Blog 11.

    Here at Quinnipiac, athletics experience the most media by far. As seen first hand from Quinnipiac’s athletic director Jack McDonald in class, the athletics media is representated all over the athletic website and for the bigger audience on their own YouTube page. This type of media is aimed at the QU students, athletes, fans and more. Researchers of the social media are able to look at QU athletics media site and record how many views and/or comments the video received. This is one of the ways survey research can take place.

    Jess mentions the Chicago cubs using an online survey to hear from their fans. In comparison to the QU athletics media page they are both available online and able to gather research through participation of viewing.  However having all of this available online does limit those who do not have internet easily accessible. Mallory also discusses the other way in which the sports social media side can take part in experimental or survey research. She describes how the NHL went through ideas of changing rules around and decided to actually use NHL players in their experiment. The experiment changed the amount of players on the ice throughout to see, this exposed the players to market testing where trials were done.
    Personally, when filming a women’s lacrosse promotional video for the QU athletics media site we experimented with having different number of players try out the video and if adding different variables of background players or props worked or not. Experimental research allows for different variables and changes in the research which Mallory and I have found. 

Experimental in Social Media

This week, learning about experimental PR we are exposed to a fun way of looking at how the PR world works. How having 2 variables in society can have such effects on each other or not at all. And choosing to study the effects or causes of variables in our media world, in particular, builds our future of experiments and the PR world.

If changing GAPs logo creates all this “buzz” in consumers then the independent variable has made a change in the dependent variable. However, are the consumers and societies view of the new logo going to be totally biased because they are comfortable with the previous logo that has been around for 20+ years?! This turned into a mini social media experiment when they asked the public to submit their ideas for a new GAP logo, since they got so much negative buzz about their new logo.

Surveys in Social Media

So much in our world today we have our likes and dislikes, reflecting on what websites we choose to use and what media sources we are not fond of. Researchers and social media workers have the task of figuring out what exactly the audience likes and dislikes. Listening to the audience enhances the future for businesses and media in particular.

Social media in the NFL, specifically, has begun to participate in the social media sites. With the understandable regulation of not using the sites 90 minutes before and after games. Every NFL team has a Facebook page which I find shocking. For NFL teams to have a Facebook page exposes them to the media world, creating an even bigger audience.

            A survey was conducted together by Catalyst Public Relations and Sports Business Journal. More than 500 fans from each of the leagues were asked about their use of social media. The results showed “that 61 percent of MLB fans and 55 percent of NFL fans consider themselves bigger fans of the respective leagues since they started following their favorite teams on Facebook, Twitter and similar sites. In addition, more than half of MLB fans (and 43 percent of NFL fans) said they spend more time watching and following the league now than they did prior to their social-media engagement” (David Broughton).

With teams posting on Twitter and Facebook it allows for audience to “follow” or respond to their social media pages. It was found that “Fewer than half of fans ages 18 to 33 claimed to have responded to brand promotions or other offers “every time” or “most of the time.” The number is even lower, 22 percent, for fans ages 46 to 6.” Surveys are constantly used in the Public Relations world to get a sense of their audience.

Classmates' blogs

Given the chance to read some of my classmates blogs again gave me the opportunity to learn more about the research in the communications world in general. As qualitative research was last addressed many classmates shared experiences and examples that connected qualitative research in our every day lives.

            I can relate to Meagan’s blog which discusses her athletic team being surveyed about nutrition. Researchers use surveys to obtain information they would like to use to measure. However as I touched on in my last blog, giving surveys over the internet and online has the risk of bringing in false or flawed results due to the individual not fully paying attention to survey or having the freedom to say things they don’t always do. In person surveys are more reliable, getting the person in their natural habitat. And just observing the soccer players in person to see what they choose to eat at a team tailgate is better for results. And for the coach to relay information back to the players in person about their eating habits makes their future better by keeping them aware. It was good that the coach did not reveal he was observing players at first.

            Not only does qualitative research help through observation but also through focus groups, more importantly getting peoples attitudes and beliefs. Katie's discusses this in her blog about her York Hill focus group asking participants questions and getting first hand feedback. She was able to get the participants attitudes through their answers and hearing their frustrations or concerns. Face to face focus groups can be dangerous if peoples views get swayed by others in the group. However this research is straightforward and reliable to use for hopefully a change in York Hill flaws.

Qualitative Research & The Social Media's Future

   Instead of using numbers and statistics to calculate the popularity of certain websites or television show advertisements research can be conducted by way of responses. Asking the audience more of the why and how. This side of interest in researchers helps conduct information for making the future of social media improved. The decisions that we take part in everyday through what websites we play into the social media’s outcome.

   As the social media continues to evolve in so many ways; at our fingertips and through the click of a button, we are seeing its impact through societies actions. The quick status updates, mobile picture uploads to facebook, “like’s” on Facebook pages display the social media production. As time moves forward so does our social media’s relationship with the publics interests.

  Do researchers actually listen when participants and the audience give feedback and value it? As technologies advance qualitative researchers hope to better this aspect of the research world. 

For example more face-to-face discussions will help researcher’s grasp the feedback better knowing the participant isn’t multi-tasking if the discussions were online. 

Classmates' blogs.

           As my blog focus’ on the social media I find it interesting and fun to look at classmates blogs with similar topics and focus’ to hear different perspectives and thoughts. One main similiarity I found across the blogs of my fellow classmates, was the question of ethics. No matter what their topic or blogs focus almost all questioned the ethics.

           

          I find that the social media side of PR contributes a lot to unobtrusive research, which we focused on last week. Checking out other students blog I found a similarity with Francesca’s blog.  She also focused particularly on the twitter and facebook medium that celebrities so often update and expose. She argued, as I did, that when you do go on these websites and check out what everyone (your fave celebs) are up to, you are conducting unobtrusive research because they do not know. Interesting how we don’t even think twice before ultimately “stalking” people by looking at their webpage without them knowing you know what they are up to. This leads me into thoughts on ethics side.

         I also seem to find in interest in the ethics that accompany most aspects of the PR world, but mainly on our recent topic of unobtrusive research. Kelley's blog actually focus’ directly on the ethics in PR so I was interested in reading her take on unobtrusive research as a whole and apply it to my blog. I agree with Kelley that sometimes studies can go a little to far, crossing the ling of ethics in some studies if the participants do not know. Kelley touched on the violation of ethics in research which I agree with, and this is what the social media often takes part in. With celebraties and wanting to know about what is going on in their lives and going to far extents to get a picture or information is often invading their privacy. In our world today the media world has to be careful with performing studies and keeping an ethical balance so there isn’t an uproar in the media or issues. 

Behind the scenes research

Okay, relating social media and unobtrusive research may just sound like another research method that individuals take on. However unobtrusive research does have an interesting hitch to it. Let me interest you, as I was interested with this topic at first.

The fun of unobtrusive research is the thrill of the people being studied do not know. Okay creepy may be another word to describe this type of research at this day in age. But in order to see people in their natural habitat with their actions, yes we have to be a little creepy. The examples that we went over in class were the museum floor, and finding out which painting is the most popular by the wear of the floor tiles. I found this very interesting and a fun way to conduct research.

Chelsea Handler, a television host and comedian, has a Twitter for example which is always updating what celebrities will appear on her late night show. This allows researchers to see what celebs are aired on Chelsea Lately without the celebs knowing. This type of research may benefit the celebrities so that the research isn’t done in an obnoxious way, presenting the information to the public. Using something as simple as Twitter that is so often being updates helps getting information without contact.

The way celebrities are so often stalked kept tabs on 24/7 it is a little difficult for these paparazzi’s to display unobtrusive research since they do not do a very good job of hiding themselves.

There is the debate whether unobtrusive research is ethical or not. And personally I think that it depends on the situation and what is being researched, mainly for what purpose. If researchers are tallying who is going to be on Chelsea Handler’s late night show I think it is ethical as long as the researchers are not flaunting their results to the public.