Research Questions and Empirical Measures

CMNS 260 Assignment 3:

Research Questions and Empirical Measures

Bernadette Redila

301126236

TA: Nawal Musleh-Motut

Topic, Purpose and Intended Use

For the purpose of this assignment, my research will be focusing on the role that the media plays in effecting Canadian citizens political knowledge and action. Mass media plays such a large role in our modern day society, and informing its consumers of the world surrounding them. Specifically with political issues, the majority of citizen’s are not constantly involved in political processes and therefore are not directly exposed to issues within the realm of politics. Political knowledge is acquired through the mass media’s portrayal of information, whether it be through television news, radio debates or campaign commercials during election time. What the majority of what citizens know are subject to what the media wants to and do portray, unless other outlets are actively searched to gain further information.

The basis of my research is rooted in the power that the mass media holds that enables certain parties, whether it be the owners, advertisers of editors, to influence public opinion. My research questions the Positivism Theory of the media, that media ought to reflect reality, and the role of ideology and objectivity. Is the information we already know about current political issues tainted by bias opinions or were they subject to the ideals of objectivity?

I chose to explore the relationship between media and citizen’s political action because in recent years there has been a downturn in voter turnout rates, specifically young adults. On the other hand, media use has grown exponentially in the last ten years. I wanted to see if there was some sort of correlation between the two. From personal experience, I have noticed a lot of friends and family take information from news broadcasts and TV talk shows as is. They never seemed to question what they were exposed to, and never actively seeked alternative options to help them make a political decision. The purpose of this research is to provide some sort of explanation regarding my assumption of a relationship between voting and media exposure, in essence I would be conducting explanatory research.

Research Question/Hypothesis

Do mass media make it difficult for all voter’s to make informed political decisions during election and referendum time?

Research Design Proposal

Operationalization of principle concepts:

1)  Mass media: Television (news broadcasts, talk shows, commercials), radio (interviews, talk show debates & discussions), print sources (advertisements, newspapers, and magazines) and the Internet (websites of large news organizations).

2)  Voters: Canadian citizen’s who are legally able to vote.

3)  Informed: aware of popular issues pertaining to the government and it’s policies. Awareness of party’s political agenda and platform.

4)  Political decisions: Voting in either political elections or referendums.

Method:

To collect my data I could use survey and existing statistics research. Using survey research I would interview participants with a variety of questions that determine to some degree what they about current political issues, if they are politically active and what types of media they gain their information from. By using survey research I am able to conduct a study with a select group and generalize it onto a larger group. Using existing statistics research I could determine what the level of media communities are exposed to, for example whether their community is exposed to more political campaigning than another. This method is flawed because it may not be current or may not be reliable due to flaws in the research of those statistics.

Identifying and sampling a “population”:

The population that would be interviewed would consist of citizen’s who are legally able to vote. I would separate the population into age groups due to various differences in lifestyles and interests that are tied to age (For example, a young adult may be more concerned with post-secondary costs than retirement and pensions). I would need to randomly sample a population to include participants in my unit of analysis.