately. Municipal groups, news channels churches, schools and non-profits are now vouching for sourcing their information from these sites. With sharing information and news with people in the network, sites such as Facebook and Twitter are able to give updates on the happenings around the world. The wait to watch the slotting of the news on the television, will see paradigm change with users able control content and making way to the new generation information gathering. We are able to get every minute information as soon as it happens or develops. The platform is no just a medium to communicate with the friends or relatives but has now become endless supply of news and information which can be accessed on the fingertips (Wheeldon 2010). The sites are able to affect the method by which we can receive news or information. The platform is user friendly and can open anywhere around the world giving more opportunity for creating and using it for making diverse kinds of news. Instead of reading the newspaper or even watching television, these networking sites are able to provide a medium to remain connected to the world and receive updates. By seeing the status quo of Facebook or even Myspace web 2.0 users are able to find information which is new which may be very relevant to them. The increasing dynamics in the society, accessing information can have an important role in connecting to the world. With the platforms, the users are able to discuss the information on the sites and make it a hot topic to be followed by the global audience (Pham 2008). Thus, this study would focus on understanding how young adults, especially in the age group of 17-21 years are using social media such as Twitter and Facebook to get real-time news. 1.2 Audience/Public Background Internet has become the sourcing point for procuring international and national news source for the people in the age group of 18 to 29, this has been found in the study conducted by Pew Research Center. In the year 2010, nearly 65% of the crowd who were in the age group of 30 was cited to have Internet as the main source of news which was seen to double from 34% in the year 2007. With the number of people who were watching television as the main source of news had seen a drop from being at 68% to around 52% at the time of study. Among the 1,500 the US national adults who were surveyed, nearly 41% responded that they get the information on the Internet and nearly 17% from the year 2007. Nearly 48% in the age group of 30 to 59 opined that the Internet was also the main tool through which they were sourcing the main news, which was a increase from 32% in the year 2007, on the other hand, the television watching for news went down from 71% to nearly 63%. This is although the number of these people in the age group of 51 and 64 age was considered to be watching television as the main source which was 71% has been the same. The ones who were more prone to using Internet were around 34% has been equal to the number of people who cite the newspapers which was nearly 38%. There has been a rise in the number of people in the group of 65 and older who are able to source information from the Internet and it has risen from 5% to 14%, although television was considered to be the main source for these respondents which was nearly 79% All the findings and the numbers have found to be in line with the increase in the personalised news stream on the internet. In case of Facebook and the news feed as well as Twitter’s launch in summer 2006 were able to create a lot of furor in the sector. These sites were seen to be expanding and diversifying the content portfolio since the year 2008. The count of Tweets have seen a surge from nearly 5,000 daily in the year 2007 to nearly 90 million daily in the year 2010, and on the other hand, Facebook was up from 30 million users (2007) to 500 million users or more at present. Therefore, the current topic under analysis is very relevant to the present day context wherein real time updates and news have become the buzzword with the young adults. Some of the specific research questions that this paper would be exploring include: Understanding the news consumption pattern in young adults: The study would attempt to find out how the young adults are consuming news these days and what are the popular channels through which they prefer getting the news. Analysing the relevance of social media for news: In order to understand whether social media is actually fuelling the growth of news or not, the selected audience would be asked about the relevance of social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook for getting news updates. Using social media for updating news: For understanding whether young adults are also using social media platforms for updating news and providing their opinions, the audience would be asked whether and if yes, how frequently, they use social media to provide their take on the news. 2.1 Research exercise 1 Rationale: The first research methodology that is being used for this study is the method of content analysis. Content analysis is considered to be a research tool that has been able to determine the existence of various or specific words or even concepts with the texts. Researchers have been able analyse and quantify the meanings, presence, as well as relationships of these concepts and words, and draw the inferences of the messages with the texts, writer(s), or audience, and it can be seen with the culture as a holistic concept. On the other hand, texts can be defined as the chapters, books, essays, discussions, interviews, headlines or articles, speeches, historical documents, advertising, conversations, informal conversation, or any speech that has occurrence of some kind of communicative languages. These texts which are in the single term or single study can also represent some variety of the sources or occurances, which can be near Palmquist's 1990 study in which the composition of two classes was undertaken. In this study, he was able to analyse the teacher and student interviews, classroom discussions, writing journals, as well as lectures along with the out-of-class interaction sheets. In order to conduct the content analysis on the text, the text needs to be coded or can be broken down into a manageable categories into variety of levels, such as word sense, word, phrase, theme or even sentence, and examined thereafter by using the content analysis' as the basic methods which should be relational analysis or conceptual analysis (Stemler 2001). Sample: A sample size of 20 people were taken, whose Twitter and Facebook updates and statuses were studied in an in-depth manner. Results: The method of content analysis helped in understanding what kind of content the target audience is reading as well as updating on the social media related to news. It is important to understand whether the young adults are only interested in entertaining news or also use social media for their dosage for daily happenings and serious political news as well. The results indicated that the young adults are not only interested in reading about entertainment related news but also use the social media to read and provide their opinions on serious political and social matters as well. 2.2 Research Exercise 2 Rationale: The second research methodology that is being used for this study is the method of sample surveys. This particular survey is a non-experimental and a descriptive research method. It is essential when a researcher would like to collect the data n a phenomena which cannot be observed directly for instance such as opinions on the library services. The information or data are collected for using the questionnaires however; the researchers may directly interview these subjects. These surveys can be qualitative which may have open-ended questions or even quantitative, which can be closed questions. Essentially there are two basic surveys which are cross-sectional surveys as well as longitudinal surveys (Loseke et al. 2007). Sample: For this paper, cross-sectional survey was conducted as it helps in gathering information about a particular topic from a particular population at a single point of time. Twenty young adults were contacted for this survey and were asked to fill a questionnaire about their social media usage for news related information. Results: The questionnaire asked varied questions related to the young adults’ opinion related to social media and its usage for news consumption. These questions were multiple-choice and provided a general perspective about the topic. Most of the target audience was of the opinion that social media platforms are a great way of knowing real-time information about a certain incident and most are switching towards social media for their daily updates on news. Also, it was interesting find that most even used the social media to provide their opinion on the news as well. They even thought that in future social media would become an important platform to receive news updates. 2.3 Research Exercise 3 Rationale: The third research methodology that is being used for this study is the method of in-depth interview. In-depth interviews were undertaken for this paper as it is believed that such a method is significant for investigating and understanding the correlation between social media and perception of young adults about news. A qualitative methodology is the best fit for this topic because it provided an initial understanding of the underlying reasons and motivations of the target audience while also providing a base for further research. This methodology is more subjective than quantitative surveys because the researcher is able to decide which quotes or specific examples to report (Denzin et al. 2005). The qualitative researcher aims to gather information that would help him or her to gain understanding about human behavior, as well as find the reasons that cause them to act in a certain manner. The researcher through this methodology tries to find out why and how a decision has been made, what were the reasons that compelled the person to make such a decision, as well as when and where the particular decision was taken. The qualitative researcher uses focused group discussion and does not rely on large data collected through random surveys. This helps the researcher in categorising and analysing the pattern or trend in the data and further organises it according to the results. In this research methodology, the data can be collected through the following means, by conducting direct interviews, by observing the answers given by a focus group, through in-depth interviews, and by analysing written documents and published records. Some of the other popular tools used by qualitative researchers are conducting focus groups and key informant interviews (Loseke et al. 2007). Sample: As it is difficult to undertake in-depth interviews of too many people, it was decided that the sample size for this research method would be reduced to 10 respondents. The researcher allocated around 45 minutes with each of the respondents to record their perceptions about the topic. Results: The in-depth interviews revealed more information related to the topic as compared to the survey results. The researcher was able to probe further with the participants and ask them questions related to their choice for social media for news consumption. It was found that most young adults found social media platforms accessible due to their mobile friendly application and most could get news updates at one go and that too in a one-liner format that are easily readable and understandable. They found the traditional news media to be unnecessarily verbose and often difficult to follow. Further, social media enabled them to voice their views as well on various topics. 3.1 Discussion/Analysis Synthesis of findings from three exercises The three exercises helped in understanding the views and opinions of the audience/public in a better manner. While the content analysis exercise helped us in understanding that the target audience was more interested in sharing news regarding entertainment and sports rather than political affairs. Further, most refrained from giving opinions on any issue. The exercises also revealed that most of the young adults preferred knowing about an incident first-hand through various social media platform and do not have much patience for the traditional media as they find it boring and time-consuming. Thus, the initial research about youngsters being fickle and are looking for instant news in a digestible format was confirmed through these three exercises. After studying the content of the status messages being updated by the targeted age group on Twitter and Facebook, it was found that most of them just shared some links related to particular news of interest. Only a few provided their opinion on the news piece while circulating it among their peers. It was mostly found that the youngsters were inclined towards entertainment and sports-related news rather than serious political issues. However, some of them also covered hot topics such as the recent Egypt uprising, sharing tweets across the world on the latest updates on the event. It was also noticed that the youngsters not only shared links from the mainstream media such as New York Times and the Guardian, but also shared news from blogs on their social media account. Thus, user generated content can be viewed as the latest buzzword among the youngsters who are relying more on social media to get real-time and first-hand information about an event, rather than leaning on the traditional media. It was also found that the opinions that were expressed on the issues were very logical, with some providing in-depth understanding of the issue. This, clearly shows that the youngsters are aware of their surrounding and do not hesitate to bring forth their opinions on various issues. Post analysing the content of the various updates on social media sites, a cross-sectional survey was also conducted to understand the point of view of the targeted population about news usage through social media. Fifty youngsters were chosen for this survey and following are the results of the survey. Do you use social media for finding real-time news updates? Forty youngsters were of the opinion that they use social media for getting real-time news updates, which accounted to around 80 per cent of the survey population. This clearly shows a trend towards using social media for news consumption among the young population. Do you share news links through social media? Most of the survey respondents showed excitement about sharing news links on their social media accounts as it helped in knowing about different things in a same platform. Thirty five youngsters were of the opinion that they shared news links through social media. Do you provide your opinions while sharing news links? Most of the respondents were however, found to be not that forthcoming when it came to sharing their views and opinions on a particular news piece. Most were content with sharing the links, but were not confident enough to provide their understanding or opinion on the news. Why do you use social media for getting news updates? Most of the respondents were of the view that they used social media for their news needs as it provides quicker updates, reliable and easier to access. Further, most also preferred using social media for networking with their friends and connecting with them to understand their perspective about particular news and share their opinions with them. Following the sample survey in-depth interviews were conducted of a few selected respondents, which revealed that the youngsters preferred using the social media for their news needs as they found it to be a quicker and easier medium to follow. For them, it is difficult and time consuming to read through the newspapers or listen to the news analysis on television. They found the newspapers to be verbose, while they considered news analysis on television to be boring. Instead, they desired for quick news updates on a real-time basis, which could be fulfilled easily through the use of Twitter and Facebook. However, they were also of the opinion that the visual impact of the television medium cannot be negated and they often watched the news after reading about an update on social media to understand the background about the incident. So, the traditional media is being viewed as a platform to find out about the incident, while the social media is used for real-time news updates. Therefore, the above results from the three methodologies indicate that youngsters are converging towards social media for their daily news needs and are forsaking traditional media such as the newspapers and television news channels. They are looking for snappy, one-liner updates, which can give them instant news about the latest happenings. They do not have the patience or the time to go through big articles or sit through repetitive news analysis to find out about the latest incidents. Instead, they use social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook to share and read news updates. Further, they like the interactive nature of these social media channels as they provide them with the opportunity to voice their opinions on a real-time basis and circulate them as well. Also, they are able to discuss and understand the point of views of their friends also while reading through a piece. The results also indicated that youngsters although used their social media accounts for sharing entertainment and sports-related news, they were also forthcoming about burning issues as well. They preferred knowing first-hand from the people involved in the incident through the social media platform rather than believing the traditional media. Thus, the influence of social media in the news business is posed to be far-reaching in the near future. 4.1 Research Idea/Proposal In order to better understand the news needs of the youngsters in the age group of 17-21 years and how they are being fulfilled through the use of social media, it is important to measure this requirement on the basis of particular issue. For instance, the recent Egypt uprising can be taken as a basis to understand how the youngsters consumed updates from the social media and what role did the traditional media played to cover the incident. Such a focused research would help in strengthening my hypothesis as well and finding out about the relationship between the selected audience and media. Thus, the research question for my further study would be the following: How did young adults (17-21 years) use social media (Twitter and Facebook) for getting real-time news on the Egypt uprising? Therefore, in my next research I would focus on understanding how the young adults in the age group of 17-21 years used social media such as Twitter and Facebook for getting real-time updates on the recent Egypt uprising. For doing so, I would seek permission from around 20 students to analyse the content of their tweets, re-tweets, status messages and wall posts to understand what kind of content on the particular topic was shared or read by the target audience during that particular phase. This would help me in understanding whether young adults prefers to use social media rather than traditional media for getting updates on burning issues. References Wheeldon, Ebony. "A Social Society: The Positive Effects of Communicating through Social Networking Sites." OnlinConference on Networks and Communication. Curtin University of Technology, 25 April 2010. Pham, Khao. "Social networking sites and its positive effects.” APACS Network, 7 September 2008. Stemler, Steve. “An overview of content analysis.” Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 7(17), 2001. Loseke, Donileen R. and Cahil, Spencer E. Publishing qualitative manuscripts: Lessons learned. In C. Seale, G. Gobo, J. F. Gubrium, & D. Silverman (Eds.), Qualitative Research Practice: Concise Paperback Edition, 491-506, 2007. Denzin, Norman K. and Lincoln, Yvonna S. Introduction: The discipline and practice of qualitative research”. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (3rd ed.), 1-32, 2005. Read More