Public-Relations-Research-I-munotes

Page 1

1 1 SCIENTIFIC METHODS OF MEDIA EFFECT RESEARCH 1.0 OBJECTIVES In this chapter we are going to understand the • Scientific approach to the study of media effects • Way of Knowing • The nature of science • What is theory 1.1 INTRODUCTION: Studying media has three major dimensions 1) Creation of the Content 2) Representations of the Content 3) Effect of the Content a) The creation of the content is the policy and managerial functions of media which follow the objectives and agenda of any communication strategy/campaign or initiatives. We have to consider many normative and authoritative verticals to understand the decision-making process in the media organization with respect to the selection, processing and transmission of the content through any media platforms. b) Representation of the content is based on the availability of the resources and understanding the media habits of the target groups and reaching out to them more efficiently and constructively. Representation also has a view point which expresses the stand taken by media professionals on certain issues and developments. c) Effect of the media is altogether a large spectrum which emphasizes on the changes in psychological, social and economic behavior after the usage of the media or media content by its audience. We have to check with what is scientific approach and how does one can understand, develop and practice it. We are surrounded by science, science is everywhere. Science is in the artifacts (tools) we are using, science is in the way we behave, science is in the way people participate, science is in the production, distribution, promotion. Science is in our social, political and economic structures and hierarchies. munotes.in

Page 2


2 Public Relations Research - I
2 Media also an outcome of a science and technology. There are many stakeholders who plays an important role in every laddered position in the media verticals. For Example: 1) Government: Government regulate the media for several social, political and economic reasons. The main motive behind regulating media by government is to maintain the social and political balance and harmony. 2) Owner/Management: Every management has vision and mission behind each initiative. The profit and popularity are one of the most important aspects behind drafting and setting the vision mission. Managers are always alert when it comes to the selection and transmitting the content for the masses. 3) Invertors: is the one who brings revenue and capital in the organizations. We always need to take care of the by objectives set mutual concerns. 4) Media Professionals: Are the creators and gatekeepers of the media content. These people are directly involved in the selecting, processing and transmitting the content to their audience. 5) Audience: The entire media industry is trying to get more attention, involvement and reactions from this community. Be it public relations, Journalism, Advertising, Cinema, Fiction nonfiction content, Documentary making, musical programs, each and every one’s success is measured by the number of audiences is involved with them. All the above stakeholders play an important role in the media industry as far and content selection and processing are concern. We always observe things around. We try to see the relation and co relations of each phenomenon we see. registered the phenomenon and try to understand the relations of certain phenomenon with other verticals in our mind and try to measure those observations in a systematic and orderly way that is scientific approach. What is the scientific method? “Principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.” - Merriam Webster How does Scientific approach is applied in the Research of Media Effect Media Research is a way of understanding radio, television and print media for the purpose of reaching the ideal consumer audience. It is munotes.in

Page 3


3 Public Relations
Research - I Research cantered on issues of media selection and efficiency and response to it. 1.2 SCIENTIFIC METHODS OF MEDIA EFFECT RESEARCH Media effect is an audience perspective about media. Media effect is all about knowing how does audience respond to the certain media content, what do they do when any actionable information is consumed by them, how do they respond to the appeal by various opinion leaders? Do they adopt or abandon the certain practices or thinking patterns from media content? What role media plays in the behavioural changes in the audience? There are and will be many questions and assumptions as far as media consumption and respond to the consumed content by the audience. Definition of Media Effect: “Media effects refers to the many ways individuals and society may be influenced by both news and entertainment mass media, including film, television, radio, newspapers, books, magazines, websites, video games, and music.” Assumption of the above definition is that people use media. Which is true as many numbers are proving that use of media by people. Now how can we understand what do people watch, read and listen? What do they do with those content? For Example, an advertising campaign by the Ministry of Consumer affairs named “Jago Grahak Jago” is meant to make consumer more alerts towards their rights to avoid misleading and malpractices in the trade and business. Now understanding the above phenomenon, we have to follow certain steps to do this research more scientifically. Mass Media Research is the branch of social science research. Whatever rules and approaches are there in social science research are equally applicable in media research as well. Steps in Social Science Research. 1) Identification of the Problem: Problem word in this is not problem as it is. Problem in research means curiosity, thought, need to know more about, need to understand something, exploring the facts. Identification of the problem begin with question or curiosity. We have to check the facts and to come to the conclusion by analyzing them with the help of some assumptions. 2) Review of Literature: RoL help researchers to find a best way out for the research they are conducting by referring the earlier research literature. Reviewing the published literature and understanding how munotes.in

Page 4


4 Public Relations Research - I
4 much research wok done in a particular domain how much need to be done is very much important. That’s why learning about the world with evidence-based literature is one of the most important aspects of the research. 3) Formulating the hypothesis: Hypothesis is the lighthouse of any research activity. Its important to fix the area in research as its very complex and multidimensional process where research may get diverted from the main path. Hypothesis is an assumption in the research which may be proved or unproved in the conclusion. It is pathway for a researcher to stick to the baseline of research and problem we are looking in to. 4) Research Design: Research design is the blueprint of the research. It’s a plan and map for the researcher. Scientific approach always supports to the order and research design define and decide the order in the research. Research Aims and Objectives, Research Questions, Data collection, selection and criteria for sampling, sampling tools and techniques, data analysis parameters and measures, research limitations and delimitations, operational definitions, all need to define more precisely and with any ambiguity. 5) Data Collections: This one the most scientific and strategic way to find out which data will support hypothetical proposals and will bring research to the conclusion. Collecting data is an art but fixing the sample in the universe is the science. Data collection has many scientific methods to collect the specific data without any fallacy. 6) Data Segregation & Analysis: Classification of the data is very much important as it helps in analysis. Categorizing collected information and interpreting the information is equally important in measurement. 7) Conclusion: Writing conclusion is an art it’s a summery of the task a researcher carried out during his research. People read the abstract and conclusion in the beginning to understand the depth and quality of the research. These above are the steps we generally follow in the social science research. If want to put them in perspectives lets look at the example above. 1.3 THERE ARE CERTAIN METHODS WE ADOPT IN MEDIA EFFECT RESEARCH. Mass Media theories offer the outline for impending enquiries around media effects extending since as modest as in what way 7-year-old boys respond to cornflakes commercials to as comprehensive as by what method Internet usage affects learning. When researchers imagine a plan and regulate a hypothetical agenda, they essentially pickup concrete munotes.in

Page 5


5 Public Relations
Research - I research approaches. Current examine approaches are significantly diverse and can variety after analysing deep-rooted newspapers to execution skilful tests. Content Analysis Content analysis is a research method Which contains analysing the content of several systems of media. With the help of content analysis, scholars nerve to appreciate both the persons who shaped the content and the people who consumed it. A distinctive content analysis plan does not need elaborate trials. In its place, it merely needs access to the suitable media to analyse, making this type of study an easier and low-cost substitute to other systems of research involving complex surveys or human subjects. Archival Research Research that examines older media that essentially adopt archival research, which is a type of research that focuses on studying historical credentials such as old newspapers and past publications. Surveys Surveys are universal in contemporary lifespan. Questionnaires get the data on whatever since brand recalling to social media habits. Surveys can be open-ended or closed-ended by nature. Mass media surveys usually take one of the following two forms. A open ended survey purposes to get the existing condition of phenomenon, such as trend in social media and political discourses, Memes and violation of privacy or media habits and brand selections etc. In media, open ended reviews create TV and Broadcasting ratings by result the amount of individuals who consume what programs at what time on which media platforms. A systematic survey, yet, does additional than just record a contemporary situation. In its place, it efforts to reach out to why a specific condition exists. Researchers proposed queries or premises around media, and formerly conduct systematic surveys to answer these questions. Interviews The interview is an anthropological research tool that is also useful in media studies. Interviews take reviews one stage closer by permitting researchers to straight enquire a research contributor about precise question to get a better and broader insights of the participant’s insights and understandings. Interviews have been used in investigate projects that follow newspaper reporters to find out their reasons for reporting certain stories and in projects that attempt to understand the motivations for watching world cinema. munotes.in

Page 6


6 Public Relations Research - I
6 Groups discussion Similar to the depth interviews, group discussion allows researchers to well understand public reactions to media. A group discussion allows the members to begin a gathering active that more closely look like that of usual media usage. In media studies, researchers can employ focus groups to judge the reactions of a group to specific media styles and to content. This can be a valuable means of understanding the reasons for consuming specific types of media. 1.5 WAY OF KNOWING How do we know? What we know? is the long-lasting question is the study of psychology and behavioural science. Just think once about what you know? and in what way you learned that. Probably you know that you must clean and make your bed in the morning as your parents might have instructed you that. Maybe you know that parrots are green because all of the parrots you have seen are green. The procedures of receiving information can be broken down into five categories each with its own merits and demerits. PERCEPTION The one of the methods of knowing is intuition. Once we use our instinct, we are trusting on our guts, our feelings, and/or our predispositions to guide us. Instead of examining evidences or using balanced thought, perception involves trusting what feels true. The tricky with relying on instinct is that our intuitions can be incorrect because they are determined by cognitive and motivational biases rather than logical reasoning or scientific evidence. While the strange behaviour of your friend may lead you to think s/he is lying to you it may just be that s/he is holding in a bit of gas or is preoccupied with some other issue that is irrelevant to you. However, weighing alternatives and thinking of all the different possibilities can be paralyzing for some people and sometimes decisions based on intuition are actually superior to those based on analysis (people interested in this idea should read Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink)[1]. AUTHORITY Perhaps one of the most common methods of acquiring knowledge is through authority. This method involves accepting new ideas because some authority figure states that they are true. These authorities include parents, the media, doctors, Priests and other religious authorities, the government, and professors. While in an ideal world we should be able to trust authority figures, history has taught us otherwise and many instances of atrocities against humanity are a consequence of people unquestioningly following authority (e.g., Salem Witch Trials, Nazi War Crimes). On a more benign level, while your parents may have told you that you should make your bed in the morning, making your bed provides the warm damp environment in which mites thrive. Keeping the sheets open provides a less hospitable environment for mites. These examples munotes.in

Page 7


7 Public Relations
Research - I illustrate that the problem with using authority to obtain knowledge is that they may be wrong, they may just be using their intuition to arrive at their conclusions, and they may have their own reasons to mislead you. Nevertheless, much of the information we acquire is through authority because we don’t have time to question and independently research every piece of knowledge we learn through authority. But we can learn to evaluate the credentials of authority figures, to evaluate the methods they used to arrive at their conclusions, and evaluate whether they have any reasons to mislead us. RATIONALISM Rationalism involves using logic and reasoning to acquire new knowledge. Using this method premises are stated and logical rules are followed to arrive at sound conclusions. For instance, if I am given the premise that all swans are white and the premise that this is a swan then I can come to the rational conclusion that this swan is white without actually seeing the swan. The problem with this method is that if the premises are wrong or there is an error in logic then the conclusion will not be valid. For instance, the premise that all swans are white is incorrect; there are black swans in Australia. Also, unless formally trained in the rules of logic it is easy to make an error. Nevertheless, if the premises are correct and logical rules are followed appropriately then this is sound means of acquiring knowledge. EMPIRICISM Empiricism involves acquiring knowledge through observation and experience. Once again many of you may have believed that all swans are white because you have only ever seen white swans. For centuries people believed the world is flat because it appears to be flat. These examples and the many visual illusions that trick our senses illustrate the problems with relying on empiricism alone to derive knowledge. We are limited in what we can experience and observe and our senses can deceive us. Moreover, our prior experiences can alter the way we perceive events. Nevertheless, empiricism is at the heart of the scientific method. Science relies on observations. But not just any observations, science relies on structured observations which is known as systematic empiricism. 1.6 THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD The scientific method is a process of systematically collecting and evaluating evidence to test ideas and answer questions. While scientists may use intuition, authority, rationalism, and empiricism to generate new ideas they don’t stop there. Scientists go a step further by using systematic empiricism to make careful observations under various controlled conditions in order to test their ideas and they use rationalism to arrive at valid conclusions. While the scientific method is the most likely of all of the methods to produce valid knowledge, like all methods of acquiring knowledge it also has its drawbacks. One major problem is that it is not always feasible to use the scientific method; this method can require munotes.in

Page 8


8 Public Relations Research - I
8 considerable time and resources. Another problem with the scientific method is that it cannot be used to answer all questions. As described in the following section, the scientific method can only be used to address empirical questions. This book and your research methods course are designed to provide you with an in-depth examination of how psychologists use the scientific method to advance our understanding of human behaviour and the mind. WHAT IS SCIENCE? • Science is a universal method of understanding the accepted biosphere. Its three essential structures are orderly pragmatism, experiential enquiries, and civic knowledge. • Psychology is a science discipline since it takes the systematic approach to measuring & understanding human behaviours. Measuring media effects is one of the branches of psychology. Because it has a direct relation with media consumption and audience behaviour. Some people are amazed to know that psychology is also a science. They normally believe that astronomy, biology, and chemistry are sciences but surprised what psychology has in mutual with other domains. Though, it is important to reflecting on what other domains of science in joint with together. For these and additional explanations, theorists and experts who have thought intensely around this enquiry have decided that what the sciences have in common is a general approach to knowing the natural world. Psychology is a science since it takes this same general approach to understanding one aspect of the natural world: human behaviour. FEATURES OF SCIENCE 1) Systematic Empiricism 2) Empirical Questions 3) Public Knowledge The over-all systematic method has three essential landscapes. The first is systematic pragmatism. Empiricism denotes to knowledge built on observation, and researchers’ study around the natural world methodically, by rationally designing, constructing, recording, and analysing observations of it. Scientists are novel in their persistence on examining their ideas about the way the world is in contradiction of their scientific and systematic observations. Notice, for example, What do people comment on the posts published on the official pages of celebrities.? Researhcers will not assume things to make or pass the statements but Instead, they methodically noted, calculated, and associated the number and nature of comments given by a large sample of internet users. The second characteristics of the scientific method—which trails in a upfront technique from, that it is surrounded with empirical questions. These are enquiries around the means the world really is then, consequently, can be replied by methodically perceiving it. The question munotes.in

Page 9


9 Public Relations
Research - I of whether women use social media more than men is empirical. Either women use social media more than men or they do not, and this can be fixed by methodically observing how much women and men actually use social media. There are several exciting and significant questions which are not analytically measureable and that science is not in a position to answer. Like questions about values — what is true? are things upright or bad, fair or unfair, or lovely or unpleasant, and how the world should to be. So, the question of is a stereotype is precise or imprecise is an analytically measureable? Similarly, the question like criminal behaviour has a hereditary base? is an empirical question? The third significance of discipline is that it generates public knowledge. Afterward enquiring their experiential queries, creating their methodical remarks, and portrayal their conclusions, researchers circulate their work. This typically means inscription of an article for magazine/book/newspaper or in a professional journal, in which they publish their research question in the background of preceding research, define in depth the approaches and methods they have used to get the answer to their enquiries, and evidently represent their outcomes and conclusions. Progressively, experts are choosing to publish their research work all access media/journals, in which the articles are easily accessible by all, Publication is an important aspect of science for the above reasons. One is that knowledge is a community procedure—a significant association amongst numerous scholars disseminated sideways together time and space. Our existing scientific knowledge of maximum themes is based on numerous diverse studies carried out by several diverse scholars who have made their work common openly over countless years. The second is that publication permits science to be self-correcting. Every experts comprehend that, despite their best efforts, their approaches can be imperfect and their deductions may be incorrect. Publication permits others in the scientific community to notice and accurate these errors so that, over time, scientific knowledge progressively imitates the means the world really is. munotes.in

Page 10


10 Public Relations Research - I
10 2 THE BRIEF HISTORY OF HISTORY OF MEDIA EFFECTS 2.1 INTRODUCTION The Eras of Media Effects Designs The initial segment, from World War I and it was there till 1930. It was categorized by the supposition that the effects of the media on the people would be exceptionally strong. Media were attributed with nearly unlimited supremacy in their capacity to form opinion and belief, to modification of life customs, and to manipulate the audience behaviour extra or fewer conferring to the determination of their supervisors. The influence of mass media messages over unsuspicious audiences was defined in radical relations: the mass media evidently passionate messages like hazardous bullets, or shot posts into the audience similar to solid remedies pushed through hypodermic needles. These metaphors offered growth towards the “hypodermic-needle concept” (Berlo 1960, 27), the “magic bullet theory” (Schramm 1973, 243), and the “transmission belt theory” (DeFleur & Ball-Rokeach 1982, 161). Instinct psychology and the theory of mass society were understood to demonstration that people in developed and industrial society were drifting, disaffected, and integrally susceptible to manipulation. As a result, they were shield less in contradiction of and at the compassion of the unpredictable stimuli of the media – predominantly as initial thoughts preserved that the mass media were run largely by people and establishments that were purposely trying to employ a targeted stimulus upon receivers. The second stage of the distinctive history continued around from 1930s till 1960s and was distinguished by the hypothesis that the media were mostly not significant and influential. The research team of Paul F. Lazarsfeld accompanied in the deconstructionism of the bullet theory. The outcome of their pragmatic, social-scientific election study, The people’s choice (1944), moved curiosity away after what the mass media did to people and in the direction of what people did with the media. Somewhat than seeing a society of split individuals in receipt of omnipotent messages from the mass media, the interpretation shifted to one of a civilization of individuals who interrelated inside groups then inadequate the effects of media communications. munotes.in

Page 11


11 Public Relations
Research - I Early on, Lazarsfeld et al. (1944) defined all three key concepts that Joseph T. Klapper (1960) later united and used as the basis of his limited effects theory. These philosophies also categorized the second stage of effects research. They state that: (1) people practice discriminatory acquaintance and choosy awareness to guard themselves from media effects, accepting nearly solely only such data as agrees to their formerly recognized insolences; (2) opinion leaders starts with a two-step flow of messages by fascinating thoughts and advices from the mass media and then interactive with these – transmuted – thoughts to a smaller amount of active individuals; (3) social group creation improves the part that relational communication plays in shielding an distinct member from a alteration of opinion, as followers do not wish to lose association in their interpersonal group. The next phase is 1960s onwards till the end of the 1970s, was considered by the renaissance of strong media effects. A amount of exceptionally stared studies presented that it was probable for the mass media to overwhelmed some selectivity procedures in a TV saturated environment. At the end of the 1940s Herbert Hyman and Paul Sheatsly (1947) presented a study in Public Opinion Quarterly named “Some reasons why information campaigns fail”; then, few years later, Harold Mendelsohn (1973) utilised the similar medium to state the precise differing: “Some reasons why information campaigns can succeed.” Three different features are attributed to this stage: more matured approaches of analysis, more precise hypotheses, and more highly differentiated hypothetical approaches. So, survey statistics & content analysis facts could be shared long-term with the help of time-series analyses or panel strategy studies. Mass Media effects research later that time has been not as much of attentive on crude changes in attitude or behaviour, and more interested in delicate variations in our insights about the world outside. The next fourth stage of the standard media effects past ranges through to the contemporary time and is categorized by “negotiated” or “transactional” effects. Now the leading principle preserves that the media apply their highest influence as they developed and involved in the procedure of creating sense and meaning. In the beginning, media “construct” social constructions and history itself by enclosing images of reality in expectable and decorated ways. Then, people construct for themselves their personal interpretation of social realism and their place in it, in interface by the representational structures presented by the media. The method permits equally for the control of mass media and for the power of people to choose, with a terrain of continuous negotiation in between, as it were. 2.2 TYPES OF MEDIA EFFECTS The Sense of ‘Media effects’ means diverse things to different people. A psychologist, for example, has ‘psychological’ perspectives while munotes.in

Page 12


12 Public Relations Research - I
12 measuring of observing the media effects in mind. Similarly for sociologist, will put things acroos with the sociologist prespective and will try to figure out media effects in the social-cultural context. The Political theorist will connect the dots with the political perspective and will check the reality in the political point of view. So, everyone put the media effects with their own object-oriented domain-based approaches thus it will change the meaning person to person. Same effects with different point of view. Like for Ex. An advertisement of Cadburry Dairy milk and its impact on children. One can put this research in social, economical and psychological perspectives to understand the reactions of the children to the particular commercial. So, any effort to know ‘effects’ essentially take into interpretation the viewpoint from which the ‘effects’ are being examined. In Addition to this, ‘effects’ are of many types and various degrees too. They may be temporary, medium-term or long-term; they may be manifest or latent, strong or weak or transient and superficial as in the case of fashions, stances and life-styles. Then there are impacts of a transitory behaviour or of a more lasting behaviour. In continuation it can influences be termed as ‘effects? How are ‘influences’ and ‘effects’ separate from ‘impacts’ or are they mere synonyms for the same social phenomena? Some mass media sociologists have imperilled the insufficiency of everyday language to measure the complexity of mass media effects to any kind of critical inspection. And what exactly are ‘the media’? Like technologies (printing presses, the telegraph, telephones, radio and TV sets, audio and video recorders, video and movie cameras, satellites, computers, etc.) or the ‘genres’, the ‘programmes or the contents of separate media? Or, are they the cultural and entertainment industries which are today one of the fastest growing businesses owned and run by large media conglomerates? Or, are they the many media organizations involved in the production, storage, distribution and exhibition of media materials? The sheer imprecision in all talk about ‘the media’ and ‘effects’ seems to be characteristic of the social sciences. The simple Sender & Receiver model would soon be going to be outdated as more superseding variables arose in mass media communication effects research. Though, this was not the final word, as mass communication researchers in the approaching periods built more compound theories and research to know effects and communication procedures. Even complement analyses of the War of the Worlds phenomenon by Princeton scholar Hadley Cantrail and associates would accomplish that personal, conditional, contextual and phenomenal factor—such as Use of social media for social engagement by the users, use of social media for social awareness by individuals as well as organizations etc. In evaluation of more than thousands of studies, essays, and reports prior to 1960, Klapper summarized results in three zones of concern: the effects of violence, political influence, and the idea that entertaining content. munotes.in

Page 13


13 Public Relations
Research - I 2.3 AGENDA-SETTING THEORY AND MEDIA EFFECT Max McCombs and Donald Shaw, communication researchers first proposed the agenda setting theory, summaries the news media’s hypothetical capability to set significances for public opinion—that is, to regulate the comparative salience of present bulletin topics for associates of the community. In 1968 stated “Chapel Hill study,” McCombs and Shaw (1972) established a strong association amid what themes were enclosed deeply in the news media and what associates of the public measured the most striking matters in political processes and election. Many studies to follow long-established and prolonged the ideas of agenda-setting theory. A significant variation was completed among agenda-setting is media guide us “What to think about” and agenda-setting tells us “How to think about i” by highlighting convinced characteristics of issues. Many more studies have scrutinized “agenda-building” stimuluses and intermedia agenda-setting procedures. Social learning theory and Media Effects Originally, the work of Albert Bandura was intended merely at confirmative that those may learn through perceiving the behaviours of others, relatively solitary via recompense or penalty for their own behaviours. “Bobo doll studies” study by Albert Bandura confirmed experimental or social learning, both for living models and refereed models. His outline recognized that recipients may obtain information and learned standardizing behaviours from remote and imaginary models, which had strong and far-reaching inferences for mass media effects. In addition, theoretic explanations, such as the enhancing impact of demonstrated rewards (and the opposite effect of punishment) and the similarity of the receiver to the model exhibiting the behaviours, have also found application to media effects studies. Bandura executed his theory to deliberate changes such as the extermination of fears over observation, many others have utilised it as the foundation for research on violence and the media and frequent other consequences, counting prosocial behaviours like eating healthy foods or exhibiting self-sacrifice. Perhaps the maximum intentional area using the O-S-O-R model (and relying heavily on Bandura’s work) has been violence on television and its impact on children. Cultivation theory and Media Effects George Gerbner and colleagues developed this theory in communication at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. munotes.in

Page 14


14 Public Relations Research - I
14 Cultivation theory is a cognitive-focused aide to social intellectual theory, stipulating that experience to arbitrated imageries of the world that are recurrent and reliable will encourage the interpretation that such descriptions reproduce the actual world. The unique focus of the theory and connected research was television, which at the while presented an immense source of info and entertainment. The uniformity of TV images and representations permissible for tracking such impacts as the mean world supposition, which specified that higher number of TV viewers held a view of the real world as more crime- cantered, hazardous, and terrifying than it actually was. Cultivation is been practiced to the procedure of gender and racial stereotyping, as well as figure/body image. Theory continues to map the model as changes in the media scenery have led to the propagation of networks and the disintegration of audiences. Spiral of silence theory and Media Effects With great efforts it came in limelight with an experiential similarity of societal circumstances, Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann’s (political scientist), spiral of silence theory (1974) tried to clarify why people in her innate West Germany would incline to endure silent once they supposed that they seized a marginal/minority opinion. She theorized that distress of separation (a lack of conformity) and fear of retaliations were likely clarifications. Mass media centric approach (particularly news media) as prime conveyers of environment of opinion—what feelings are in the mainstream and which in the minority—carried this concept to the courtesy of communication scholars. The spiral of silence outlook has subsequently remained functional to numerous global circumstances and has been modified and squeezed to explanation for heterogeneousness in the social order by recognizing several spirals and has maximum lately been useful to environment of social media. The “cynicism” among amateur community and scholars similar, as they strained to make sense of experiential findings that were self-contradictory and indecisive. The mass media effects were infrequent, considering for further contemplation of the key audience positioned interceding features: tendencies and the affiliated procedures of particular acquaintance, specific perception, and selective retention; cluster affiliation and the norms of those assemblies; social dissemination of content; the part of opinion leadership and influencers; and the standing quo nature of profit-oriented mass media. The slight or partial effects method presented a noteworthy influence after social psychology: the growth of the O-S-O-R model, which describes a cognitive approach to understanding the individual’s relationship to his or her environment. The model recognizes and articulates the involvement of an active organism (the “O”s in the model) in the process of human response to stimuli, including media content. The model followed the earlier, more simplistic S-R model, as well as a preliminary cognitive approach model that had added a middle munotes.in

Page 15


15 Public Relations
Research - I O, representing internal states of the organism (individual) that mediate the impact of the stimulus: S-O-R. Finally, an initial O was added, representing the organism’s preorientations to the stimulus. As Markus and Zajonc noted, “It is now recognized that the internal states not only mediate between the stimuli of the environment and the responses but that what stimuli are attended to and what stimuli are ignored is under the selective control of the organism as well” (1985, p. 138). While many influential scholars viewed the limited effects model’s emphasis on reinforcement as a noneffect, others, including Marxist and critical commentators, noted the strategic aspect of this reinforcement in buttressing the positions of the dominant political and social forces in a society. And, over time, scholars began to reexamine the early effects studies with an eye to discovering under what conditions media effects might accrue, rather than dismissing such effects simply because they were not uniformly and reliably found. To some extent, the difference between the S-R and O-S-O-R models of media effects focuses on whether the audience is active or passive. Beginning in the 1970s, there was a resurgence of interest in this issue as scholars started examining audience activity. The basic tenets of the selective psychological processes (selective exposure, selective perception, and selective retention, stemming from the theory of cognitive dissonance) were reexamined and have formed a base from which a number of these theoretical and research traditions have developed. In short, the first “O” in the O-S-O-R model is an important element in these research lines. But these traditions also include a consideration of true media effects beyond selective processes and activities. The key line of inquiry that developed has come to be referred to as uses and gratifications. Uses and gratifications research began as efforts to explain audience media use patterns (Katz, Gurevitch, & Haas, 1973) but soon migrated into effects research as the source of important mediators. The uses and gratifications perspective makes several key assumptions: that an active audience is goal directed in its choice of media experiences; that there is considerable initiative involved on the part of an audience member; that the media compete with a wide range of other sources for needs gratification; and that individuals are sufficiently self-aware to be able to accurately self-report their media uses and gratifications.The uses and gratifications perspective has continued to generate 6 MEDIA EFFECTS: ACCOUNTS, NATURE, AND HISTORY OF much interest and research, with later foci on particular proactive uses of the mass media by audience members, such as mood management. Back to strong effects and more complex models From the 1960s through the 1980s, media effects scholarship saw the emergence of a cluster of what might be called strong effects research traditions, in all cases taking into consideration individual differences and contextual factors that might mediate or moderate the impact of mass media exposure. These strong effects traditions all made assumptions that media content can, and often does, have powerful effects on individuals, groups, and societies but that this potential for effects is neither direct nor deterministic. The second “O” in the O-S-O-R model is pointedly acknowledged by these traditions as the locus of potential mediators and moderators acting upon stimuli (media messages) as they produce their response (effects). Early in the munotes.in

Page 16


16 Public Relations Research - I
16 1960s, cultural philosopher Marshall McLuhan (1964) articulated the view that a predominant medium or technology may tell us how to think, while his mentor Harold Innis (1950) had earlier pointed to their influence on social organization. The more contemporary medium theory focuses on how each medium is physically, socially, and psychologically distinct from the others. In the 1970s, the strong effects perspectives emerged as prominent, including such theoretical perspectives as agenda-setting, cultivation theory, and the spiral of silence. These theories assumed that media have strong, often long-term effects on receivers; these theories also assumed the relative homogeneity of media content consumed en masse by audiences. At the same time, mass communication scholars began focusing on levels of analysis other than the individual, in particular the community. The following sections examine these enduring lines of research that continue to develop and describe the impact of media. Agenda-setting theory First articulated by communication scholars Max McCombs and Donald Shaw, agendasetting theory outlines the news media’s presumed ability to set priorities for public opinion—that is, to determine the relative salience of current news topics for members of the public. In their 1968 “Chapel Hill study,” McCombs and Shaw (1972) demonstrated a strong relationship between what topics were covered heavily in the news media and what members of the public considered the most salient issues in an election. Hundreds of studies to follow confirmed and extended the notions of agenda-setting theory. A key differentiation was made between first-order agenda-setting (media tell us “what to think about”) and second-order agenda-setting (media tell us “how to think about it” by emphasizing certain attributes of issues). In addition, studies have examined “agenda-building” influences and intermedia agenda-setting processes. MEDIA EFFECTS: ACCOUNTS, NATURE, AND HISTORY OF 7 Social learning theory/social cognitive theory Originally, the work of Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura was aimed simply at confirming that individuals may learn through observing the behaviors of others, rather than only via reward or punishment for their own behaviors. His famous “Bobo doll studies” confirmed observational or social learning, both for live models and mediated models (filmed and animated). Bandura’s social learning theory, later reworked to include a stronger cognitive focus as social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986), has served as the direct basis or rationale for thousands of studies. His framework established that receivers may acquire orientations and learned normative behaviors from remote and fictional models, which had clear and far-reaching implications for media effects. Further theoretical clarifications, such as the enhancing impact of demonstrated rewards (and the opposite effect of punishment) and the similarity of the receiver to the model exhibiting the behaviors, have also found application to media effects studies. While Bandura applied his theory to planned changes such as the extinguishing of phobias through observation, many others have used it as the base for research on violence and the media and numerous other outcomes, including prosocial behaviors such as eating healthy foods or exhibiting altruism. Probably the most studied area using the O-S-O-R model (and relying heavily on Bandura’s work) has been violence on television and its impact on children. Following much public and munotes.in

Page 17


17 Public Relations
Research - I governmental debate over the growing influence of television in the 1950s and 1960s United States, the US Surgeon General’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior was funded in 1969, charged with determining the impact of TV violence on youth. The 12-member committee’s five-volume report was released in 1972, consisting of 40 scientific reports in 2,300 pages. It reached conclusions on media effects, but also became mired in political controversy. It stands as a powerful statement of the commitment by the US government to attempting to identify media effects, although ultimately it did not lead to regulation or long-term reform of violent content. Cultivation theory Developed by George Gerbner and colleagues in communication at the University of Pennsylvania, USA, cultivation theory is a cognitive-focused adjunct to social cognitive theory, specifying that exposure to mediated images of the world that are repeated and consistent will cultivate the view that these images reflect the real world. The original focus of the theory and related research was television, which at the time presented a monolithic source of information and entertainment for US audiences. The consistency of TV images and portrayals allowed for tracking such impacts as the mean world hypothesis, which indicated that heavy TV viewers held a view of the real world as more crime-ridden, dangerous, and frightening than it really was. There was also support for mainstreaming, the notion that heavier TV viewers would be more similar in their perceptions of the real world than would light viewers (Signorielli & Morgan, 1990). Cultivation has been applied to the process of gender and racial stereotyping, as well as body image. Cultivation studies continue to map the theory as changes in 8 MEDIA EFFECTS: ACCOUNTS, NATURE, AND HISTORY OF the media landscape have led to the proliferation of channels and the fragmentation of audiences. Spiral of silence theory Also arising from an observed homogeneity of societal conditions, political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann’s spiral of silence theory (1974) attempted to explain why individuals in her native West Germany would tend to remain silent when they perceived that they held a minority opinion. She posited that fear of isolation (a lack of conformity) and fear of reprisals were likely explanations. A focus on the mass media (particularly news media) as prime conveyors of climate of opinion—what opinions are in the majority and which in the minority—brought this theory to the attention of communication researchers. The spiral of silence perspective has since been applied to many international situations and has been adapted and tweaked to account for heterogeneity in societies by acknowledging multiple spirals (Jeffres, Neuendorf, & Atkin, 1999) and has most recently been applied to social media environments. Diffusion of innovations Beginning in the 1960s, the articulation of the diffusion of innovations perspective provided a model explaining how communication enables the diffusion of new ideas and inventions through a social system. Based on early work in rural sociology at the University of Iowa, USA (Ryan & Gross, 1943), and clarified and extended by communication scholar Everett Rogers in his 1962 book (see Rogers, 2003), the diffusion of innovations perspective spawned thousands of studies around the world and helped policymakers struggling with the stimulation of economic development. Acknowledging the two-munotes.in

Page 18


18 Public Relations Research - I
18 step flow of mediated messages through opinion leaders and change agents, the perspective also added typologies of adopter types (from innovators to laggards), characteristics of innovations that stimulate or impede adoption, and consequences of innovation adoption. Diffusion of innovations continues to be a robust research tradition to the present, with great international and interdisciplinary crossover but with particular attention to technologies within the communication field. Not limited to diffusion theory, research on how communication impacts development has been a strong line of inquiry. Daniel Lerner (1958) noted the influence of media in national development, and Wilbur Schramm (1964) pointed to the positive relationship between economic growth and communication services. Studies in the 1960s and 1970s focused on how innovations diffused in rural communities, and the concept of development communication emerged. These top-down studies were joined by examinations of bottom-up grassroots projects that incorporated influences from interpersonal channels as well as popular entertainment. More recently, those concerned with development issues have focused on how communication technologies fit into the picture. MEDIA EFFECTS: ACCOUNTS, NATURE, AND HISTORY OF 9 Structural pluralism and the knowledge gap The 1970s saw the emergence of media effects research at the community level. The Minnesota team of Tichenor, Donohue, and Olien (1970) introduced scholars to structural pluralism, which says that media reflect the power structure of a society. These scholars’ work using communities as units of analysis found that media in heterogeneous communities distributed critical messages more than those in homogeneous communities, where consensus was more valued and media avoided upsetting the apple cart. Tichenor and his colleagues also introduced the idea of the knowledge gap, which says that a gap between high and low socioeconomic groups’ knowledge of public affairs grows as more information is fed into the system. This gap has been a continued focus of concern into the Internet age, with debate over whether the introduction of Web 2.0 is closing the knowledge gap. Media imperialism and media dependency Societal-level impacts have included investigations of cultural imperialism as conveyed via the media, sometimes referred to as media imperialism. With ties to the UNESCO New World Information and Communication Order debate of the late 1970s, this perspective held that the domination of the international media by a limited number of concerns from large, powerful nations results in the diminishment of national identities in smaller nations. Fitting the politics of the times, media imperialism became a popular theme of research examining influence from the West, and the United States in particular, concentrating on news flow but also considering the influence of film (particularly from Hollywood). This line of research peaked in the 1980s and declined as leftist politics waned (Tunstall, 2008). However, media dependency theory provided a more broadly based perspective from which to view the power of information distributed via the mass media.The perspective views people, at both the individual and society levels, to be dependent on media for “continuous and ongoing ambiguity resolution” (Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur, 1976, p. 9). Under this perspective, media sources are viewed as powerful constructors of social reality, in that “by controlling what munotes.in

Page 19


19 Public Relations
Research - I information is and is not delivered and how that information is presented, the media can play a large role in limiting the range of interpretations that audiences are able to make” (p. 10). Cognitive approaches Moving beyond the work in social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986), scholarship interested in the actual mechanisms of the cognitive processing of mediated messages has grown steadily in the period of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Models and theories explaining how advertising affects audiences and consumers have looked at message strategies, message content and formats, consumer and audience characteristics, and audience information processing. Cognitive processing has been a key focus, but researchers also have looked at “attitudes toward the ad,” the hierarchy of effects (Ray, 1973), and the theory of reasoned action (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). 1 0 MEDIA EFFECTS: ACCOUNTS, NATURE, AND HISTORY OF Priming theory acknowledges the existence of cognitive schema, the mental networks unique to each individual that are forged by learning and experience. Exposure to particular cues can activate an individual’s schema such that proximate thoughts and behaviors will be called to the fore, and responses to mediated stimuli will reflect this priming (Roskos-Ewoldsen, Roskos-Ewoldsen, & Carpentier, 2009). Framing theory, while most commonly thought of as the modes of presentation used by news professionals to try to tap into existing audience schemas for a given topic, has also been applied to the process by which receivers interpret and form impressions from mediated information, perhaps bringing it under the same umbrella as agenda-setting (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007). Additional foci of contemporary research that looks at how audiences process messages include studies of memory performance, cognitive capacity and cognitive resource allocation, excitation transfer, narrative transportation, telepresence, social presence, flow, social comparison, social identity, and how the cognitive development of children relates to media exposure outcomes. Some research focuses specifically on the nature of cognitive processing, and one segment of this research uses psychophysiological measures to assess reactions to media exposure. Third-person effect Introduced in a 1983 article by sociologist W. Phillips Davison, the third-person effect is the tendency of individuals to perceive or report that mass-mediated messages have a greater impact on others than on themselves. Subsequent research has confirmed the conditional nature of the effect—for example, the social desirability of the particular effect and the precise nature of the third persons (“others”). This theory is unique in its metaeffects status—it is a theory about how people think the media affect members of the audience—and has the potential to integrate media effects theories. But then, it must be conceded, the social sciences are not ‘exact’ sciences like the physical and natural sciences. For, while the social sciences study human beings and their behaviour in different situations, the natural sciences study minerals, plants, animals and the cosmos where consistency and predictability are the order of the day. Moreover, social scientists and media professionals rarely consider the infinite variety of ‘uses’ the different media and the different programmes are put to, in different munotes.in

Page 20


20 Public Relations Research - I
20 contexts. In most cases, the use of the term ‘effects’ is misleading because it suggests that the media ‘do something’ to people, as though people are inorganic creatures, who do not bring their own personalities to play in the communication process. It also implies that the media are actors and that the people are acted upon. So while the media are active, audiences are unresponsive if not passive. These assumptions about media and audiences have their origin in Aristotelian linear models of communication where persuasion is seen as the primary goal of all communication. The truth is that we have little precise knowledge or proven data about media effects since they invariably take place in combination with a whole lot of social, economic and cultural variables. Do effects relate to change, however slight, in attitude and behaviour (both elusive terms and comprehensive in meaning)? Perhaps. The extent of change (if any) depends on the variations in the desires and inclinations of individual members of an audience and in the way they as individuals and as members of different social and cultural groups respond to various types of stimuli from the mass media and the social media. It has to be noted, moreover, that people can be influenced without paying attention and without changing at all, that there is often no relationship between what a person learned, knew or recalled on the one hand and what he did or how he felt on the other! It follows therefore that one can learn things without believing them, believe things without doing them and do things without learning or believing them!1 Interaction, Not Effects The ‘interaction’ (a much more comprehensive and accurate term than effects) between media and human beings is an extremely complex phenomenon. It becomes even more complex when we realize that there are a great variety of media offering numerous programme genres and also the fact that there are a whole variety of people and groups listening, viewing and reading in a countless number of socio-cultural environments. Perhaps, the only safe conclusion on ‘effects’ (or ‘interactions’) of the media is the one arrived at by the American behavioural scientist Bernard Berelson in 1948: ‘Some kinds of communication on some kinds of issues, brought to the attention of some kinds of people under some kinds of conditions have some kinds of effects.’2 Theories of Media Effects Several theories related to the effects or changes brought about by the media on individuals and society have been propounded by both ‘functionalist’ and ‘critical’ schools of communication. The ‘functionalist’ theorists begin with the assumption that the media have a role and a function in society: to stabilize, reinforce and maintain the consensus in society. They do not see the question of power and conflict as a major driving force in society; they assume that the competition among the various groups in society allows for free and fair play and all groups have an equal chance to dominate and to control. The ‘critical’ theorists, on the other hand, place the struggle for power among social classes/groups at the centre of society; they assume that the mass media are invariably employed by the dominant class to propagate its ideology. Further, while the ‘functionalists’ research media effects using empirical quantitative methods, the ‘critical’ theorists are not concerned with effects as much as with the cultural and political contexts munotes.in

Page 21


21 Public Relations
Research - I in which media experiences take place, the ownership and economics of the media and the various ways in which audiences ‘read’ the media.3 Effects Theories These theories range from one extreme position of all-powerful wideranging effects of the media, to the opposing extreme position where the media have no effects at all. At the one extreme are writers and researchers like Marie Winn who take the media, especially television, to be a ‘plug-in drug’4 ; at the other extreme is Joseph Klapper who concluded from his longitudinal research that media succeed only in ‘reinforcing’ old attitudes, habits and beliefs5 . In between, are the ‘negotiation’ or interaction theorists who suggest that effects, like meanings of media texts, are ultimately ‘negotiated’ by audiences. (This is sometimes termed the ‘mediation perspective’).6 Most media theories deal directly with the ‘effects’ of the content of programmes on opinions, attitudes, perceptions, beliefs and social behaviour. The theories have their basis largely in research on television and film, though some in speculation or personal experience. The largest number of studies has been on the effects of violence in television programmes on the behaviour of children and adolescents; others on the effects of propaganda on personal opinion and on voting behaviour. Since early effects research was based on the ‘persuasion’ model of communication (the Lasswell model and the Shannon-Weaver model, for instance) and carried out by social psychologists, the results often pointed to strong effects, for that is what they were looking for in the first place. The social contexts in which the media were experienced (say the family, the home, the theatre, the school or the peer group) were rarely taken into account. The stimulus-response experiments to measure effects were frequently carried out in laboratories using mechanical pre-test and post-test methods of research. Hence the results they obtained turned out to be along expected lines. Reinforcement and Narcosis: Limited Effects Theories Joseph Klapper and others, for example, believed that media reinforce existing values and attitudes. Only then, after all, can programmes of the media be popular with a majority of social groups which have an interest in the perpetuation of their own traditions and statuses.7 Lazarsfeld and Merton held that the mass media ‘cannot be relied upon to work for changes, even minor changes, in the social structure’.8 They highlighted three social functions of the mass media: the first was the ‘social status conferral function’, the second the ‘enforcement of social norms and the third the ‘narcotizing dysfunction’ that distracts audiences from real problems and in fact prevents their doing anything about them. In other words, the mass media, have a drug-like addictive effect, lulling audiences into passivity and a sense of elation. Exposure to a flood of information, say Lazarsfeld and Merton, may serve to narcotize rather than energize the average reader or listener. As an increasing amount of time is devoted to reading and listening, a decreasing share is available for organized action. The interested and informed citizen can congratulate himself on his lofty state of interest and information and fail to see that he has abstained from decision and action… He comes to mistake knowing about problems of the day for doing something about them.9 First proposed in 1948, the theory appears dated particularly after the galvanizing impact the mass media had in bringing the Vietnam war to an end and in throwing President Nixon out as a result of the reporting on munotes.in

Page 22


22 Public Relations Research - I
22 Watergate. Of course, several other social factors too played a vital role. In India, the press publicity given to excesses of the emergency, particularly through underground literature, did contribute to bringing about an end to the Emergency regime. More recently, the inordinate media coverage (in both old and new media) given to Narendra Modi prior to and during the 2014 and 2019 national election campaigns could have played a crucial role in the BJP’s landslide victory. 10 Equally significant was the BJP’s expenditure on political advertising on Facebook and Google, several times that of the Congress and other political parties combined. The ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings, the #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter and similar socialpolitical movements are further cases in point. Catharsis: Purgation of Pity and Fear Closely related to the ‘narcosis’ theory, is the ‘catharsis’ theory of media effects. Seymour Feschbach,11 the main exponent of the theory, following Aristotle, argued that the media have a ‘cathartic’ effect on people that somehow purges them of many anti-social and unfulfilled desires, frustrations and feelings of hostility. In one of his laboratory studies, Feshbach subjected college students to savage insults and criticism at the hands of experimenters; the ‘experimental group’ was then shown an aggressive film of a brutal boxing match, while the ‘control group’ was shown a dull film. When they were later questioned about their opinions of the experimenters, those students who had seen the film on boxing felt less hostile to their experimenters than those students who were shown the ‘control’ film. However, in an almost identical laboratory experiment by Leonard Berkowitz,12 the experimenters were introduced to the students as either a boxer or a rhetoric student. The students were then exposed to either a violent boxing film or a neutral nonviolent film. Later, they had the chance to give electrical shocks (under the pretext of a separate experiment) to the ‘boxer’ or the rhetoric student. It was found that those students who had seen the boxing film gave the largest number of shocks to the ‘boxer’. Berkowitz concluded that the boxing film was responsible for the aggressive response of the students; this is termed the ‘weapons effect’. A variation of this is the ‘weapons priming effect’ which states that weaponrelated words too can lead to aggressive behaviour. Other experiments have revealed that children in particular are likely to imitate violence in films if the violent actions in the film are rewarded. Laboratory experiments are by their nature artificial for they cannot recreate the different conditions, environments and states of mind in which violent films are seen. The reactions to violence in films can be very varied as is well demonstrated in Philip Schlesinger’s work on ‘Women Viewing Violence’ and ‘Men Viewing Violence’ at the Stirling Media Research Institute during the 1990s.13 The ‘narcosis’ and ‘catharsis’ theories represent extreme views. So does Ernest Van den Haag’s view that ‘mass communications, taken together are demeaning, debasing and de-personalizing instruments of manipulation at worst; middle-class hedonism at best’.14 Yet another extreme theory is that of Fredric Wertham which says that the content of the media is ‘corruptive in general and specifically teaches materialism, brutality, antisocial behaviour and callousness towards other humans’.15 Incidental Effects In contrast, Aldous Huxley took the stand that media indeed do teach people things, but most of them are of no consequence; they also have effects, but mostly munotes.in

Page 23


23 Public Relations
Research - I in unimportant and trivial facets of our lives although we may think that they are important. These trivial facets are fashions, mannerisms, mating habits and food habits. As Schramm, Lyle and Parker found in their study of children and television, ‘television could be an especially effective agent of incidental learning while the child is still young. This is because at that time it seems so real’.16 Uses and Gratifications By the 1950s and ’60s, communication researchers began to fine tune their methods and their theories. Elihu Katz, Denis McQuail and Michael Gurevitch introduced what they termed the ‘uses and gratifications’ theory of media effects.17 They turned their attention to how audiences used the media to live out their fantasy lives and to seek out other gratifications or even to inform and educate themselves about the world and its people. Thus media ‘effects’ were related to the needs and activities of audiences. The theory was largely concerned with the selection, reception and nature of response of audiences to the media, the assumption being that individual members in an audience made conscious and motivated selection of channels and programmes. It was also assumed that audiences made supplementary and compensatory uses of the mass media. Uses and Gratifications Model of Mass Communication18 Cultivation or Cultural Indicators Theory George Gerbner’s dissatisfaction with effects research led him to evolve a sophisticated theory grounded on his longitudinal research on American television. He and his team at the Annenberg School of Communication undertook a content analysis of television programmes, looking at portrayals of gender, violence, the family, portrayal of minorities and then matched these with actual situations, behaviours and attitudes in American society. 19 Take the portrayal of crime, for instance. Gerbner concluded that there was a ‘cultivation’ or enculturation effect on audiences highly exposed to television. Audiences ‘adopted’ the perceptions and values which were consistently portrayed in different programme genres. Gerbner and his team attempted to move beyond the analysis of effects on individual behaviour and to analyse communication systems at a social structural level. Television was seen as the arm of the industrial and military establishment, an agent of social control. Technological Effects—McLuhanesque Perspective ‘The medium is the message’, wrote Marshall McLuhan, setting the controversy over media effects on its head. No matter what the contents of programmes, he argued, people will watch television; it commands their attention as no other medium has. He warned like a doomsday prophet that ‘the electronic media are transforming every aspect of man’s life and restructuring civilization, not so much by the content of their messages, as by the nature itself of television, movies, computers and other media.’ Mass communications, therefore, are neither good nor bad, but rather mystical devices that possess powers to change the way mankind lives and thinks. For instance, Indian cities have already witnessed some changes in eating, sleeping and socializing habits as a result of the proliferation of television, computers, mobile phones, gaming, audio and video streaming services and the new social media. Reflex Effects A rather different kind of effect on which no theory has yet been built is the impact of media among and within themselves. Mass communicators are known to review each other’s work and reporters carefully go through rival papers and switch on to news programmes on munotes.in

Page 24


24 Public Relations Research - I
24 the air. It is no surprise, therefore, that ‘copycatting’ in content and form has become a common phenomenon. Let a topic be introduced in one paper and the others take it up with a vengeance. So when a ‘health’ programme proves popular on TV, every newspaper introduces a ‘health’ column. So, carpet coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic by all the media in 2020 was inescapable. Then there are the effects of new media upon the old and vice versa. The formats of television newscasts and features have in fact been copied from radio, and print media are all profusely illustrated because of the impact of television. Again, short stories first published in the papers or magazines, are turned into radio, TV and cinema scripts. All these inter-media and intra-media effects may be called ‘reflex effects’ or ‘bandwagon effects’. Effects of Media on Education: Do Media Educate? Right from pre-Independence days, attempts have been made by both government and private groups to use the media for educational purposes. Dadasaheb Phalke, the pioneer of Indian cinema, made educational documentaries such as The Growth of a Pea plant and How to Make a Film besides fictional films. Radio experiments in the use of radio for promoting literacy and education were conducted as early as the 1930s. Television was introduced in India by the Nehru government with the primary aim of exploiting the medium for distance education. B. G. Verghese’s Chhatera experiment attempted to use the daily newspaper to educate urban Delhi citizens about rural people and their problems. The most ambitious attempt to exploit the mass media for education was of course, Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE). It sought to educate rural people in six states of India about the need for family planning, improved agriculture, hygiene, nutrition and healthcare. Classroom-type instructions were also provided to school children. Today, Doordarshan devotes at least 10% of its telecast time to educational or enrichment programmes for farmers, school children, youth and other groups. It has taken to promoting literacy on a nationwide scale. UGC’s ‘Countrywide Classroom’ and IGNOU’s transmissions are ambitious post-SITE attempts to use television for higher education. ‘Gyandarshan’, an exclusively educational channel, was launched by Doordarshan in 2004. A second educational channel called ‘Topper’ went on air in 2008 to help students prepare for their school examinations. Do media educate? How effective are the mass media in educating the people of our country? What are the ‘effects’ of media on ‘education’? These are all loaded and difficult questions to which there can be no straight cut-and-dry answers. Literate and educated people benefit much more from educational media than the less literate and educated, unless the educationoriented programmes are specifically geared to the needs, interests and levels of specific groups. This is an essential condition of any educational programme on any medium to have some kind of ‘effect’. Even before groups and regions can benefit from education through the print or the electronic media, they will need to become ‘media literate’. Media literacy precedes or is simultaneous with the skill to learn from the media. The folk media are perhaps much more effective in promoting the message of literacy than any of the mass media. In Kerala, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and other states, folk forms of the local regions have been utilized both by voluntary social action groups and by governmentsupported literacy campaigns. For munotes.in

Page 25


25 Public Relations
Research - I example, in Maharashtra, literacy campaigns have used folk musical forms such as lavani, powada, gondhal, jagar and others. During the campaign, cultural teams went out to the different villages on Kalajathas. ‘The main thrust of the messages conveyed through song, dance and discussions was literacy. However, it was reported that other issues such as mother and child care, family planning, watershed management, the problem of alcoholism and dowry, small savings and agricultural development were also conveyed’. In some campaigns, the message of literacy was spread by relating the folk forms to local festivals: akshar kandlis and akshar rangoli at the time of Diwali and akshar Ganpathi at the time of the popular festivals of Maharashtra. In the campaign at Sindhdurg, haldi-kumkum celebrations were widely used to mobilize women and to bring them together to discuss issues related to their everyday lives. However, in all these campaigns, there were few attempts to place literacy in the context of political, social and economic structures in the rural and urban areas.20 It appears then that the media by themselves (whether modern or folk) do not promote literacy. Nor is commitment enough. The social structures operating at the grassroots need to be taken into account, as well as the infrastructure in the form of schools, teachers, volunteers, post-literacy facilities and the caste and communal divides. A factor often overlooked is the time available to agricultural and industrial workers to respond in any meaningful way to literacy drives in the media. Mass Media and the Indian Family: Who Holds the Remote Control? The proliferation of TV, cable and satellite channels in India is of great concern to parents and teachers. With so much time given to watching the small screen, parents are worried that little or no time will remain for conversation in the family, for family get-togethers and for family visits. However, parents must acknowledge that they too spend a lot of time with television and that frequently they exercise no control on what their children watch and when. Further, parents frequently use television as a babysitter or as an excuse for staying at home. Two early studies of television and the Indian family Andal Narayanan’s Impact of Television on Viewers, 21 and Neena Behl’s close look at what happens to one Indian village when television is introduced in it,22 suggest that television plays a vital role in influencing family relationships. But when the novelty of the medium wears off and it becomes part of the furniture (‘the box in the corner’) of the family it appears that the effects on the family are not as worrying as they were first thought to be. True, multichannel television often creates friction among siblings or between parents and children or even between parents themselves. But then TV also helps to bring a family closer especially when all members enjoy a popular programme together. It provides topics for conversation, for expressing opinions and for family discussions. A lot depends upon what the members of the family do with television. Since few Indian families can afford more than one TV set, gathering around the TV set is similar to the earlier practice of gathering round a fireplace. The family, like any other social institution, is a power structure. The exercise of power in the home, in earlier times, was through the breadwinner, generally the man of the house. The remote control device now puts power in the hands that hold it. Ethnographic and focus group studies of the place of television in the lives of families clearly point to the remote control in munotes.in

Page 26


26 Public Relations Research - I
26 most families being held by male rather than female members. However, in many Indian homes where the female is dominant, the remote control is invariably in the hands of the mother. In some families though, the remote control is in the hands of the children.23 Five studies on the controversial role that Doordarshan played in the mid1980s in promoting the Hindu nationalist agenda through serials based on the epics, Mahabharata and Ramayana, and thus changing the face of Indian politics, are worthy of attention here. The first is Mitra’s 1993 study of genres on Indian television; a content analysis of Mahabharat on Doordarshan.24 The other three use ethnographic methods to analyse audience reception of Indian television serials. Gillespie looks at the TV viewing experience of British-Panjabi families of Southall, particularly as they watch Doordarshan’s Mahabharat and compare it with Peter Brooks’ version on British television.25 Mankekar takes a close look at 25 families of Delhi in an attempt to fathom how they make sense of television postMandal riots,26 while Raghavan sits down with 20 upper middle-class and middle-class families in Ahmedabad to figure out their pleasure of watching the longest running Hindi soap opera, Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi. 27 And Rajagopal employs discourse analysis and other methods to understand the role of television in the rise of the Hindutva movement in India and North America.28 Children and the Mass Media: The Lively Audience Without communication an individual could never become a human being; without mass communication an individual could never become part of modern society. Socialization is a life-long active process, beginning on the day of one’s birth. The child learns to socialize from the parents and the social groups he or she belongs to. As children grow up they come into contact with other social groups, but their basic loyalties are to their own primary and secondary groups which provide them their sets of attitudes, beliefs and norms of behaviour. Children come under three kinds of social control: (1) tradition orientation—social control based on tradition; (2) inner orientation—social control achieved through standards, guidelines or values existing in each individual and (3) external or other orientation— social control achieved by conformity to standards existing in other persons and groups. The child of today comes into contact with groups other than those in school; for instance, through the mass media, which give him/her access to remote groups and their cultures. Besides, the mass media provide models of behaviour and norms of living. The child begins to imitate them, particularly in cases where he or she is least integrated into the family or the peer group. Such children rely heavily on media advice and models; while others do not since their activities outside the home provide them greater stimulii and other role models. But the socialization effects of mass media cannot match the power of the home, the neighbourhood and the school where interpersonal relationships exist.29 In contrast, socialization through the mass media is depersonalized and hence effective mainly in the peripheral areas of life. One would expect a national outlook to follow from a wide exposure to national news and social advertisements in the mass media. But communalism continues to hold out against all attempts at national integration through the media—so deep-rooted are our attitudes and beliefs. So also social evils like the dowry system, child marriages, caste munotes.in

Page 27


27 Public Relations
Research - I conflicts, foeticide and rape persist. The mass media are not a panacea for social or economic under-development as some governments are prone to believe. Even interactive media like the internet, computer games and mobile telephony may have little influence in bringing an end to these evils. In any study of media influence on children or on the influence of children’s interests and needs on the media, the age group is an important variable. Other equally important variables are social class, religious and cultural background, linguistic background and community. It has been found from research by Jean Piaget and others that the pre-operational child (aged 5 years and below) responds differently from the child belonging to the concrete operations stage (6 to 11 years) or to the formal operations stage (11 to 12 years). To illustrate, young children aged five and below see a series of separate and fragmentary incidents rather than the story of a film. They do not invariably recognize the identities of the principal character throughout the film and they tend to believe implicitly what they see on TV to be real. And, interestingly, they sometimes read incidents into the plot from their own imaginations or add incidents and events that they think should have occurred.30 The 6 to 11year old child, however, understands the story of a film, but still understands only the concrete physical behaviour of film performers. Only at the age of 10 or 11, does he usually understand the feelings and motivations and put himself in the shoes of a character. The 11 to 12 year old comprehends films as efficiently as adults and comes to realize the make-believe fantasy world of films. He also gradually begins to understand the emotional relationships in films and to appreciate some and dislike other aspects of films. Besides, he can imagine hypothetically the sorts of relationships which may exist between film characters even if the relationships are not presented on the screen.31 Recent ethnographic and semiotic studies of children’s interaction with television suggests that children make for a ‘lively audience’ and are highly discriminating and critical viewers.32 Children and Indian Television Children below the age of 16 comprise about 40% of the population of India. Yet barely 5% of total telecast time on GEC channels (General Entertainment Channels) is directly aimed at children; this is equally true of other mass media too: radio, fiction and documentary cinema and the press. On television, programmes for children devote the largest chunk of time to animation films, muppet shows, game shows, reality shows and talent-hunt series. American animation series like Spiderman, He-man, Mickey and Donald and a host of others feature regularly on Indian television channels. The advertisements that usually accompany them relate to toys and dolls. Interestingly, terrorist-related toys like ‘GI Joe’, sold by India toy manufacturers like Funskool, an MRF-controlled company based in Goa and Leo Toys of Blowplast company, are advertised regularly on children’s programmes. Funskool is a collaborator of a subsidiary of Hasbro, the world’s largest toy manufacturer and the makers of ‘GI Joe’; Leo Toys collaborates with Mattel, the second largest toy manufacturer in the United States. Mattel produces toys like Hot-Wheels, Scrabble, Pictionary and Superman. It has also produced the TV series He-man to promote the sale of their toys. It has set up a Barbie Friends Club, ‘an interactive club where children could emulate the role model’. The munotes.in

Page 28


28 Public Relations Research - I
28 members of the club—over 12,000 of them between the ages of 6 and 12 years at a subscription fee of R95 each—write letters to Barbie and she writes back to them. It is claimed that Barbie receives over a hundred letters every day. 33 Should Indian television channels allow themselves to become commercial media for the peddling of transnational manufacturers and their toys? All children’s channels look upon kids as ‘consumers’ who enjoy immense ‘pester power’. In the mid-1980s when there wasn’t a single children’s channel, the Joshi Committee warned against this ‘cultural invasion’, but Doordarshan and later the private channels paid no heed to the warning. The Joshi Committee Report also observed that ‘reviews of children’s reaction to film and television in India have indicated that animation is not always successful with Indian child audiences. Unfamiliarity with the technique sometimes makes it difficult for Indian children to identify the characters and objects’. For Indian children to comprehend them it is necessary to keep the drawings in animation films simple and realistic and the message needs to be conveyed in a direct manner. It therefore urged that research-based software be produced so that programmes are appropriate in terms of the child’s level of development as well as his or her life situation. The Joshi Committee Report (1984) learned from its extensive analysis of television software that ‘most of our children’s programmes seem to have been designed for the upper-class child. This is somewhat paradoxical: the ultimate objective is to use television for education purposes and it is the urban child who least needs additional educational inputs. Instead, television programmes should be directed primarily towards disadvantaged children in rural and urban areas’.34 The irony is that ‘disadvantaged children’ do not possess or have access to television receivers. The Joshi Report also noted that children’s programmes are among the most substandard of all programmes produced. Indeed, children’s programmes are considered child’s play; producers who are under-utilized at other work are allocated the children’s programme section. Further, the time slotted for telecasting children’s programmes is generally at the beginning of the evening’s transmission, when most children should be playing outdoors. Except for SITE studies of children’s response to educational programmes and a few other studies, we have little significant research on children’s use of or interaction with, the mass media.35 The comic strips that daily newspapers, Sunday newspapers and magazines publish regularly for young readers are mostly ‘syndicated’ comics from the United States. Columns for children frequently include quizzes, contests, comic strips and stories. Children’s magazines like Chandamama (in several Indian languages), Champak and JAM are few and far between. While there is a National Film Foundation for Children and Young People and children’s film festivals are organized sporadically, very little attention is in fact paid to the production of films for children on a regular basis. The Films Division, on the other hand, is the foremost producer of short animation films, either directly educational in nature or for telling popular stories from the Panchatantra or the wealth of Indian folktale tradition. The digital era has ushered in new forms of education and entertainment for India’s children. While content for children has proliferated on television, it’s the new social media like Instagram, TikTok and YouTube that have thrown up numerous munotes.in

Page 29


29 Public Relations
Research - I opportunities for endless creation, consumption and participation and sharing of content. Several children have turned ‘influencers’ in the social media with their own YouTube shows (on cooking, unboxing, toys, make-up, etc.) and their endorsements of products, people and institutions in the various social media. It’s no surprise that child-influencers are the most sought after ‘stars’ in digital marketing today. Perhaps the biggest success story in the social media has been that of ChuChu TV (on YouTube), targeted at young Indian children at home and overseas; it turns out that English nursery rhymes sung by Indian children have a global appeal. The Chennai-based ChuChu TV now offers its vast inventory of short episodes of songs and stories to over 31 million subscribers around the world, not only in English, Hindi and Tamil but also in Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. munotes.in

Page 30


30 Public Relations Research - I
30 3 PROPOGANDA & PUBLICITY WITH THE REFERENCE TO WORLD WARS, EFFECTS OF MEDIA VIOLENCE, SEXUAL CONTENT IN MEDIA, MEDIA THAT STIR EMOTIONS 3.1 INREODUCTION Propaganda & Publicity with the Reference to World Wars Propaganda is simply defined as the “manipulation of information to influence public opinion.” This definition works well for this discussion because the study & use of Propoganda has had an enormous influence on the role of persuasion in modern mass media.The United States in contrast to other nations where media are held in check has encouraged an independent commercial press & thus given the powers of Propoganda & persuasion to the public. Propagnda is not inherently good or bad. Whether Propoganda has a Positive or negative effect on society & culture depends on the motivations of those who use it & the underst & ings of those who
munotes.in

Page 31


31 Public Relations
Research - I receive it. People promoting movements as wide ranging as Christianity, the American Benjamin Franklin used a powerful image of a severed snake to emphasize the importance of the colonies joining together during the American Revolution. Revolution, & the communist revolutions of the 20th century have all used Propoganda to disseminate their messages. Newspapers & pamphlets that glorified the sacrifices at Lexington & Concord & trumpeted the victories of George Washington’s army greatly aided the American Revolution. e.g, , Benjamin Franklin’s famous illustration of a severed snake with the caption “Join, or Die” serves as an early testament to the power & use of print Propoganda. Magazines adopted a similar format later in the 19th century, & print media’s political & social power rose. In an infamous example of the new power of print media, some newspapers encouraged the Spanish-American War of 1898 by fabricating stories of Spanish atrocities & sabotage. For example, after the USS Maine sunk off the coast of Havana, Cuba, some newspapers blamed the Spanish even though there was no evidence fueling the public’s desire for war with Spain. The present-day, pejorative connotation of Propoganda recalls the utilization of mass media by World War I era governments to motivate the citizenry of many countries to go to war. Some media outlets characterized that war as a global fight between Anglo civilization & Prussian barbarism. Although some of those fighting the war had little underst & ing of the political motivations behind it, wartime Propoganda convinced them to enlist. Mark Crispin Miller, introduction to Propoganda, by Edward Bernays. World War I legitimized the advertising profession in the minds of government & corporate leaders because its techniques were useful in patriotic Propoganda campaigns. Corporations quickly adapted to this development & created an advertising boom in the 1920s by using World War I Propoganda techniques to sell products. Mark Crispin Miller, introduction to Propoganda, by Edward Bernays. munotes.in

Page 32


32 Public Relations Research - I
32 Propoganda Examples Governments, corporations, nonprofit organizations, & political campaigns rely on both new & old media to create messages & to send them to the general public. During & since the 2008 Presidential election, there has been constant scrutiny over Barack Obama’s birthplace & citizenship; the reports are discredited, but the questions resurface. Propoganda use these mediums include: (1) Visual & Audio Media (2) Internet (3) Arts & Social Media (4) Social Media (5) Speeches In response to the rise of Propoganda & concern that the general public did not know how to critically analyze information, the Institute of Propoganda Analysis was established in 1937 by Edward Filene, Kirtley Mather, & Clyde R. Miller. The purpose of the Institute was to provide the general public information about the types of Propoganda, the tactics used in Propoganda, & strategies to analyze it in order to combat the psychological effects & success of such information. It operated until 1942, & it classified Propoganda into seven key categories.
munotes.in

Page 33


33 Public Relations
Research - I 3.2 TYPES OF PROPOGANDA
Propoganda & publicity during world wars President Woodrow Wilson certainly recognized the potential of newspaper men like Hearst to influence public opinion. He appointed one of those men, George Creel, to lead the Committee on Public Information. This com mittee helped to advise President Wilson on how public relations could be used to influence public opinion about the war. As one scholar in mass com munication noted, "It [the Committee on Public Information] engaged in public relations on a scale never before seen, using movies, public speakers, articles in newspapers & magazines, & posters." The use of wartime Propoganda sensitized the public to the fact that mass media might be used to influence public opinion on a large scale. ● Effects of media violence A number of studies have verified certain connections between violent video games & violent behavior in young people. E.g, studies have found that some young people who play violent video games reported angry thoughts & aggressive feelings immediately after playing. Other studies, such as one conducted by Dr. Chris A. & erson & colleagues, point to correlations between the amount of time spent playing violent video games & increased incidence of aggression. However, these studies do not prove that video games cause violence. Video game defenders argue that violent people can be drawn to violent games, & they point to lower
overall incidence of youth violence in recent years compared to past
munotes.in

Page 34


34 Public Relations Research - I
34 decades. Other researchers admit that individuals prone to violent acts are indeed drawn to violent media; however, they claim that by keeping these individuals in a movie theater or at home, violent media have actually contributed to a reduction in violent social acts. The 1999 Columbine High School shooting led to greater debate & criticism over violent video game. Whether violent media actually cause violence remains unknown, but unquestionably these forms of media send an emotional message to which individuals respond. Media messages are not limited to overt statements; they can also use emotions, such as fear, love, happiness, & depression. These emotional reactions partially account for the intense power of media in our culture. 3.3 SEXUAL CONTENT IN MEDIA Music videos on MTV & VH1, which promote artists & their music, capture audience attention with highly suggestive dance moves, often performed by scantily clad women. Recent music videos by Jennifer Lopez, Rihanna, Beyoncé, & Lady Gaga are just a few examples. Movie trailers may flash brief images of nudity or passionate kissing to suggest more to come in the movie. Video games feature female characters like Lara Croft of Tomb Raider, whose tightly fitted clothes reveal all the curves of her Barbie-doll figure. & partially nude models grace the cover
of men’s & women’s magazines like Maxim, Cosmopolitan, & Vogue where cover lines promise titillating tips, gossip, & advice on bedroom behavior. Sex Sells: Commodifying Desire, Past & Present In the 1920s & 1930s, filmmakers attracted audiences to the silver screen with the promise of what was then considered sc & alous content. Prior to the 1934 Hays Code, which placed restrictions on “indecent” content in movies, films featured erotic dances, male & female nudity, references to homosexuality, & sexual violence. In the 1960s, the Hays Code was replaced with the MPAA rating system, with ratings such as G, PG, & R.
munotes.in

Page 35


35 Public Relations
Research - I The rating system, designed to warn parents about potentially objectionable material in films, allowed filmmakers to include sexually explicit content without fear of public protest. Since the replacement of the Hays Code, sexual content has been featured in movies with much greater frequency. The problem is not that sex now appears more often, but that it is almost always portrayed unrealistically in American mass media. This can be harmful, they say, because the mass media are important socialization agents; that is, ways that people learn about the norms, expectations, & values of their society. Rarely do these media point out the potential emotional & physical consequences of sexual behavior. According to one study, portrayals of sex that include possible risks like sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy only occur in 15 percent of the sexually explicit material on television Additionally, actors & models depicted in sexual relationships in the media are thinner, younger, & more attractive than the average adult. This creates unrealistic expectations about the necessary ingredients for a satisfying sexual relationship. Social psychologists are particularly concerned with the negative effects these unrealistic portrayals have on women, as women’s bodies are the primary means of introducing sexual content into media targeted at both men & women. Media activist Jean Kilbourne points out that “women’s bodies are often dismembered into legs, breasts or thighs, reinforcing the message that women are objects rather than whole human beings.” Additionally, many researchers note that in women’s magazines, advertising, & music videos, women are often implicitly & sometimes explicitly given the message that a primary concern should be attracting & sexually satisfying men. Media Awareness Network, “Sex & Furthermore, the recent increase in entertainment featuring sexual violence may, according to some studies, negatively affect the way young men behave toward women. Young women & men are especially vulnerable to the effects of media portrayals of sexuality. Psychologists have long noted that teens & children get much of their information & many of their opinions about sex through television, film, & online media. In fact, two-thirds of adolescents turn to the media first when they want to learn about sexuality. The media may help shape teenage & adolescent attitudes toward sex, but they can also lead young people to engage in sexual activity before they are prepared to h & le the consequences. ● Women's Glorified, Domesticated, Objectified & Sexist Portrayal Nevertheless, these depictions influence how women are perceived & treated in society. Women are also given continuously decorative roles or as domestic caregivers of family, reinforcing the gender dynamics in the family system. These electronic media, including munotes.in

Page 36


36 Public Relations Research - I
36 news channels, can play a crucial role in the reconstruction of women's image, shaping gender norms, socio-cultural values, & perceptions. However, mostly sensational news such as rape & violence against women is given the spotlight, While more severe women issues are not taken up. Sexual objectification & commodification of women are prevalent in movies & advertisements. Advertisements depict their version of women's perfection slim, fair complexioned, glamorous, which sets a bad precedent among adolescents & young women. Advertisements, especially for home, kitchen, jewelry, sanitation, & hygiene products, mirror the gendered view of society. Those ads depict women mostly as home makers, concerned only with maintaining their houses, beauty, & taking care of their families. Frontliners of women's movements in India have been instrumental in highlighting the sexist attitude in advertisements. Though there have been some changes in the way corporations & product companies depict women, the tendency has always been towards reinforcing traditional regressive gender roles. The fashion & cosmetics industry also plays a negative role in the gender discrimination of women. It is only women who are expected to maintain impossible st & ards of physical perfection & body shape. Objectification of women's bodies is subtly promoted by beauty pageants & the fashion industry that curtails women's equality. Women are treated as trophies, celebrated for how they look, instead of intelligence, skill, character, & their contribution. There have been women's rights movements around the world against beauty pageants & the stereotypes they reinforce. ● How Social Media Has Made Women Vulnerable To Abuse The advent of the internet & social media platforms has broadened the social space for women to raise their issues, reach out, network & collaborate for their common causes. Women blogging, NGO websites, & women platforms have advanced the empowerment of women through technology. There is also a gender digital divide creating unequal spaces in digital media. Some of the reasons for this gender gap are lack of textual literacy, the wage gap, lack of context in local languages, gender division of labor causing time constraints for women, etc. According to Women's Rights Online Network, women are 50% less likely to access the internet than men. At the same time, the same platforms reinforce gendered online behaviours & sex-role stereotypes. Women who voice strong opinions on women's issues are exposed to verbal abuses & threats of violence. Social media also tends to create negative body image & low self-esteem by emphasizing obsessive celebrity culture, physical perfection, & beauty. munotes.in

Page 37


37 Public Relations
Research - I
According to the UN's Broadb & Commission for Digital Development, 73% of women have already experienced cyber violence. Women receive rape, death threats, & gendered abuses for expressing their opinions online. As per a survey by UN Women, in India, 28% of women who faced online abuse reduced their online presence & stopped posting on specific issues. These gendered online abuses effectively silence women's voices & discourses around women's issues. Cyber-crime against women is also on the rise. Stalking women online, sending unsolicited & persistent messages through WhatsApp & e-mails, developing pornographic content, & morphed photos to target women are some of how women are harassed on social media. What is more, women do not know where to report such issues & how to deal with them. Women subjected to such cyber crimes & problems are vulnerable to mental health issues such as emotional stress, depression, & hypertension, further affecting their lives. Trolling on social media of women who defy sexism & gender bias is another dangerous trend that has to be taken note of. Trolls are abusers who push defamatory, personally abusive content targeting individuals. Women, especially those who voice non-mainstream & anti-modernization views, are trolled exceptionally on social platforms. The e-mail spoofing would cause substantial monetary loss. Regular phishing, the attempt to gain sensitive information such as a username & password & intent to obtain personal information, becomes a major threat for women in the digital world. Then what is the solution, how can we create a secure, inclusive, & gender unbiased media! This is not just covering 'women's issues.' It is about ensuring content is balanced across gender lines & respects the diversity that represents nearly 50% of the world's population. We have to make sure more women occupy managerial roles in the newsroom & higher positions in the field of print journalism, television, web channels, & publications. There should be an equal pay scale for female media workers & development programs to
munotes.in

Page 38


38 Public Relations Research - I
38 increase their skills & leadership abilities. Despite laws & regulations, practical actions against perpetrators are not taken. As per NCRB data, around 27,000 cybercrime incidents registered in 2018; however, the investigation is pending for the same amount of crimes that were reported in the previous year. So, the state should ensure the enforcement of laws to prevent stalkings, cybercrimes, & other online abuses in priority. At last, it is not impossible for men to effectively cover gender issues; on the other h & , he must be aware & prone to women's needs & perspectives. 3.4 MEDIA THAT STIR EMOTIONS From movies to emojis, from love letters to flame wars, from shocking television news to immersive video games emotions are of utmost importance for media production, reception, appropriation, & interaction. They guide the sensory perception & meaning-making of their users; they imprint media experiences into memory; & they contribute to the formation of collective identities, values, & modes of action. Emotions are the main motivation for the use of media in the first place, as they form the basis of aesthetic experience, enjoyment, & entertainment. Today, media interfaces & algorithms even observe & influence their users’ emotions. The perplexing variety of connections between media & emotions can be tentatively sorted into four groups of general questions: Emotion representation is how different emotions represented & expressed in media, & through what means. Emotion elicitation is Which emotions do media evoke in users, & by what forms & structures; Which user dispositions & contexts underlie affective reactions. Emotion practice is In which practices are emotions integrated, & how are they interwoven with media uses & functions. Emotion culture is Which socio-cultural causes & effects do media emotions have in certain cultures & epochs; How are they linked to power, ethics & politics, & how do they change over time. All theories are based on heterogeneous emotion & affect concepts & methods hailing from various disciplines. They are shaped by diverging research interests: some are intended to describe or recommend emotional experiences, others try to explain present or past responses, forecast future reactions, improve production practices, or criticize socio-cultural contexts. munotes.in

Page 39


39 Public Relations
Research - I
● Media & the affective field It was not until the 1970s that a more intensive preoccupation with the subject began, & since the 1990s it has experienced a proper boom. Research has split into several str & s, which often take antagonistic positions towards each other. To some degree, these disagreements flare up because film & media scholars deal with very different underst & ings of media & emotions. Media differ in their sensory & semiotic modes, their technology & materiality, their spatial & temporal range, their practical uses, their socio-cultural contexts, & many further respects that have a bearing on their affective potential Most existing research has concentrated on classic mass media, & in this issue we follow that direction, but hope that many observations can be transferred to other media. Film & media studies inherit contentious conceptualisations of affective phenomena from fields of research as different as psycho-analysis, cognitive science, phenomenology, cultural studies, or affect studies. Across these varied approaches & concepts, generic terms for the totality of affective phenomena differ: some use ‘emotion’, others prefer ‘affect’ in a broad sense. For both terms, numerous more specific definitions exist, & many other related concepts, such as ‘empathy’, are just as ambiguous. What many theories have in common, however, is the assumption that affective phenomena are complex dynamic processes that involve an interplay of bodily reactions, action tendencies, & expressive impulses, which go h & in h & . 3.5 WHAT IS SPECIFIC ABOUT MEDIA EMOTIONS? Moreover, media theories differ not only in the theories of emotion they rely on, but also in the extent to which they acknowledge differences between everyday & media-specific emotions.
munotes.in

Page 40


40 Public Relations Research - I
40 Affective preconditions of the media situation: media offer different affective affordances & gratifications to their users – affective niches that enable media-specific types of emotionality . For instance, print media predominantly dem & imagination, audiovisual media may directly address perception, video games presuppose interaction, & social media invite communication. Often, media emotions develop in freely chosen, safe situations (e.g. the cinema hall), which relieve the pressure of action & focus attention on the media texts. Collective & shared emotions: frequently, media emotions are collective emotions. When media reception takes place with others, processes of shared attention, collective emotionality, & physical contagion can develop. Just think of collective laughter or social emotions like shame.In contrast, the very same media productions may also evoke diverging emotions in dispersed audiences with different dispositions, for example in the case of political online videos. Witness emotions: Many emotions in the media are not directed at the users’ own situation, but at the situation of observed actors: they are witness emotions – often involving empathy or sympathy – that neither require nor enable the user to act. This can mean reassurance through safety, but also the tension of not being able to help. Just think of the Hitchcockian scenario of the bomb under the table that the viewer knows about, while the characters do not. Awareness of fictionality & factuality Media experiences may be fictional or factual. It certainly makes a difference for my emotions, if I observe a fictional character in a television series or if I transform into an avatar in a documentary AR experience. & users of fictional media are usually aware that the observed events are only invented. Older aesthetic theories have discussed the fact that media users nevertheless develop emotions under the heading of the so-called paradox of fiction. Most current theories dissolve this apparent paradox by taking into account, among other things, pre-conscious stimulus reactions as well as processes of simulation & imagination. Prefocused emotionality: most importantly, media direct & manipulate the representation & elicitation of emotions through narrative, rhetorical, audiovisual, or other means. They present ‘critically prefocused’ texts inviting the users to develop emotions of a certain kind, intensity, duration, etc. The way they do this is largely media-specific. For instance, where films use close-ups to focus attention on emotional faces, print media may employ detailed descriptions.
munotes.in

Page 41


41 Public Relations
Research - I Awareness of communication: Finally, the media come with an awareness that they serve the communication of meaning. They not only show something, but they show
how someone has experienced it. Moreover, media users usually search for overarching meanings & imagine a communicative situation, where somebody (e.g. a filmmaker) addresses someone (e.g. a specific target audience) with certain intentions & effects. This also means that the use of media & affective responses to media texts is influenced by media-specific dispositions, for instance the knowledge about certain genres, stars, or narrative conventions. As audiences use this knowledge to reflect on the style of media texts or on their own experiences, aesthetic emotions or meta-emotions emerge. With the surge of digital, networked, & mobile media, theoretical discussions have begun to exp & . Features like interactivity, participation, social networking, or artificial intelligence profoundly shape their affectivity & confront media studies with difficult questions. Overview of the current section Deidre Pribram offers a ‘socioemotional’ perspective on audience emotions & an analysis of collective responses to the television series Wanted. Pribram examines transnational television audiences’ communal experiences of gendered anger, contending that socio emotionality informs social relations
munotes.in

Page 42


42 Public Relations Research - I
42 wherein emotional experience is a binding factor that is felt & shared across national boundaries. Her contribution to studying audiences’ affective experiences of commonality in the age of streamed television sees emotion as a category with multiple variations – like genre. In addition, she conceives of gender as an imagined community populated by people who exist as communal images providing touchstones that extend emotional experience. Wyatt Moss-Wellington also provides a fresh take on genre, examining the emotional politics of contemporary romantic comedies in which limerence (the intensity of feeling during romantic pair-bonding) gives rise to personal & political awakenings. Moss-Wellington explores the vicarious pleasures that romantic comedy offers, arguing that limerent emotional experiences are valuable beyond the elation of love. The affective power of limerence can challenge & change emotions & notions of value, recalibrating one’s mindset during experiences of courage or rejection. Political romantic comedies revalue sensitivity to emotional states & qualities that facilitate being more selfless, vulnerable, & responsive to others’ needs, becoming attached to hopeful ideals, & willing to engage in risk-taking behaviors that may convert convictions & desires into reality. David Richard’s phenomenological analysis of embodiment in the television series Sharp Objects (Marti Noxon, 2018) reveals how viewers tune into the experience of depression via a traumatized protagonist with a history of self-harm. After introducing the phenomenology of illness, Richard details how intimate framing, a gothic milieu heavy with suffocating familial decay, & the immersive qualities of textured acoustic close-ups elicit emotive responses from the audience & convey mood & existential feelings. Richard demonstrates how the series’ non-linear editing expresses depression’s episodic nature & the feeling of being out of sync or out of tune with life as he argues that Sharp Objects gives embodied insight into the phenomenological experience of depression. If the term ‘emotion’ has etymological roots in ‘motion’, as it is often claimed, then it may not be too far-fetched to hope that these seven contributions will move both discussions & underst & ing forward.
munotes.in

Page 43


43 Public Relations
Research - I 4 EFFECTS OF MEDIA STEREOTYPES, INFLUENCE OF MARSHALL MCLUHAN, PERSUASIVE EFFECTS OF MEDIA 4.1 MASS MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION: The functions of media are: (1) Persuade (2) Inform (3)Entertain Functions of media There are four types of communication: (1) Intra-personal (daydreams and internal monologues) (2) Interpersonal (discussion in small groups) (3) Group (discussion with large groups, such as public speaking) (4) Mass (technology-driven communication with thousands or millions of people). The system of communication which brings news and entertainment to the populace at large through books, newspapers, radio, television, and also the Internet is named the "Mass Media." The Mass Media is playing an 4.2 FOUR TYPES OF COMMUNICATION increasingly large role in our everyday lives. The term mass media is especially used by academics and media-professionals. Mass media could be a term that wants to denote, as a class, that section of the media
munotes.in

Page 44


44 Public Relations Research - I
44 specifically conceived and designed to succeed in a really large audience. Once we see "the media" it’s usually a relevance to the mass media, or to the print media, which may be a section of the mass media. it had been coined within the 1920s with the appearance of nationwide radio networks and of mass-circulation newspapers and magazines. The mass-media audience has been viewed by some commentators as forming a mass society with special characteristics, notably atomization or lack of social connections, which render it especially prone to the influence of contemporary mass media techniques like advertising and propaganda. The mass media system has controls: media monitors who make sure that bad messages are slowed down or eliminated. These include regulators (such because the FCC), pressure groups, and gatekeepers, like editors, directors, and company moguls. Another control is perceived belief. Mass Media and Stereotypes: The most common stereotypes that tend to be negative include: ● Cultural stereotypes. ● Social stereotypes. ● Racial stereotypes. ● Gender stereotypes. ● Religious stereotypes. Mass media have huge reach in society and are a key filter through which individuals study one another, yet countless studies demonstrate that these media still reproduce ethnic and racial stereotypes, with often harmful effects. In various mediums – news, drama, and gaming – ethnic group groups are typically marginalised and overlooked. Very often, after they are represented, they're shown only in narrowly stereotyped roles, like the model Asian migrant or the exotic Latina, or depicted negatively because the problematic “other,” disproportionately represented as violent or criminal, and “less than” dominant groups (i.e., less intelligent, less wealthy, less powerful). ethnic group media – that's, media produced by and for ethnos groups – generally offer more positive representations and a counter narrative to mainstream stereotypes but may also be susceptible to narrow type casting and stereotypes. The resulting pervasiveness of stereotyped representations across media formats and kinds is partly the result of complex media production processes, norms and values, commercial drivers, and a scarcity of ethnic group media producers. Nonetheless, their impact, though hard to live, is potentially significant. Mass media play a task in shaping collective identities and intergroup attitudes and, by typecasting certain groups, distort the image that audiences see of various groups. There's evidence to suggest these skewed
munotes.in

Page 45


45 Public Relations
Research - I media representations cannot only promote public hostility toward other ethnic groups but also lower ethnos individuals’ self-esteem. As a result, research into ways to combat stereotypes and promote more positive representations within the media is critical. 4.3 INDIAN STEREOTYPES IN WESTERN FILMS AND TV
● Poverty Some films like Lion have tried showing a financially-troubled protagonist in a realistic light and empathetic light. But otherwise, foreign films often tend to show 'poverty' or paint the entirety of India as a backward nation with no modern infrastructure. The Darjeeling Limited, Million Dollar Arm, and many others mock and generalise Indian cities; Indian directors frame their scenes in the backdrops of ruined buildings, crowded streets, and cows in the middle of traffic, but they paint the context as being from a particular area in India, rather than generalising
munotes.in

Page 46


46 Public Relations Research - I
46 the entire country as an undeveloped urban jungle. ● Exoticism And Mysticism Cults like those in Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom, and the spiritual journeys in India as shown in Eat, Pray, Love, paint India as a highly 'exotic' land filled with mysticism and superstitious beliefs. The argument against this stereotype can again be explained as the point for India's multi-religious identity. Not all Indians are blind worshippers of bearded mystics and gurus. As of last year, about 2.9 million Indians are atheists, while some consider themselves to be rationalists despite holding onto their religious identity. Otherwise, India is a diverse land of its own, rather than an exotic, archaic, and divine fantasy-world of sorts. ● There's More To Music Than Just Classical India does boast of historic classical and folk music styles, having exported maestros like sitarist Ravi Shankar to the rest of the world. Still, such forms of music hardly make way to the Indian music mainstream in today's times. Film music or independent music usually dominates the playlists of many Indian demographics. Many independent artists are experimenting or reinterpreting foreign genres too, be it hip-hop or electronica. That's why rather than relying on a 'traditional' sound, films shot in India can feature several new-age Indian artists and their musical styles. ● Purposely Complicated Names Indians, Arabs, Koreans, and many other immigrants get mocked for their names that are difficult to pronounce by the dominant citizen groups in the countries they settle. Some even have to Anglicise or shorten their names for the convenience of the Westerners. Instead of mispronouncing or changing the names of the people from this diaspora, maybe the
munotes.in

Page 47


47 Public Relations
Research - I Hollywood narrative can make an effort to accurately show some Indian names. It's not always that difficult. Even though today, foreign productions do try to accurately portray Indian characters and their names, there used to be Indian characters with names complicated and exaggerated beyond measure. The biggest case yet again is Apu's surname, Nahasapeemapetilon. Older films were even more careless in christening their Indian characters. In Annie (1978), an Indian bodyguard was simply named Punjab (an Indian state, hardly ever used as a person's name). ● Supporting Characters For Comic Roles Indian-Americans were often shown as shop clerks, drivers, doctors, or any other supporting character. Often reduced to caricatures with the aforementioned accents, they were hardly given any scope for character development or background stories. However, now, with slightly higher representation, this attitude is changing. Examples like Aziz Ansari's lead role in Master of None and Rahul Kohli in The Haunting Of Bly Manor are helping in giving Indian-origin American and British actors a more nuanced and multi-layered portrayal. Marshall Mcluhan and his influence: During the primary 1960s, instructor McLuhan wrote two books that had an infinite effect on the history of media studies. Published in 1962 and 1964, respectively, the Gutenberg Galaxy and Understanding Media both traced the history of media
technology and illustrated the ways these innovations had changed both individual behaviour and broader culture.
munotes.in

Page 48


48 Public Relations Research - I
48 Understanding Media introduced a phrase that McLuhan has become known for: “The medium is that the message.” This notion represented a singular attitude toward media that the media themselves are instrumental in shaping human and cultural experience. His bold statements about the media gained McLuhan an honest deal of attention as both his supporters and critics seasoned his utopian views about the ways media could transform 20th-century life. McLuhan spoke of a media-inspired “global village” at a time when conflict paranoia was at its peak and the war was a hotly debated subject. Although 1960s-era utopians received these statements positively, social realists found them cause for scorn. Despite or perhaps because of these controversies, McLuhan became a preferred culture icon, mentioned frequently within the tv sketch-comedy program Laugh-In and appearing as himself in Woody Allen’s film Annie Hall. McLuhan's most generally known work, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), is additionally a pioneering study in media ecology. In it McLuhan proposed that media themselves, not the content they carry, should be the foremost focus of study–popularly quoted as "the medium is that the message." McLuhan's theory was that a medium affects the society during which it plays employment not by the content delivered over the medium, but by the characteristics of the medium itself. McLuhan pointed to the sunshine bulb as a transparent demonstration of this idea. a light-weight bulb doesn't have content within the way that a newspaper has articles or a television has programs, yet it is a medium that comes with a social effect; that's, a light-weight bulb enables people to make spaces during nighttime which is ready to preferably be enveloped by darkness. He describes the lightbulb as a medium with no content. McLuhan states that "a light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence." More controversially, he postulated that content had little effect on society—in other words, it didn't matter if television broadcasts children's shows or violent programming, as one example—the effect of television on society would be identical. He noted that every one media have characteristics that engage the viewer in numerous ways; as an example, a passage during a book is reread at will, but a movie had to be screened again in its entirety so on check anyone a component of it. McLuhan also claimed within the primary a component of Understanding Media, that different media invite different degrees of participation on the a component of a non-public who chooses to consume
munotes.in

Page 49


49 Public Relations
Research - I a medium. Some media, a little amount a tiny low amount almost just like the flicks, enhance one single sense, during this case vision, in such the foremost effective way that somebody shouldn't exert much effort in filling within the limited print of a movie image. McLuhan contrasted this with television, which he claimed requires more effort on the a component of the viewer to work out meaning; and with comics, which because of their minimal presentation of visual detail require a high degree of effort to fill in details that the cartoonist may have intended to portray. A movie is thus said by McLuhan to be "hot," intensifying one single sense "high definition," demanding a viewer's attention, and a comic book to be "cool" and "low definition," requiring rather more conscious participation by the reader to extract value. McLuhan stresses the importance of awareness of a medium's cognitive effects. He argues that, if we aren't vigilant to the implications of media's impact, the globe village has the potential to become atiny low amount where totalitarianism and terror rule. In the early 1960s, McLuhan wrote that the visual, individualistic print culture would soon be dropped at an end by what he called "electronic interdependence": when electronic media replaced visual culture with aural/oral culture. During this new age, humankind will move from individualism and fragmentation to a collective identity, with a "tribal base." McLuhan's coinage for this new system is that of the worldwide village. Though the world Wide Web was invented 30 years after The Gutenberg Galaxy was published, McLuhan may have coined and positively popularised the usage of the term "surfing" to test with rapid, irregular and multidirectional movement through a heterogeneous body of documents or knowledge, e.g., statements like "Heidegger surf-boards along on the electronic wave as triumphantly as Descartes rode the mechanical wave. Power of Media: We all know media refers to the tools of mass communication consisting of television, radio , newspapers, magazines and therefore the internet like : Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Google and other Social Networking Sites. Broadcasting , Advertising ,Visual Representations , Pictures or Images , Graphics, Videos, or maybe Movies are sorts of social media where people can use and see. It simply means the media features a power to present information and supply a simple means of communication especially in long distance where people are
munotes.in

Page 50


50 Public Relations Research - I
50 going to be ready to contact one another. The influence of the media has become so powerful today because it can easily influence people positively and or negatively . Now, we live under the ability of the media as a source of knowledge and entertainment that enhances the knowledge of the users through the various kinds of news or events in our society or environment. Media like television are often a robust educational tool especially for youths because as we will see, there are TV programs that incorporates a positive influence for the kids to speak well and taught them on the way to sing Alphabet song’s, a way to read ,how to spell correctly, the way to choose healthy foods and taught them the correct values .Because of these, it provides a decent relationship with the users especially the children. In magazines, it influences the readers deeply, especially female teenagers thanks to the style trends nowadays.These magazines have an enormous impact on society. Another example are Newspapers. After we prefer to read this stuff , we receive lots of data and we also discover the problems especially associated with politics, environmental problems, rate of teenage pregnancies and other vital issues in our society. If there’s a positive side of the media, it also includes a negative side. Remember on Advertisements, they always introduce the physical fantastic thing about the merchandise to encourage the purchasers to shop for. However, they don’t show or tell the viewers that these products might not be good for health only for them to earn money. In movies, a number of it shows violence to at least one another and use to point out sexual images. As users, we should always use the media well and wisely. Now could be the time for us to be practical.Yes, the media's power is to create our lifestyle easier but let's remember that an excessive amount of use of media isn't good.We should be cautious of using different types of media for us to be safe and conscious of negativity. Media is the main source of data. It creates awareness among the folk and makes them eighlightened citizens. It creates vox populi about the burning problems with the country, exposes scandals and builts the arrogance of individuals. We find out about the working plans and programmes that the govt. is undertaking. There are successful implementations or failures. 4.4 THE ADVANTAGE OF MEDIA FOR STUDENTS Popular media (films, music, YouTube) are a well-recognized medium to students that helps gain attention and maintain student interest within the theories and ideas under discussion. Students can see the theories and ideas in action. In addition to figurative sense, theories and ideas leap from the screen. munotes.in

Page 51


51 Public Relations
Research - I
● Students can hone their analytical skills by analysing media using the theories and ideas they're studying. ● The use of media within the classroom enables students to work out concepts and new examples once they're watching television, paying attention to music, or are at the flicks with friends. ● Students can experience worlds beyond their own, especially if the media is sharply different from their local environment. Overall Implication of Media and Information On Education: Media is everywhere , it's become a part of our everyday life. The media play a dominant role within the learning process. The media has the potential to shape personalities. Change the way we perceive and understand the planet and our immediate reality. Media plays a good influence in everyone’s life.

munotes.in

Page 52


52 Public Relations Research - I
52 ● The main duty of the media is to increase news, knowledge, and data. ● It shares the data from one part of the planet to a different People came to understand about their rights through the influence of the media. ● Media also helps people to seek out ways to use their rights. ● Media acts as a link between the government and folks Because the various policies and undertakings of the government. are forwarded through the medias ● Media also helps us to customise our personality. ● Media is incredibly vast and we get all the pieces of knowledge in a very single touch either in electronic gadgets or newspapers. ● Media also helps in bringing the true facts of any news before people. ● Without the media, the globe would have gone underrated without proper knowledge about anything. ● Social networking has increased the speed and quality of collaboration for college kids. ● They're better able to communicate meeting times or share information quickly, which might increase productivity and help them find out how to figure well in groups. ● Social networking teaches students skills they’ll have to survive within the business world. ● Having the ability to make and maintain connections to several people in many industries is an integral part of developing a career or building a business. ● By spending such a lot of time working with new technologies, students develop more familiarity with computers and other electronic devices. ● With the increased specialisation in technology in education and business, this can help students build skills which will aid them throughout their lives. ● The ease with which a student can customise their profile makes them more responsive to basic aspects of design and layout that aren't often taught in schools. ● Building resumes and private websites, which are increasingly used as online portfolios, benefit greatly from the talents obtained by customising the layout and styles of social networking profiles. munotes.in

Page 53


53 Public Relations
Research - I ● The ease and speed with which users can upload pictures, videos or stories has resulted in a greater amount of sharing of creative works. Having the ability to induce instant feedback from friends and family on their creative outlets helps students refine and develop their artistic abilities and might provide much needed confidence or help them decide what career path they'll want to pursue. Demerits of Media ● One of the Demerit of Media is that it'll elaborate everything in such some way that even the false accusation is believed ● Social media nowadays steal lots of your time And nobody tries to seek out out the reality since everything is discussed in media itself ● Many students depend upon the accessibility of knowledge on social media specifically and also the web generally to produce answers. meaning a reduced concentration on learning and retaining information. ● Students who try and multi-task, checking social media sites while studying, show reduced academic performance ● Their ability to focus on the task at hand is significantly reduced by the distractions that are caused by YouTube, stumbleupon, Facebook or Twitter. ● The longer students spend on social sites, the less time they spend socialising in the flesh. ● Due to the dearth of body signals and other nonverbal cues, like tone and inflection, social networking sites don't seem to be an adequate replacement for face-to-face communication. ● Students who spend a good deal of their time on social networking are less ready to effectively communicate face to face. ● The popularity of social media, and therefore the speed at which information is published, has created a lax attitude towards proper spelling and grammar. ● This reduces a student’s ability to effectively write without looking forward to a computer’s spell check feature. ● The degree to which private information is obtainable online and therefore the anonymity the net seems to produce has made students forget the requirement to filter the knowledge they post. ● Many colleges and potential employers investigate an applicant’s social networking profiles before granting acceptance or interviews. ● Most students don’t constantly evaluate the content they’re publishing online, which might bring on negative consequences months or years down the road. munotes.in

Page 54


54 Public Relations Research - I
54 If one were to appear back over the last decade and take a look at to seek out some element that affected society as an entire from a technical standpoint, there would be a pair of possible contenders. The advancement of smartphone technology in such a brief time is certainly impressive, for instance. However, the impact of social media, while intertwined with the smartphone are a few things that made even more of a bearing. Consider just how easy it's to work out what's happening on the opposite side of the planet, through the accounts of real people instead of filtered news channels. Twitter and Facebook were huge parts of the Arab Spring, and that they are important to assist people detain contact and update during disasters. 4.5 THE EFFECT ON COMMUNICATION AND CONNECTION
A decade ago, it had been very difficult to search out and connect with people who you once knew in highschool or college, even with the ability of the online. Once you moved away, the general public lost touch permanently. Social media sites, like Facebook and Google+, are making it much easier for people to search out each other and reconnect, even after decades of being apart. The sites are an excellent way to see what's happening within the lives of friends and family, and to fulfil new ones that have similar interests and thoughts to yours. The Youth

munotes.in

Page 55


55 Public Relations
Research - I The youth of the globe are commonly the foremost able to adapt to and learn to use new technologies, and that they are certainly at the forefront of social media of every type. they need more technological know-how than many of older generations further. Social media, therefore, is certainly having a rather large impact on their daily lives permanently and for bad. Those who spend an excessive amount of time on social sites, or who take the abuses of online bullies seriously on the sites could have some issues. For folks, even those of teenagers who are 16 and 17, it's important to observe to make sure that social media sites don't take over the lives of youngsters. When used appropriately, it may be a really good thing.Marketing Of course, the social media sites are ripe for marketing endeavours also, and over the past few years, users have seen an uptick within the amount of advertising on the sites. Many companies are literally choosing to become an element of the location instead of merely buying advertising. This enables for a better connection between the shoppers and also the companies, which may lead to higher service and better quality products. As long as companies aren't too overt about ads and promotion, most users don't mind it. In most cases, users must subscribe to the content within the first place. Entertainment
Another reason people are spending the maximum amount of time as they are doing on social media sites is because they'll be a good sort of entertainment. Watch videos that folks post to their timelines, view pictures, read stories, and even play games. Whether employing a smartphone, a tablet, or a standard computer, more and more people are utilising social media in their daily lives. Few things have quite the maximum amount of impact and affect as social media over the past few years. The sites are certainly a step toward world globalisation. It is possible to seek out a variety of various social media outlets available today, and one should certainly be ready to find something that suits their needs and lifestyle. From Twitter to Facebook and Google+, something is out there for everybody who wants to attach.
munotes.in

Page 56


56 Public Relations Research - I
56 5 EFFECTS OF NEWS AND POLITICAL CONTENT, IMPACT OF NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES 5.1 MASS COMMUNICATION Mass communication plays a very important role in our society. Its purpose is to tell the general public about current and past events. Mass communication is defined in " Mass Media, Mass Culture" because the process whereby professional communicators use technological devices to share messages over great distances to influence large audiences. Within this process, the media (a newspaper, book, broadcast, etc) takes control of the data we see or hear. The media then uses gatekeeping and agenda-setting to "control our access to news, information, and entertainment". Gatekeeping could be a series of checkpoints that the news needs to undergo before it gets to the general public. Through this process, many of us need to decide whether or not the news is to be seen or heard. Some gatekeepers include reporters, writers and editors. After gatekeeping comes agenda-setting. one in every of the foremost critical aspects within the concept of an agenda-setting role of mass communication is that the timeframe for this phenomenon. additionally, different media have different agenda-setting potential.
The media we consume daily has an impression on our thinking, behavior, and emotions; And while staying up to this point on local and national news, especially because it relates to mandates and health updates, is critical during now, experts say over-consumption of the news can take a toll on your physical, emotional, and psychological state.
munotes.in

Page 57


57 Public Relations
Research - I 5.2 NEWS COVERAGE Newspaper The main type of medium is that the newspaper. General-interest newspapers typically publish stories on local and national political events and personalities, crime, business, entertainment, society and sports. Newspapers have played a vital role within the exercise of freedom of expression. Whistle-blowers and people who "leak" stories of corruption in political circles often like better to inform newspapers before other mediums of communication, hoping on the reputation of newspaper editors to show the secrets and lies that relate to the general public. However, there are many circumstances of the political autonomy of newspapers being curtailed. Positive effects of newspaper: ● Make knowledgeable Newspapers provide wide information of economic, political, social, business and sports. A critical reading of newspaper enhances insight into different societies and offers crucial world knowledge. together with intellectual thinking, it provides the cognitive ability to analyse and judge different situations. the massive amount of information in every field encourages a personal to create the society better. Numerous community and non secular conflicts mentioned within the newspapers push someone toward lead the society for betterment and make him conscious of the wrongdoings and welfare activities. ● Keep up-to-date The current events within the newspaper keep an individual abreast, which helps in making future decisions. A businessman can invest during a sector that seems to guide the race in coming years. for instance, at present, electric and hybrid vehicles became showstopper among automobiles. And, a newspaper is that the prime source to supply such information. Also, people stay awake to countries indulging in civil wars and accordingly, make their tourism decisions. Science and technology grants necessary piece in newspapers for the complete mankind. ● Increase learning and reading abilities The additional learning regarding anything during this world makes someone a far better person. and therefore the newspaper may be a god of vast learning.
munotes.in

Page 58


58 Public Relations Research - I
58 Everyday newspaper reading increases concentration, which further helps in academic studies. Repeated mentioning of states, leaders, business companies, social and economic policies find a stable place in a very brain and one needn't cram everything up. Negative effects of newspaper: Being a mixture of words written from one person’s perspective, a newspaper might lose its motive. ● Negative impression Today, newspapers became a typical source of defaming someone, company or a product. the explanation may well be compensation from the alternative party or the negligence of field researchers themselves. and also the fact, that readers believe what they read, creates worry among the victims. this may produce a long-term damage to an individual’s life. ● Political control on numerous incidents, different parties blame the opposition for controlling a voter’s decision through newspapers. At present, several newspaper companies are allies of politicians and organizations. due to the weak policing and judiciary, these companies achieve taking a hide-out if caught. ● Wrong advertisements Other than spreading negative impression, newspapers are often agents of evil. Many newspapers glorify organizations, people, and products without mentioning any negative consequences and promote them to a gullible mass against huge compensation with a sole objective of profit-making. during this way, newspapers betray readers and fail in achieving their prime objective of reporting the reality. Radio News Radio station newscasts can range from as little as a moment to the maximum amount because the station's entire schedule, like the case of all-news radio, or talk radio. Stations dedicated to news or talk will often feature newscasts, or bulletins, usually at the highest of the hour, usually between 3 and eight minutes long. they'll be a combination of local, national, and international news, moreover as sport, entertainment, weather, and traffic, or they'll be incorporated into separate bulletins. All-news radio could be a radio format devoted entirely to discussion and broadcast of reports. Some all-news stations may carry sports, public affairs programs, simulcasts of TV news magazine, affairs of state shows.
munotes.in

Page 59


59 Public Relations
Research - I 5.3 EFFECTS OF RADIO ON SOCIETY ● Entertainment As already mentioned, radio brought a novel entertainment opportunities to people, especially for those who couldn't afford the luxurious of visiting places where entertainment was available only to the rich. With a hi fi by their side, folk could also enjoy music and stayed informed about events as ordinary as a street robbery to vary of governments and tug of war among political rivals to availability of commodities within the market. But it absolutely was the entertainment which made the radio popular on first instance. Very soon the entertainment started acquiring other areas than music. Comedy shows, gossip chat and answering letters from listeners made people crazy about radio enjoyments. ● Information Radio served hugely the human instinct to grasp about events happening around him and at distant lands. The radio brought news from across the oceans and from inland without distinction. a daily listener of newscast would get an effect because the whole world has shrunk – a sense which medium would never had thought in around 400 years before the invention of the radio. The news aired regularly from different stations were followed by views and a way spicy discussion among experts to get more interest in events from social and political life. The announcements about weather, and trains/flights schedule has been one more advantage to radio listeners. ● Education As radio continued to possess its impression on the cultural outlook of the societies by pouring in more opinions of experts in several fields of social life, it started special services to teach people on scores of issues foremost among those are the healthcare matters. No other source would are proved handier than radio programs to coach mothers particularly on providing primary health points for babies and college going children. ● Advertising helped The corporate sector sensed the importance of radio mutually strong medium to succeed in very high number of consumers of their products and services and began buying time for this purpose. Within a decade of broadcast, an advertising sector – much more organized than the globe would know during the ascension of medium, was visible. Since the recognition of the commercial programs was dependent hugely on the entertaining side, the glamour was but to seem broad and loud. New trends were invented in music jingles, script writing and presentation. ● Promotion of other industries like movie industry The screenland which was also in its nascent stages was one noticeable area which benefited tremendously from radio technology. Mainly, the film songs would resound the air all day instigating ordinary people to go to theaters for watching movies the songs belong to. At one stage in 30s and 40s it appeared because the radio and film world are only two names of 1 same product. Not only the songs, the talks about munotes.in

Page 60


60 Public Relations Research - I
60 stars scandals and rise and fall of film stars would generate lot of interest for common listeners. Still variety of radio and television stations are heavily trusted matters associated with screenland. ● People glued to radio Wars among nations – particularly the nice wars within the 20th century, have brought massive destruction of societies. A nation at war has just one goal of fighting against the enemy. during this context the role of radio becomes all the more important. Radio news, commentary, announcements and war music are commodities in high demand by a society at war. Radio services are fully exploited by countries at war. The quickest source of telling people what to try and do, where to maneuver and what instruction they need to follow have always come from radio. All important addresses by head of state to people are done on radio. Special band utilized by armies to speak It is not the folk who have the benefit of radio services but the armies are gaining much advantage because of radio technology. Sending codes to different formations within the battlefield within no time are possible by developing a code and occupying a specific frequency for this purpose. Communicating through codes is that the common most practice during wartimes. decoding of messages if believed to be one forte which led to German defeat within the WWII. ● Ships, planes are connected through radio frequencies It is not the activities of armies on the land which are linked with radio messages, ships within the deep sea and therefore the war planes within the air are connected with radio frequencies. ● Satellite using radio waves to detect enemies’ movement After the dispatch of satellite within the space in early 60s, the movement of armies of the enemy is now detected from the skies with the assistance of radio waves. ● Propaganda – to morale boosting and demoralizing enemy The worst in wars occur within the kind of propaganda at a large scale to demoralize the enemy. And at the identical time boosting morale of your own people and armed forces. ● Laws The invention and usage of radio has been instrumental in introducing laws which regulate the radio programs and make sure that no misuse of this technology takes place which can cause problems to social life. ● Censorships It is applied by the governments when a political crisis is visible. Dictatorial government have always used censorships to confirm that a popular opinion isn't molded against them by certain interest groups. Television news Television news refers to disseminating current events via the medium of
munotes.in

Page 61


61 Public Relations
Research - I television. A "news bulletin" or a "newscast" are television programs lasting from seconds to hours that provide updates on world, national, regional, or local news events. newscast is incredibly image-based, showing video of the many of the events that are reported. Television channels may provide news bulletins as a part of a frequently scheduled program. Less often, television shows could also be interrupted or replaced by breaking news ("news flashes") to supply news updates on current or sudden events of great importance. Structure, content and style Newscasts, also referred to as bulletins or news programs, differ in content, tone, and presentation style reckoning on the format of the channel on which they seem in addition as their timeslot. In most parts of the globe, national television networks will have network bulletins featuring national and international news. the highest rating shows will often be within the evening at "prime time", but there are often mealtime newscasts of two to a few hours long. Rolling news channels broadcast news 24 hours every day. Local news could also be presented by stand-alone local TV stations, local stations affiliated with national networks, or by local studios which "opt-out" of national schedule at specified times. Different news programming is also geared toward different audiences, reckoning on age, socio-economic group, or demographic. "Magazine-style" television shows may mix news coverage with topical lifestyle issues, debates, or entertainment content. Newscasts encompass several reporters or guest commentators being interviewed by an anchor, referred to as a "two-way. " There can also be breaking news stories which can present live rolling coverage. Packages will usually be filmed at a relevant location and edited in a veryn editing suite in an exceedingly newsroom or a edit suite in a location a long way from the newsroom. they will even be edited in mobile editing trucks, or satellite trucks, and transmitted back to the newsroom. Live coverage are going to be broadcast from a relevant location and sent back to the newsroom via fixed cable links, microwave radio, production truck, satellite truck, or online streaming. Most news shows are broadcast live. Media and Politics

munotes.in

Page 62


62 Public Relations Research - I
62 The Indian media landscape has changed significantly over the last decade. With the advances in technology, the media industry has been burgeoning like never before and expanded its reach, in terms of the amount of outlets, whether in television, radio or newspaper. While this has set a formidable trend for market growth, the underlying consequences of this rapidly growing media landscape has thrown up some challenges also. The people with access to the corridors of power are successful in influencing dissemination of data through media houses, by partially owning these outlets, and tangentially influencing the way news are presented. Clearly, ownership of the media significantly affects the perspectives presented within the reporting and bias becomes inevitable in such circumstances. The fact that social media and therefore the Internet serve to tell voters about their governments in countries where there are few alternative sources of data has direct consequences for politicians’ behavior—naturally, politicians are concerned about their image on social media. The question is whether or not this variation in behavior is useful for voters, thus increasing political accountability. Overall, the literature finds that politicians use social media to attach to voters which the emergence of social media affects their off-line behavior. 5.4 POLITICAL SOPHISTICATION One's level of political sophistication is a function of knowledge and political ideology. A person who knows very little and doesn't have a well-developed political ideology has a low level of sophistication. In contrast, a person who knows a great deal and has definite political views has a high level of sophistication. Researchers have found that after exposure to news stories about health care reform and a mayoral election campaign, those viewers who were politically sophisticated had learned more and had higher quality arguments about the issues when they were given a chance to write about their own views. The studies that link need for cognition with a preference for viewing news seem to suggest that the news media may naturally tend to appeal to those with a disposition to think about ideas, concepts, or implications. The research on political sophistication seems to suggest the same kind of news effect on certain individuals. But is there any hard evidence that exposure to news in the media has a definite impact on what people are actually thinking? For the answer to that question, we need to look into the theory and research associated with the notion of agenda setting. munotes.in

Page 63


63 Public Relations
Research - I Agenda -Setting Theory
Agenda-setting theory describes the "ability [of the news media] to influence the salience of topics on the general public agenda. " That is, if a item is roofed frequently, the audience will regard the difficulty as more important. In reality, mass media only shows the audience what it comprehends as a very important issue. Print or broadcast news will then remove the audience's ability to think for themselves. Agenda-setting is that the media's ability to transfer salience issues through their new agenda. This way, the general public agenda can form an understanding of the salience issues. Two basic assumptions underlie most research on agenda-setting: (1) the press and therefore the media don't reflect reality; they filter and shape it; (2) media concentration on some issues and subjects leads the general public to perceive those issues as more important than other issues. The Cognitive Effects of Agenda-Setting Agenda-setting occurs through a noesis referred to as "accessibility. " Accessibility implies that the more frequently and prominently the journalism cover a difficulty, the more instances that issue becomes accessible within the audience's memories. When respondents are asked about the foremost important problem facing the country, they answer with the foremost accessible news issue in memory, which is usually the difficulty the print media concentrate on the foremost. The agenda-setting effect isn't the results of receiving one or some messages, but is thanks to the combination impact of a awfully sizable amount of messages all handling the identical general issue. Mass-media coverage normally and agenda-setting specifically even have a strong impact on what individuals think that people are thinking, and hence tend to allocate more importance to issues that are extensively covered by mass media.
munotes.in

Page 64


64 Public Relations Research - I
64 5.5 ADVERSARIAL JOURNALISM Adversarial journalism is a form of journalism that seeks to uncover wrongdoings of public officials. This type of journalism is always premeditated and used to defame or discredit interviewees by portraying them as self-contradictory, malevolent, unqualified, or immoral. This effect is also achieved by replaying selected quotes from public speeches, followed by hand-picked footage or images that appear to reinforce negative images of the interviewee. New Media
An important promise of recent media is that the "democratization" of the creation, publishing, distribution and consumption of media content. New media refers to on-demand access to content any time, any where, on any digital device, similarly because the interactive user feedback, creative participation, and community formation round the media content. Another important promise of recent media is that the "democratization" of the creation, publishing, distribution, and consumption of media content. illustrates the interactive type of communication which will exist in emerging social media. Most technologies described as "new media" are digital, often having characteristics of being manipulated, networkable, dense, compressible, and interactive. Some examples is also the web, websites, computer multimedia, video games, CD-ROMS, and DVDs. Facebook is an example of the social media model, within which most users are participants. There is growing consensus that new media will: ● Alter the meaning of geographic distance. ● Allow for a huge increase in the volume of communication. ● Provide the possibility of increasing the speed of communication. ● Provide opportunities for interactive communication.
munotes.in

Page 65


65 Public Relations
Research - I ● Allow forms of communication that were previously separate to overlap Blogs A blog could be a discussion or informational site published on the web consisting of posts typically displayed in reverse chronological order. Until 2009, blogs were usually the work of one individual, occasionally of atiny low group, and infrequently were themed on one subject. More recently "multi-author blogs" (MABs) have developed. MABs from newspapers, other media outlets, universities, think tanks, interest groups, and similar institutions account for an increasing quantity of blog traffic. the increase of Twitter and other "micro-blogging" systems helps integrate MABs and single-author blogs into societal news streams. Although not a requirement, most good quality blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to go away comments and even message one another on the blogs. it's this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites. therein sense, blogging may be seen as a type of social networking. Indeed, bloggers don't only produce content to post on their blogs, but also build social relations with their readers and other bloggers. Many blogs provide commentary on a specific subject, others function as personal online diaries, and still others function more as online brand advertising of a selected individual or company. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media associated with its topic. Microblogging is another sort of blogging, featuring very short posts. In education, blogs is used as instructional resources. Blogs and Politics By 2004, the role of blogs became increasingly mainstream, as political consultants, news services, and candidates began using them as tools for outreach and opinion forming. Blogging was established by politicians and political candidates to precise opinions on war and other issues and cemented blogs' role as news sources. The rise of latest media has increased communication between people everywhere the globe and also the Internet. it's allowed people to precise themselves through blogs, websites, pictures, and other user-generated media. "Virtual communities" are being established online and transcend geographical boundaries, eliminating social restrictions. While this attitude suggests that the technology drives – and thus may be a determining factor – within the process of globalization, arguments involving technological determinism are generally frowned upon by mainstream media studies. Instead academics specialize in the multiplicity of processes by which technology is funded, researched and produced, forming a feedback circuit when the technologies are used and sometimes munotes.in

Page 66


66 Public Relations Research - I
66 transformed by their users, which then feeds into the method of guiding their future development.and interconnect. New media has also recently become of interest to the worldwide espionage community because it is definitely accessible electronically in database format and may therefore be quickly retrieved and reverse engineered by national governments. Particularly of interest to the espionage community are Facebook and Twitter, two sites where individuals freely divulge personal information that may then be sifted through and archived for the automated creation of dossiers on both people of interest and therefore the average citizen. New media changes continuously because it's constantly modified and redefined by the interaction between users, emerging technologies, and cultural changes. Television news is taken into account by many to be the foremost influential medium for journalism. For many of the local news and national TV newscasts are their primary news sources.Television journalism viewership has become fragmented thanks to the emergence of 24-hour cable news channels. Convergence is that the sharing and cross-promoting of content from a spread of media, which in theory might all converge and become one medium eventually. In broadcast news, the net could be a key a part of this convergence. Frequently, broadcast journalists also write text stories for the online, usually in the middle of the graphics and sound of the initial story. websites also offer the audience an interactive form where they will learn more a few story, are often cited related articles, and may offer comments on the publication. A newscaster (short for "news broadcaster") may be a presenter of reports bulletins. This person may perform electronic news gathering likewise as a compile the script for a news flash with a television producer. munotes.in

Page 67


67 Public Relations
Research - I 6 NATURE SCOPE & LIMITATIONS OF STATISTICS, PARAMETRIC & NONPARAMETRIC TESTS, DESCRIPTIVE & INFERENTIAL STATISTICS 6.0 NATURE, SCOPE & LIMITATIONS OF STATISTICS The term “Statistics” is used in two senses: 1. In plural sense meaning a collection of numerical facts or estimates—the figure themselves. It is in this sense that the public usually think of statistics, e.g., figures relating to population, profits of different units in an industry etc. 2. As a singular noun, the term statistics' denotes the various methods adopted for the collection, analysis & interpretation of the fact numerically represented. In singular sense, the term ‘statistics’ is better described as statistical methods. In our study of the subject, we shall be more concerned with the second meaning of the word ‘statistics’. Scope of Statistics ● Subject Matter of Statistics ● Nature of Statistics ● Limitations of Statistics. 6.1 SUBJECT MATTER OF STATISTICS: (i) Statistical Methods: Data are collected with the help of statistical methods, they are made simple & informative, & with the help of proper conclusions are obtained. There are many methods to get help to collect data & make them eligible for use. These methods are called statistical methods. ● Collection of Data ● Organization ● Condensation ● Interpretation ● Analysis ● Forecasting. munotes.in

Page 68


68 Public Relations Research - I
68 (ii) Applied Statistics: The statistics described above give us the knowledge of the theory but how to bring those policies into practice is studied under practical or applied statistics. It can be divided into the following three categories:- ● Descriptive Applied Statistics ● Scientific Applied Statistics ● Business Statistics. Nature of Statistic
1. Statistics is a Science: Statistics is a script in which we get orderly or systematic knowledge. From the point of view of the prescribed conditions of science, statistics can be called science on the following aspects:- (i) Statistics is the rule of knowledge & is developing at a very rapid pace. (ii) Its various policies are widely used in all areas. Law of statistical regularity, Law of Inertia of Large Numbers, Theory of Probability, etc are universal rules. (iii) Based on the facts of the past & present, future trends are predicted by many statistical methods. In this way, we can say that it is absolutely appropriate to say science to statistics.
munotes.in

Page 69


69 Public Relations
Research - I
2. Statistics is an Art: If science is knowledge then art is action i.e., art refers to the branch of knowledge which changes the best methods for solving various problems & the measures for achieving the facts are also suggested. Statistics is also an art because of- (i) Statistics presents solutions, methods, & conclusions for solving the problem of various questions. (ii) How to use different statistical methods & rules to solve various problems? This thing is also studied mainly in statistics. e.g., , statistics tell us where the use of the arithmetic mean is best & in which direction the median will be best used? How to create an index & what median should be used? (iii) For the behavior of statistical methods, special skills & experience, & self-restraint are required in the person, which is very necessary for art to say a subject. 3. Statistics is a Scientific Method: It should be understood in the context of general scientific methods of acquiring knowledge. There are four aspects to this research; (i) Observation (ii) Hypothesis (iii) Prediction (iv) Verification Limitations 1. The use of statistics is limited to numerical studies: Statistical methods cannot be applied to study the nature of all types of phenomena. Statistics deal with only such phenomena as are capable
munotes.in

Page 70


70 Public Relations Research - I
70 of being quantitatively measured & numerically expressed. e.g., , the health, poverty & intelligence of a group of individuals, cannot be quantitatively measured, & thus are not suitable subjects for statistical study. 2. Statistical methods deal with population or aggregate of individuals rather than with individuals. When we say that the average height of an Indian is 1 meter 80 centimeters, it shows the height not of an individual but as found by the study of all individuals. 3. Statistical relies on estimates & approximations : Statistical laws are not exact laws like mathematical or chemical laws. They are derived by taking a majority of cases & are not true for every individual. Thus the statistical inferences are uncertain. 4. Statistical results might lead to fallacious conclusions by deliberate manipulation of figures & unscientific handling. This is so because statistical results are represented by figures, which are liable to be manipulated. Also the data placed in the hands of an expert may lead to fallacious results. The figures may be stated without their context or may be applied to a fact other than the one to which they really relate. 6.2 PARAMETRIC & NON PARAMETRIC TESTS A hypothesis may be defined as a proposition or a set of propositions set forth as an explanation for the occurrence of some specified group of phenomena either asserted merely as a provisional conjecture to guide some investigation or accepted as highly probable in the light of established facts. Quite often a research hypothesis is a predictive statement, capable of being tested by scientific methods, that relates an independent variable to some dependent variable. E.g., consider statements like the following ones: “Students who receive counseling will show a greater increase in creativity than students not receiving counseling” Or “the automobile A is performing as well as automobile B.” These are hypotheses capable of being objectively verified & tested. Thus, we may conclude that a hypothesis states what we are looking for & it is a proposition which can be put to a test to determine its validity. Characteristics of Hypothesis in Research Methodology 1. Hypothesis should be clear & precise. If the hypothesis is not clear & precise, the inferences drawn on its basis cannot be taken as reliable. 2. Hypothesis should be capable of being tested. In a swamp of untestable hypotheses, many a time the research programmes have bogged down. Some prior study may be done by researchers in order to make hypotheses a testable one. A hypothesis “is testable if other munotes.in

Page 71


71 Public Relations
Research - I deductions can be made from it which, in turn, can be confirmed or disproved by observation.” 3. Hypothesis should state the relationship between variables, if it happens to be a relational hypothesis. 4. Hypothesis should be limited in scope & must be specific. A researcher must remember that narrower hypotheses are generally more testable & he should develop such hypotheses. 5. Hypothesis should be stated as far as possible in most simple terms so that the same is easily understandable by all concerned. But one must remember that the simplicity of the hypothesis has nothing to do with its significance. 6. Hypothesis should be consistent with most known facts i.e., it must be consistent with a substantial body of established facts. In other words, it should be one which judges accept as being the most likely. 7. Hypothesis should be amenable to testing within a reasonable time. One should not use even an excellent hypothesis, if the same cannot be tested in reasonable time for one cannot spend a life-time collecting data to test it. 8. Hypothesis must explain the facts that gave rise to the need for explanation. This means that by using the hypothesis plus other known & accepted generalizations, one should be able to deduce the original problem condition. Thus the hypothesis must actually explain what it claims to explain; it should have empirical reference. Parametric Tests The basic principle behind the parametric tests is that we have a fixed set of parameters that are used to determine a probabilistic model that may be used in Machine Learning as well. Parametric tests are those tests for which we have prior knowledge of the population distribution (i.e, normal), or if not then we can easily approximate it to a normal distribution which is possible with the help of the Central Limit Theorem. Parameters for using the normal distribution: ● Mean ● Standard Deviation Eventually, the classification of a test to be parametric is completely dependent on the population assumptions. There are many parametric tests available from which some of them are as follows: ● To find the confidence interval for the population means with the help of known standard deviation. munotes.in

Page 72


72 Public Relations Research - I
72 ● To determine the confidence interval for population means along with the unknown standard deviation. ● To find the confidence interval for the population variance. ● To find the confidence interval for the difference of two means, with an unknown value of standard deviation. 6.4 IMPORTANCE OF PARAMETRIC TEST IN RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 1. Parametric tests can provide trustworthy results with distributions that are skewed & non normal Parametric analyses can produce reliable results even when your continuous data are non normally distributed. You just have to be sure that your sample size meets the requirements for each analysis in the table below. Simulation studies have identified these requirements. Read here for more information about these studies.You can use these parametric tests with non normally distributed data thanks to the central limit theorem. 2. Parametric tests can provide trustworthy results when the groups have different amounts of variability Nonparametric tests don’t require data that are normally distributed. However, nonparametric tests have the disadvantage of an additional requirement that can be very hard to satisfy. The groups in a nonparametric analysis typically must all have the same variability (dispersion). Nonparametric analyses might not provide accurate results when variability differs between groups Conversely, parametric analyses, like the 2-sample t-test or one-way ANOVA, allow you to analyze groups with unequal variances. In most statistical software, it’s as easy as checking the correct box! You don’t have to worry about groups having different amounts of variability when you use a parametric analysis. 3. Parametric tests have greater statistical power In most cases, parametric tests have more power. If an effect actually exists, a parametric analysis is more likely to detect it. Important parametric tests: 1. z-test; 2. t-test; 3. χ2-test, and 4. F-test. munotes.in

Page 73


73 Public Relations
Research - I z-test is based on the normal probability distribution & is used for judging the significance of several statistical measures, particularly the mean. The relevant test statistic, z, is worked out & compared with its probable value (to be read from a table showing area under normal curve) at a specified level of significance for judging the significance of the measure concerned. This is a most frequently used test in research studies. This test is used even when binomial distribution or t-distribution is applicable on the presumption that such a distribution tends to approximate normal distribution as ‘n’ becomes larger. z-test is generally used for comparing the mean of a sample to some hypothesized mean for the population in case of large sample, or when population variance is known. z-test is also used for judging the significance of difference between means of two independent samples in case of large samples, or when population variance is known. z-test is also used for comparing the sample proportion to a theoretical value of population proportion or for judging the difference in proportions of two independent samples when n happens to be large. Besides, this test may be used for judging the significance of median, mode, coefficient of correlation & several other measures. t-test is based on t-distribution & is considered an appropriate test for judging the significance of a sample mean or for judging the significance of difference between the means of two samples in case of small sample(s) when population variance is not known (in which case we use variance of the sample as an estimate of the population variance). In case two samples are related, we use paired t-test (or what is known as difference test) for judging the significance of the mean of difference between the two related samples. It can also be used for judging the significance of the coefficients of simple & partial correlations. The relevant test statistic, t, is calculated from the sample data & then compared with its probable value based on t-distribution (to be read from the table that gives probable values of t for different levels of significance for different degrees of freedom) at a specified level of significance for concerning degrees of freedom for accepting or rejecting the null hypothesis. It may be noted that t-test applies only in case of small sample(s) when population variance is unknown. χ2-test is based on chi-square distribution & as a parametric test is used for comparing a sample variance to a theoretical population variance.
munotes.in

Page 74


74 Public Relations Research - I
74 F-test is based on F-distribution & is used to compare the variance of the two-independent samples. This test is also used in the context of analysis of variance (ANOVA) for judging the significance of more than two sample means at one & the same time. It is also used for judging the significance of multiple correlation coefficients. Test statistic, F, is calculated & compared with its probable value (to be seen in the F-ratio tables for different degrees of freedom for greater & smaller variances at specified level of significance) for accepting or rejecting the null hypothesis. It is calculated as: F = s12/s22 Non-parametric Tests In Non-Parametric tests, we don’t make any assumption about the parameters for the given population or the population we are studying. In fact, these tests don’t depend on the population. In modern days, Non-parametric tests are gaining popularity & an impact of influence some reasons behind this fame is – ● The main reason is that there is no need to be mannered while using parametric tests. ● The second reason is that we do not require to make assumptions about the population given (or taken) on which we are doing the analysis. ● Most of the nonparametric tests available are very easy to apply & to underst& also i.e. the complexity is very low.
Image Source: Google Images Chi-Square Test 1. It is a non-parametric test of hypothesis testing. 2. As a non-parametric test, chi-square can be used: ● test of goodness of fit.
munotes.in

Page 75


75 Public Relations
Research - I
● as a test of independence of two variables. 3. It helps in assessing the goodness of fit between a set of observed & those expected theoretically. 4. It makes a comparison between the expected frequencies & the observed frequencies. 5. Greater the difference, the greater is the value of chi-square. 6. If there is no difference between the expected & observed frequencies, then the value of chi-square is equal to zero. 7. It is also known as the “Goodness of fit test” which determines whether a particular distribution fits the observed data or not. 8. It is calculated as: 9. Chi-square is also used to test the independence of two variables. 11. Chi-square as a parametric test is used as a test for population variance based on sample variance. Mann-Whitney U-Test

munotes.in

Page 76


76 Public Relations Research - I
76 1. It is a non-parametric test of hypothesis testing. 2. This test is used to investigate whether two independent samples were selected from a population having the same distribution. 3. It is a true nonparametric counterpart of the T-test & gives the most accurate estimates of significance especially when sample sizes are small & the population is not normally distributed. 4. It is based on the comparison of every observation in the first sample with every observation in the other sample. 5. The test statistic used here is “U”. 6. Maximum value of “U” is ‘n1*n2‘ & the minimum value is zero. 7. It is also known as: ● Mann-Whitney Wilcoxon Test. ● Mann-Whitney Wilcoxon Rank Test. 8. Mathematically, U is given by: U1 = R1 – n1(n1+1)/2 where n1 is the sample size for sample 1, & R1 is the sum of ranks in Sample 1. U2 = R2 – n2(n2+1)/2 When consulting the significance tables, the smaller values of U1 & U2 are used. The sum of two values is given by, U1 + U2 = { R1 – n1(n1+1)/2 } + { R2 – n2(n2+1)/2 } Knowing that R1+R2 = N(N+1)/2 & N=n1+n2, & doing some algebra, we find that the sum is: U1 + U2 = n1*n2 Kruskal-Wallis H-test
munotes.in

Page 77


77 Public Relations
Research - I 1. It is a non-parametric test of hypothesis testing. 2. This test is used for comparing two or more independent samples of equal or different sample sizes. 3. It extends the Mann-Whitney-U-Test which is used to compare only two groups. 4. One-Way ANOVA is the parametric equivalent of this test. & that’s why it is also known as ‘One-Way ANOVA on ranks. 5. It uses ranks instead of actual data. 6. It does not assume the population to be normally distributed. 7. The test statistic used here is “H”. Descriptive & inferential statistics.
● Descriptive Statistics A graphical representation of data is another method of descriptive statistics. Examples of this visual representation are histograms, bar graphs & pie graphs, to name a few. Using these methods, the data is described by compiling it into a graph, table or other visual representation. This provides a quick method to make comparisons between different data sets & to spot the smallest & largest values & trends or changes over a period of time. If the pet shop owner wanted to know what type of pet was purchased most in the summer, a graph might be a good medium to compare the number of each type of pet sold & the months of the year.
munotes.in

Page 78


78 Public Relations Research - I
78 ● Common tools of descriptive statistics Central tendency: Use the mean or the median to locate the center of the dataset. This measure tells you where most values fall. Dispersion: How far out from the center do the data extend? You can use the range or standard deviation to measure the dispersion. A low dispersion indicates that the values cluster more tightly around the center. Higher dispersion signifies that data points fall further away from the center. We can also graph the frequency distribution. Skewness: The measure tells you whether the distribution of values is symmetric or skewed. You can present this summary information using both numbers & graphs. These are the standard descriptive statistics, but there are other descriptive analyses you can perform, such as assessing the relationships of paired data using correlation & scatter plots. Example: Suppose we want to describe the test scores in a specific class of 30 students. We record all of the test scores & calculate the summary statistics & produce graphs.
Statistic Class value Mean 79.18 Range 66.21 – 96.53 Proportion >= 70 86.7% These results indicate that the mean score of this class is 79.18. The scores range from 66.21 to 96.53, & the distribution is symmetrically centered
munotes.in

Page 79


79 Public Relations
Research - I around the mean. A score of at least 70 on the test is acceptable. The data show that 86.7% of the students have acceptable scores. Collectively, this information gives us a pretty good picture of this specific class. There is no uncertainty surrounding these statistics because we gathered the scores for everyone in the class. However, we can’t take these results & extrapolate to a larger population of students. A good exploratory tool for descriptive statistics is the five-number summary, which presents a set of distributional properties for your sample. 6. 5 INFERENTIAL STATISTICS Now, suppose you need to collect data on a very large population. e.g., , suppose you want to know the average height of all the men in a city with a population of so many million residents. It isn't very practical to try & get the height of each man. This is where inferential statistics come into play. Inferential statistics makes inferences about populations using data drawn from the population. Instead of using the entire population to gather the data, the statistician will collect a sample or samples from the millions of residents & make inferences about the entire population using the sample. The sample is a set of data taken from the population to represent the population. Probability distributions, hypothesis testing, correlation testing & regression analysis all fall under the category of inferential statistics. Inferential statistics takes data from a sample & makes inferences about the larger population from which the sample was drawn. Because the goal of inferential statistics is to draw conclusions from a sample & generalize them to a population, we need to have confidence that our sample accurately reflects the population. This requirement affects our process. At a broad level, we must do the following: 1. Define the population we are studying. 2. Draw a representative sample from that population.
munotes.in

Page 80


80 Public Relations Research - I
80 3. Use analyses that incorporate the sampling error. We don’t get to pick a convenient group. Instead, random sampling allows us to have confidence that the sample represents the population. This process is a primary method for obtaining samples that mirrors the population on average. Random sampling produces statistics, such as the mean, that do not tend to be too high or too low. Using a random sample, we can generalize from the sample to the broader population. Unfortunately, gathering a truly random sample can be a complicated process. Following are the methods to collect a representative sample: ○ Simple random sampling ○ Stratified sampling ○ Cluster sampling ○ Systematic sampling In contrast, convenience sampling doesn’t tend to obtain representative samples. These samples are easier to collect but the results are minimally useful. Standard analysis tools of inferential statistics The most common methodologies in inferential statistics are hypothesis tests, confidence intervals, & regression analysis. Interestingly, these inferential methods can produce similar summary values as descriptive statistics, such as the mean & standard deviation. However, as I’ll show you, we use them very differently when making inferences. ● Hypothesis tests Hypothesis tests use sample data answer questions like the following: ○ Does the population mean greater than or less than a particular value? ○ Are the means of two or more populations different from each other? e.g., if we study the effectiveness of a new medication by comparing the outcomes in a treatment & control group, hypothesis tests can tell us whether the drug’s effect that we observe in the sample is likely to exist in the population. After all, we don’t want to use the medication if it is effective only in our specific sample. Instead, we need evidence that it’ll be useful in the entire population of patients. Hypothesis tests allow us to draw these types of conclusions about entire populations. munotes.in

Page 81


81 Public Relations
Research - I
● Confidence intervals (CIs) In inferential statistics, a primary goal is to estimate population parameters. These parameters are the unknown values for the entire population, such as the population mean & standard deviation. These parameter values are not only unknown but almost always unknowable. Typically, it’s impossible to measure an entire population. The sampling error I mentioned earlier produces uncertainty, or a margin of error, around our estimates. Suppose we define our population as all high school basketball players. Then, we draw a random sample from this population & calculate the mean height of 181 cm. This sample estimate of 181 cm is the best estimate of the mean height of the population. However, it’s virtually guaranteed that our estimate of the population parameter is not exactly correct. Confidence intervals incorporate the uncertainty & sample error to create a range of values the actual population value is like to fall within. e.g., a confidence interval of [176 186] indicates that we can be confident that the real population mean falls within this range. ● Regression analysis Regression analysis describes the relationship between a set of independent variables & a dependent variable. This analysis incorporates hypothesis tests that help determine whether the relationships observed in the sample data actually exist in the population. e.g., the fitted line plot below displays the relationship in the regression model between height & weight in adolescent girls. Because the relationship is statistically significant, we have sufficient evidence to conclude that this relationship exists in the population rather than just our sample. Example of inferential statistics In descriptive statistics, we picked the specific class that we wanted to describe & recorded all of the test scores for that class. Nice & simple. For inferential statistics, we need to define the population & then draw a random sample from that population. Let’s define our population as 8th-grade students in public schools in the State of maharashtra. We need to devise a random sampling plan to help
munotes.in

Page 82


82 Public Relations Research - I
82 ensure a representative sample. This process can actually be arduous. For the sake of this example, assume that we are provided a list of names for the entire population & draw a random sample of 100 students from it & obtain their test scores. Note that these students will not be in one class, but from many different classes in different schools across the state. Inferential statistics results For inferential statistics, we can calculate the point estimate for the mean, standard deviation, & proportion for our random sample. However, it is staggeringly improbable that any of these point estimates are exactly correct, & there is no way to know for sure anyway. Because we can’t measure all subjects in this population, there is a margin of error around these statistics. Consequently, I’ll report the confidence intervals for the mean, standard deviation, & the proportion of satisfactory scores (>=70). Here is the CSV data file: Inferential_statistics. Statistic Population Parameter Estimate
(CIs) Mean 77.4 – 80.9 Standard deviation 7.7 – 10.1 Proportion scores >= 70 77% – 92% Given the uncertainty associated with these estimates, we can be 95% confident that the population mean is between 77.4 & 80.9. The population standard deviation (a measure of dispersion) is likely to fall between 7.7 & 10.1. And, the population proportion of satisfactory scores is expected to be between 77% & 92%. Differences between Descriptive & Inferential Statistics As you can see, the difference between descriptive & inferential statistics lies in the process as much as it does the statistics that you report. For descriptive statistics, we choose a group that we want to describe & then measure all subjects in that group. The statistical summary describes this group with complete certainty (outside of measurement error).
munotes.in

Page 83


83 Public Relations
Research - I 7 MEASURE OF CENTRAL TENDENCY Topics to be covered in the Unit 1. Mean 2. Median 3. Mode 4. Variance 5. Standard Deviation 7.1 ARITHMETIC MEAN In this chapter you will study the measures of central tendency, which covers mean median mode. We will also understand the concept of variance, covariance, standard deviation correlation and regression. Let's start with Mean, to understand mean, lets take an example: Suppose Mr. Ravi has 5 sons and their monthly income is Rs. 8000, Rs. 10900, Rs. 23000, Rs. 12000 and Rs. 16500 and you are required to calculate the average monthly income of the family. So you will Mean (x) = (8000 + 10900 + 23000 + 12000 + 16500) / 5 = 70400 / 5 = 14080 So the average monthly income of Mr. Ravi’s Family is Rs. 14,080. In the adobe example, in order to get the mean or average income of the family we simply added the income from the 5 sons and as there were 5 sons whose income was added we then divided the total income by 5. When we compute the mean, we sum the given data. There is a convenient notation to indicate the sum. Let x represent any value in the data set. Then the notation ∑x(read “the sum of all given x values”) means that we are to sum all the data values. In other words, we are to sum all the entries in the distribution. The summation symbol ∑ means sum the following and is capital sigma, the S of the Greek alphabet. The symbol for the mean of a sample distribution of x values is denoted by X̅ (read “x bar”). If your data comprise the entire population, we use the symbol µ (lowercase Greek letter mu, pronounced “mew”) to represent the mean. So while computing mean is nothing but, an average that uses all the exact values of the given data and then adds them to divide with the number of entries is mean. Mean = Sum of all data / No of data. munotes.in

Page 84


84 Public Relations Research - I
84 Example: Neha has scored differently in the last 10 tests conducted round the year. In order to qualify for the same subject next year, she has to at least have a “A” grade. Help Neha understand whether she will be able to qualify for same subject next year. The grades are computed as A+ = above 80, A = 70 – 80. B+ = 50 – 70, C+ = 60 – 70, C = below 60. Her marks in the last 10 tests are 78, 87, 79, 56, 45, 39, 80, 91, 88 and 78. Solution: The data can be represented as follows Test Marks (X) So here the total of 10 tests is 721 Marks.
Now the mean will be calculated as
X̅ = ∑X / n = 721 / 10 = 72.1
Therefore, the mean is 72.1 and Neha will get
“A” grade.
Hence, she qualifies for the same subject next
year. 1 78 2 87 3 79 4 56 5 45 6 39 7 80 8 91 9 88 10 78 Total ∑X = 721 Sums for Practise: 1. Find mean of the Following data a. 23, 24, 25, 32, 45, 46, 56, 51, 33,
23 b. 35, 34, 56, 56, 67, 78, 88 c. 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80. 90 d. 11, 21, 31, 41, 51, 61, 71, 8, 91 e. 123, 324, 456, 675, 786 f. 1, 8, 7, 6, 9, 2, 3, 1, 5, 2, 4, 3, 6,
7, 8, g. 66, 45, 34, 45, 77, 66, 88, 12, 23,
90 h. 99, 68, 67, 66, 23 i. 123, 345, 456, 567 j. 73, 67, 57, 78 2. Solve the following 1. Reema’s salary for the last 8 months is as follows: 65456, 56454, 87656, 87334, 67345, 45656, 78656 and 88767. She wants you to find out what is her monthly average salary and whether she can say her monthly average salary is more than 70000 or less than 70000? munotes.in

Page 85


85 Public Relations
Research - I 2. The marks of five students are given below. The marks are for last 10 tests conducted around the year. Now they have a final exam approaching, before which you are supposed to grade the performance of five students on the following category on the basis of mean: O = Above 90, A+ = 80 – 90, A = 70 – 80, B = 60 – 70, C = 50 – 60, D = 35 – 50, F = Below 35 Tests Reema Sanjay Sujay Manjiri Om 1 56 45 88 91 56 2 65 44 97 89 67 3 67 56 79 88 78 4 66 56 88 90 87 5 54 57 89 92 92 6 56 58 80 93 90 7 78 67 90 94 91 8 89 78 92 96 92 9 88 78 93 89 99 10 39 89 94 98 59 Mean is the best measure of central tendency when, The data distribution is continuous and symmetrical, such as when your data is normally distributed. But still, it all depends on what you are trying to infer from your data. 3. Calculate the mean age of the kabaddi players in India based on the following data: 23 20 21 22 23 20 23 20 21 23 23 20 21 20 21 20 19 20 21 22 4. Compute Mean for the following data sets a. The Following Data set is of a monthly crop yield production from thirty pieces of land in one region. Find the mean production of the area. (Figures given are in tonnes per hectares) 12 23 12 23 11 10 11 12 13 15 10 9 11 12 13 10 11 13 15 12 12 13 14 15 10 11 19 15 11 12 munotes.in

Page 86


86 Public Relations Research - I
86 b. The data set represents the weight of a class of 20 students. 56 55 45 57 67 68 54 56 45 49 51 65 76 65 64 60 49 55 59 65 Median Another method of Central tendency is Median. It focusses on the position than the value itself. The median is the centremost score if the number of scores is odd. If the number is even, the median is taken as the average of the two centremost scores. The median uses the position rather than the specific value of each data entry. If the extreme values of a data set change, the median usually does not change. Example 1: City College has appointed you to make a report of the student’s average credit hour load a full-time student carry. (A 12-credit-hour load is the minimum requirement for full-time status. For the same, students may take up to 20 credit hours.) A random sample of 40 students yielded the following information (in credit hours): 12 13 14 15 16 12 17 19 18 12 14 16 18 12 14 5 13 16 16 17 15 18 19 13 14 15 16 17 18 15 14 15 13 12 16 17 18 19 12 16 Solution: Step 1: Arrange the data in the order from lowest to highest 12 12 12 12 12 12 13 13 13 13 14 14 14 14 14 15 15 15 15 15 15 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 17 17 17 17 18 18 18 18 18 19 19 19 Step 2: Since the data set has 40 students (Even Number) so we will take the middle numbers to be the 20th and 21st entry (here 15) and then take average of the same Median = (15 + 15) / 2 = 15 Example 2: Calculate the median of the following data 89 88 87 89 89 87 87 89 88 88 87 88 89 85 86 89 87 Solution: munotes.in

Page 87


87 Public Relations
Research - I Arrange the data set from lowest to highest 85 86 87 87 87 87 87 88 88 88 88 89 89 89 89 89 89 From the above 19 values get the centre point value will be the 9th value. Therefore, the median value is 88. Properties of the median Effect of Extreme Scores on mean and median Sr.
No. Scores Mean Median 1 23, 24, 25, 34, 34, 78, 900, 990 263.5 34 2 1, 3, 4, 34, 56, 78, 800 139.43 34 3 30, 30, 32, 32, 33, 33, 34, 45, 89, 100,
120, 999, 10110 899 34 4 11, 11, 12, 13, 34, 56, 788, 877, 919 302.33 34 There are two properties of the median worth noting. First, the median is less sensitive than the mean to extreme scores. To illustrate this property, consider the scores shown in the first column of Table. The three distributions shown are the same except for the last score. In the second distribution, the score of 800 is very different in value from the other scores. In the third distribution, the score of 10110 is even more extreme. Note what happens to the mean in the second and third distributions. Since the mean is sensitive to extreme scores, it changes considerably with the extreme scores. How about the median? Does it change too? As we see from the third column, the answer is no! The median stays the same. Since the median is not responsive to each individual score but rather divides the distribution in half, it is not as sensitive to extreme scores as is the mean. For this reason, when the distribution is strongly skewed, it is probably better to represent the central tendency with the median rather than the mean. The second property of the median involves its sampling stability. It states that, under usual circumstances, the median is more subject to sampling variability than the mean but less subject to sampling variability than the mode. Because the median is usually less stable than the mean from sample to sample, it is not as useful in inferential statistics. Sums for Practise: 1. Find Median of the following numbers 1 23, 34, 45, 56, 67, 78, 78, 89, 12, 23, 34, 34, 56, 67, 78 2 12, 34, 56, 76, 21, 23, 32, 67, 78, 12, 34, 23, 55, 66, 22, 12, 54, 67 munotes.in

Page 88


88 Public Relations Research - I
88 3 23, 34, 34, 33, 32, 45, 56, 67, 78, 89, 22, 12, 29, 98, 90, 64, 45 4 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 12, 1, 23, 65, 3, 4, 3, 2, 76, 87, 12, 22, 33, 88 5 12, 34, 45, 66, 1, 5, 6, 7, 12, 33, 77, 12, 22, 23, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 55 Mode In research, sometimes it is important to know the most frequently repetitive value of the data set. In other words, mode enables to find the value around which maximum concentration exists. The mode is defi ned as the most frequent score in the distribution. So, while calculating the mode it is important to find out the most frequent entry. Therefore, mode of a data set is the value that occurs most frequently. The word mode has been derived from the French word “la Mode” which signifies the most fashionable values of a distribution, because it is repeated the highest number of times in the series. Mode is the most frequently observed data value. It is denoted by Mo. For Example: 1. Count the Count the letters in each word of this sentence and give the mode. Once upon a time there was a little girl. Her name was Goldilocks. She had golden hair. Solution: Step 1: Count the letters in the above sentence 4 4 1 4 5 3 1 6 4 3 4 3 10 3 3 6 4 Step 2: Now mention the frequency of each number count in the above sentence Number of letters (Data) 1 3 4 5 6 10 Number of times in sentence
(Frequency) 2 5 6 1 2 1 As you can see in the above table, the letters with count 4 have come 6 times hence the most frequently repeated number is 4 and the mode is 6. Mode can be very useful to determine the consumer demand as it will give the most demanded item by giving it the highest frequency. It is also easy to determine in large number of data where only the frequency of the data set is to be calculated and becomes a variable of decision. Although the mode is the easiest measure of central tendency to determine, it is not used very much in the behavioral sciences because it is not very stable from sample to sample and often there is more than one mode for a given set of scores. munotes.in

Page 89


89 Public Relations
Research - I Variance and Standard Deviation The variance ( S2 ) is the average squared deviation from the mean. It is also known as the square of the standard deviation. Both measures are interchangeable. These means that the standard deviation is the square root of the variance. In simple words, Variance is square of standard deviation or otherwise Standard Deviation is square root of Variance. For the data, sample data helps find variance and then variance enables find standard deviation. 𝑠ଶ= ∑(𝑥−𝜇)ଶ𝑛−1 Where s = standard deviation x = sample data µ = mean of sample data n = no. of sample data Alternatively Standard deviation is described as just the square root of the above formula 𝑠= ඨ∑(𝑥−𝜇)ଶ𝑛−1 There is one another way also of representing variance and standard deviation Variance, 𝑠ଶ= ∑௫మି ∑ೣమ೙௡ିଵ and Standard deviation, 𝑠= ඨ∑௫మି ∑ೣమ೙௡ିଵ Above given formulas are used interchangeably. The formula given later is mostly used as its computation friendly. Hence, the first formula given is known as definition formula and the later is known as Computation formula. Example 1: Calculate the variance and standard deviation of the following data n 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 x 23 34 32 35 37 29 28 33 36 24 Solution: n x x – µ (x – µ)2 Applying formula 1 23 23 – 31 = –8 64 For Variance, munotes.in

Page 90


90 Public Relations Research - I
90 2 34 34 – 31 = 3 9 𝑠ଶ= ∑(𝑥−𝜇)ଶ
𝑛−1
s2 = ଶଶସ
ଵ଴ିଵ= ଶଶସ
ଽ=24.89
Now for Standard
Deviation:
s = √24.89=4.99 3 32 32 – 31 = 1 1 4 35 35 – 31 = 4 16 5 37 37 – 31 = 6 36 6 29 29 – 31 = –2 4 7 27 27 – 31 = –4 16 8 33 33 – 31 = 2 4 9 36 36 – 31 = 5 25 10 24 24 – 31 = –7 49 ∑x =
310 ∑(x – µ)2 =
224 µ = 310/10 = 31 n x x2 Applying formula 1 23 529 For Variance,
𝑠ଶ= ∑ଶ− (∑𝑥)ଶ
𝑛
𝑛−1
For the above formula
s2 = ଽ଼ଷସିଽ଺ଵ଴
ଵ଴ିଵ= ଶଶସ
ଽ=24.89
Now for Standard Deviation:
s = √24.89=4.99 2 34 1156 3 32 1024 4 35 1225 5 37 1369 6 29 841 7 27 729 8 33 1089 9 36 1296 10 24 576 ∑x =
310 ∑x2 = 9834 (∑௫)మ
௡= ଷଵ଴∗ଷଵ଴
ଵ଴ = 9610 Example 2: Calculate the variance and standard deviation of the following data n 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 x 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Solution: Method 1 n x x – µ (x – µ)2 Applying formula munotes.in

Page 91


91 Public Relations
Research - I 1 10 10 – 5.5 = 4.5 20.25 µ = 55 /10 = 5.5
For Variance,
𝑠ଶ= ∑(𝑥−𝜇)ଶ
𝑛−1
s2 = ଼ଶ.ହ
ଵ଴ିଵ= ଼ଶ.ହ
ଽ=9.17
Now for Standard
Deviation:
s = √9.17=3.03 2 9 9 – 5.5 = 3.5 12.25 3 8 8 – 5.5 = 2.5 6.25 4 7 7 – 5.5 = 1.5 2.25 5 6 6 – 5.5 = 0.5 0.25 6 5 5 – 5.5 = –0.5 0.25 7 4 4 – 5.5 = –1.5 2.25 8 3 3 – 5.5 = –2.5 6.25 9 2 2 – 5.5 = –3.5 12.25 10 1 1 – 5.5 = –4.5 20.25 ∑x =
55 ∑(x – µ)2 =
82.5 Method 2 n x x2 Applying formula 1 10 100 (∑௫)మ
௡= ହହ∗ହହ
ଵ଴ = 302.5
For Variance,
𝑠ଶ= ∑𝑥ଶ− (∑𝑥)ଶ
𝑛
𝑛−1
For the above formula
s2 = ଷ଼ହିଷ଴ଶ.ହ
ଵ଴ିଵ= ଼ଶ.ହ
ଽ=9.17
Now for Standard Deviation:
s = √9.17=3.03 2 9 81 3 8 64 4 7 49 5 6 36 6 5 25 7 4 16 8 3 9 9 2 4 10 1 1 ∑x = 55 ∑x2 = 385 Sums for Practise: 1. Find the variance and standard deviation of the following data a. n 1 2 3 4 5 x 12 23 34 45 56 b. n 1 2 3 4 5 x 22 12 32 9 24 n 6 7 8 munotes.in

Page 92


92 Public Relations Research - I
92 x 7 11 25 c. Following is the data received from a region of crop cultivation
received in a particular year. (The data given below is in ’00 kg) n January February March April May x 10 13 9 6 5 n June July August September October x 11 7 9 10 7 n November December x 13 11 d. Following is the data received from Nav Bharat Times about
newspaper subscription in a region for a financial year 2021 -
2022. The figure is no of households in a given locality. n April May June July August x 12 23 13 19 11 n September October November December January x 14 13 24 12 11 n February March x 17 18 While summing it up, Sr.
No. Quantity Description 1 x The variable x represents a data value or
outcome 2 Mean
µ=∑௫
௡ This is the average of the data values, or what
you ”expect” to happen the next time you
conduct the statistical experiment. Note that n is
the sample size 3 x - µ This is the difference between what happened
and what you expected to happen. This
represe nts a “deviation” away from what you
“expect” and is a measure of risk. 4 (x - µ)2 The expression is called the sum of squares. The
quantity is squared to make it nonnegative. The
sum is over all the data. If you don’t square ,
then the sum is equal to 0 because the negative munotes.in

Page 93


93 Public Relations
Research - I values cancel the positive values. This occurs
even if some val ues are large, indicating a large
deviation or risk. 5 Sum of squares
∑(x - µ)2
Or
∑𝑥ଶ− (∑𝑥)ଶ
𝑛 This is an algebraic simplification of the sum of
squares that is easier to compute. The defining
formula for the sum of squares is the upper one.
The compu tation formula for the sum of squares
is the lower one. Both formulas give the same
result. 6 Sample variance
𝑠ଶ= ∑(𝑥−𝜇)ଶ
𝑛−1
Or
𝑠ଶ
= ∑𝑥ଶ− ∑𝑥ଶ
𝑛
𝑛−1
The sample variance is s2. The variance can be
thought of as a kind of average of the values.
However, for technical reasons, we divide the
sum by the quantity rather than n. This gives us
the best mathematical estimate for the sample
variance. The defining formula for the variance
is the upper one. The computation formula for
the variance is the lower
one. Both formulas give the same result. 7 Sample Standard
Deviation
𝑠
= ඨ∑(𝑥−𝜇)ଶ
𝑛−1
Or
𝑠
= ඨ∑𝑥ଶ− ∑𝑥ଶ
𝑛
𝑛−1
This is the sample standard deviations. Why do
we take the square root? Well, if the original x
units were, say, days or dollars, then the s2 units
would be days squared or dollars squared (wow,
what’s that?). We take the square root to return
to the original units of the data measurements.
The standard deviation can be thought of as a
measure of variability or risk. Larger values of s
imply greate r variability in the data. The defining
formula for the standard deviation is the upper
one. The computation formula for the standard
deviation is the lower one. Both formulas give
the same result. The above table is originally from Brase and Brase Understandable statistics Concepts and Methods, Third edition. Covariance and Corelation Adapted from: https://www.simplilearn.com/covariance-vs-correlation-article\ Students often confuse with these two terms and they think it is used interchangeably. Whereas, in reality they are opposite of each other. In covariance, you understand the difference between two variables, whereas correlation helps you understand the relationship between the two variables. Lets discuss the terms in detail to understand the difference between the term and also its application in statistics. munotes.in

Page 94


94 Public Relations Research - I
94 7.2 UNDERSTANDING COVARIANCE Covariance is a statistical term used to highlight the systematic relationship between two random variables. The relationship is simple, where the change in one variable causes the change in another variable. The covariance value can range from -∞ to +∞, with a negative value indicating a negative relationship and a positive value indicating a positive relationship. The value of the covariance also indicates inferential points. Higher the number, reliance of the relationship is more. Also, positive covariance indicates a direct relationship and is denoted by positive number. On the other hand, a negative number indicates an inverse relationship and is denoted by a negative sign. Covariance is great for defining the type of relationship, but a researcher should refrain himself from using it to define the magnitude. Let Σ(X) and Σ(Y) be the expected values of the variables, the covariance formula can be represented as: Covariance (x,y) = ଵ௡ ∑௫௜ୀଵ(xi – x̄)(yi – ȳ) Where, xi = data value of x yi = data value of y x̄ = mean of x ȳ = mean of y N = number of data values Understanding Correlation Correlation helps to determine the degree to which the variables in the research are related and or dependent on each other. In other words, it helps a researcher to understand the way two or more random variables move in sequence. In simpler words, if movement of one variable causes other variables to move and vice versa they are said to be correlated. The formula for correlation is: Where, var(X) = standard deviation of X var(Y) = standard deviation of Y Positive correlation occurs when two variables move in the same direction. When variables move in the opposite direction, they are said to be negatively correlated.
munotes.in

Page 95


95 Public Relations
Research - I Correlation is of three types: 1. Simple Correlation: In simple correlation, a single number expresses the degree to which two variables are related. 2. Partial Correlation: When one variable's effects are removed, the correlation between two variables is revealed in partial correlation. 3. Multiple correlation: A statistical technique that uses two or more variables to predict the value of one variable.
Source: Covariance vs Correlation (wallstreetmojo.com)
munotes.in

Page 96


96 Public Relations Research - I
96 References:
Brase C. H., & Brase C. P. (2006), Understandable Statistics: Concepts and Methods, Tenth Edition Brooks/Cole
Pagano R. R. (2013), Understanding Statistics in the Behavioral Sciences, Tenth Edition, Wadsworth Cengage Learning
https://www.wallstreetmojo.com/correlation-vs-covariance/ munotes.in

Page 97


97 Public Relations
Research - I 8 HYPOTHESIS 8.1 OBJECTIVES 1. What is hypothesis? 2. Null hypothesis 3. Alternate Hypothesis 4. Steps of Hypothesis Testing 5. Kinds of Variables 8.2 WHAT IS HYPOTHESIS? According to the Merriam – webster dictionary, A hypothesis is an assumption, an idea that is proposed for the sake of argument so that it can be tested to see if it might be true. In the scientific method, the hypothesis is constructed before any applicable research has been done, apart from a basic background review. You ask a question, read up on what has been studied before, and then form a hypothesis. A hypothesis is usually tentative; it's an assumption or suggestion made strictly for the objective of being tested. For every research to be applicable in future, it has to have a hypothesis which is put to test and then the result is verified as under. It is very essential to construct the right hypothesis and then put to the right test. There is often a question towards as to how to construct the hypothesis. There lies a very simple method to understand this, as a researcher you need to first study the problem at hand and analyse the already written material on it. In research language, we call it the literature review. While doing the literature review, you will understand the gap of the research and also the problem at hand becomes clearer. Now when you have studied the problem and understood its nuances, construct a statement which built a relationship – causal, inferential, experimental etc. The relationship thus established here will then enable you to construct the hypothesis and work further on the research project. Research Example: Mr. Ajit wants to study the spends of a company over advertising and their relationship with sales. He has collected the previous data which indicates that advertising has resulted a positive surge in sales for initial months and again the lull happened. Again, when the advertising was changed and re-launched it showed the same surge. Now he will first ponder to frame a research question. munotes.in

Page 98


98 Public Relations Research - I
98 To construct a research question, we must first understand what a research question is. A research question is "a question that a research project sets out to answer". Choosing a research question is an essential element of both quantitative and qualitative research. In other words, research question becomes the nascent step every researcher will have to take and furnish. Here in the above case, the research question for Mr. Ajit will be Is there any impact of advertising on sales of the product? From the above research question, one can develop hypothesis as follows: “Advertising has an impact on sales of the product.” In the above hypothesis, you can see the word impact proves the relationship between one variable advertising and another variable sale of the product. Now understand the statement well, it is not a conclusion, but just an assumption towards the research process. It is essential for the researcher to design the hypothesis beforehand in order to give a proper direction to research. In a nutshell, we can develop following steps for Hypothesis: 1. Generate a research question. 2. Conduct a preliminary study (literature review) 3. Propose a statement 4. Refine the statement 5. Finalize the statement (Assumption based) Some other Examples: Research question Hypothesis Null hypothesis What are the health
benefits of eating an
apple a day? Increasing apple
consumption in over -60s
will result in decreasing
frequency of doctor’s visits. Increasing apple
consumption in
over-60s will have
no effect on
frequency of
doctor’s visits. Which airlines have
the most delays? Low-cost airlines are more
likely to have delays than
premium airlines. Low-cost and
premium airlines are
equally likely to
have delays. Can flexible work
arrangements Employees who have
flexible working hours will There is no
relationship between munotes.in

Page 99


99 Public Relations
Research - I Research question Hypothesis Null hypothesis improve job
satisfaction? report greater job
satisfaction than employees
who work fixed hours. working hour
flexibility and job
satisfaction. How effective is
high school sex
education at
reducing teen
pregnancies? Teenagers who received sex
education lessons
throughout high school will
have lower rates of
unplanned pregnancy than
teenagers who did not
receive any sex education. High school sex
education has no
effect on teen
pregnancy rates. What effect does
daily use of social
media have on the
attention span of
under -16s? There is a negative
correlation between time
spent on social media and
attention span in under -16s. There is no
relationship between
social media use and
attention span in
under -16s. Resource: https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/hypotheses/ In general, Hypothesis must possess following characteristics: 1. Based on prior study: Hypothesis statement must be based on the prior study done by the researcher around the topic. 2. To be verified: The statement must be such that can be put to test to verify either its existence or non-existence towards the research. 3. Clear and Precise: The statement must not create doubt or ambiguity towards the research area, but it should be very clear and precise. In other words, it should avoid any further confusions. 4. Specific: The hypothesis constructed must primarily speak about the topic at hand. It must be specific towards the core area of research. 5. Scope for conducting more test: The statement must ensure that further tests can be conducted on the same. 6. Simplicity: The hypothesis must avoid big jargons and must be simple and easy to understand for researchers to proceed on. 8.3 NULL AND ALTERNATE HYPOTHESIS: Hypothesis are primarily of two types. Null Hypothesis and Alternate Hypothesis. Null Hypothesis is symbolized as H0 or Ho and Alternate Hypothesis is symbolized as Ha or H1. In research, the null hypothesis is the suggestion that there is no effect or no relationship between phenomena or populations. If the null hypothesis munotes.in

Page 100


100 Public Relations Research - I
100 is true, any observed difference in phenomena or populations would be due to sampling error (random chance) or experimental error. If Null hypothesis is not true then there can be a conclusion drawn that there is relationship between the phenomena or populations. Stating the Null Hypothesis is the first step towards drafting a research assignment. Any problem at hand always has variables to study, null hypothesis enables to establish a relationship between the variables. When the hypothesis is put to test, it will ensure a working relationship or no relationship between the variables. Alternate Hypothesis, as the word suggests is the hypothesis which is alternate to the null hypothesis. As given above, null hypothesis shows no effect or relationship, alternate hypothesis enables relationship. The alternative hypothesis is the one that claims the difference in results between conditions is due to the independent variable. Alternative hypothesis can be directional or non-directional. In case of directional alternate hypothesis, the hypothesis claims to have a direction of effect either increase of decrease on the dependence variable. While constructing Null Hypothesis, its very important to understand that it is a proposed statement. The statement should not be a conclusion but an assumption in its own. The statement must be tested on statistical measures where it can be proven for either accepted or rejected the hypothesis. Examples of Null Hypothesis and Alternate Hypothesis Research Question Null Hypothesis (H 0) Alternate Hypothesis
(H1) 1. Does Binge
watch affect sleep
cycle? There is no significant
impact of binge
watching on sleep
cycle. Binge watching has a
significant impact on
sleep cycle. 2. Is OTT platform
used by teens more
than adults? There is no significant
impact of Age on us e
of OTT platform. Age has a significant
impact on use of OTT
platform. 3. Does incidence
from Mahabharat have
an impact on value
development of youth? Incidence from
Mahabharat have no
significant impact on
value development of
youth. Incidence from
Mahabharat have a
significant impact on
value development of
youth. 4. Does Separated
parents have an impact
on mental health of
kids? Separated parents have
no significant impact
on mental health of
kids. Separated parents have
a significant impact
on mental health of
kids. 5. Does content of The content of The content of munotes.in

Page 101


101 Public Relations
Research - I newspaper affect the
readership of
newspaper? newspaper has no
significant impact on
readership pf
newspaper. newspaper has a
signific ant impact on
readership of
newspaper. Example for types of Alternate Hypothesis Research Question Directional
Hypothesis Non-Directional
Hypothesis 1. Does Binge
watch affect sleep
cycle? Binge watching
decreases the sleep
cycle. Binge watching has an
impact on sleep cycle. 2. Is OTT platform
used by teens more
than adults? Teens use OTT
platform more than
adults. Age has a significant
impact on use of OTT
platform. 3. Does incidence
from Mahabharat have
an impact on value
development of youth? Incidence from
Mahabharat has a
positive impact on
value development of
youth. Incidence from
Mahabharat have a
significant impact on
value development of
youth. 4. Does Separated
parents have an impact
on mental health of
kids? Separated parents
hinder mental growth
of the kids. Separated parents have
a significant impact on
mental health of kids. 5. Does readership
of newspaper vary
with content of
newspaper? Read ership of
newspaper decreases
depending on content
of newspaper. The content of
newspaper has a
significant impact on
readership of
newspaper. Research Variables Social science research is an experiment carried on elements of society, largely on people. There are certain characteristics that define or develop a certain experiment. It is very essential to understand the nature of the variables to proceed with the research. Primarily there are two types of variables viz., dependent and independent variable. The variables highlight the cause-and-effect relationship of the variables for causal research. Independent Variable: The variable which does not change with the experiment is known as independent variable. It is that variable in the study which changes other munotes.in

Page 102


102 Public Relations Research - I
102 values but does not change itself. The reason it is called the independent variable is that the variable is independent to change in the experiment. Types of independent variables There are two main types of independent variables. 1. Experimental independent variables can be directly manipulated by researchers. 2. Subject variables cannot be manipulated by researchers, but they can be used to group research subjects categorically. It is to understand the importance independent variable in research as any change in the independent variable for experimentation will result in change in dependent variable. Experimentation studies involve change in independent variable by the researcher to study its effect on the dependent variable. An independent variable is a singular characteristic that the other variables in your experiment cannot change. Age is an example of an independent variable. Where someone lives, what they eat or how much they exercise are not going to change their age. Independent variables can, however, change other variables. In studies, researchers often try to find out whether an independent variable causes other variables to change and in what way. For example: Research Question: What is the impact of Radio jingles on brand recall of products? Here the researcher aims to study the effect of jingles on recall of brands. The study lists following variables: 1. Radio Jingles 2. Brand Recall Here in the above case, radio jingles will be monitored by the researcher. Researcher will introduce the radio jingles in the study to assess the effect on brand recall. Hence in other words, brand recall will change dependent on radio jingles. Therefore, Radio Jingles are the independent variables. Dependent variable: A dependent variable relies on and can be changed by other components. A grade on an exam is an example of a dependent variable because it depends on factors such as how much sleep you got and how long you studied. Independent variables can influence dependent variables, but dependent variables cannot influence independent variables. For example, the time you spent studying (dependent) can affect the grade on your test (independent) but the grade on your test does not affect the time you spent studying. When analysing relationships between study objects, researchers often try to determine what makes the dependent variable change and how. munotes.in

Page 103


103 Public Relations
Research - I A dependent variable is the variable that changes as a result of the independent variable manipulation. It’s the outcome you’re interested in measuring, and it “depends” on your independent variable. The dependent variable is what you record after you’ve manipulated the independent variable. You use this measurement data to check whether and to what extent your independent variable influences the dependent variable by conducting statistical analyses. Based on your findings, you can estimate the degree to which your independent variable variation drives changes in your dependent variable. You can also predict how much your dependent variable will change as a result of variation in the independent variable. Dependent variables explain the relationship between the cause and effect of the social science experiment and helps understand the nature of hypothesis. Both dependent variable and independent variable define the relationship and establish the hypothesis to be rejected or accepted. Research Example: Sr.
No. Research Question Independent
Variable Dependent
Variable 1 Does Binge watch
affect sleep cycle? Binge Watching Sleep Cycle 2 Is OTT platform used
by teens more than
adults? Age of viewers Utility of OTT
Platform 3 Does incidence from
Mahabharat have an
impact on value
development of youth? Incidence from
Mahabharat Value development
of youth 4 Does Separated parents
have an impact on
mental health of kids? Separated parents Mental Health of
kids 5 Does readership of
newspaper vary with
content of newspaper? Content of
newspaper Readership 6 Does showcasing
women in advertising
creates negativ e impact
on youth? Women portrayal
ads Impact on youth 7 Does Advertising of
FMCG Products create
sales of the product? Advertising
frequency of
FMCG product Sales of FMCG
Product munotes.in

Page 104


104 Public Relations Research - I
104 8 Does social media
interaction of viewers
affect the quality of
news? Social Media
interaction Quality of news 9 Does news on Media
affect the image of the
company? New on media Impact on image 10 Does Journalist views
have an impact on
creating an image of an
individual? Journalist views Image of an
individual Steps to hypothesis testing
The above diagram explains the process of Hypothesis testing. Let us understand the steps: 1. State the Null Hypothesis In the earlier part of the chapter, we have already read about null hypothesis and also understood various examples related to the same. So, the first step to testing the hypothesis is stating one. Null hypothesis needs to be stated first in order to help construct the alternate hypothesis. Null hypothesis develops the base to study the research. It gives the direction to the study and for some extent can also help to determine the parametric or non-parametric test to be applied to study. (Define Ho) 2. State the Alternate Hypothesis Once the null hypothesis is defined, the next task at hand for the researcher is to define the alternate hypothesis. Alternate hypothesis State The Null HypothesisState the Alternate HypothesisDecide Alpha LevelData CollectionCalculate Test StatisticAcceptance / Rejection RegionConclusionmunotes.in

Page 105


105 Public Relations
Research - I completes the base of assumption, with the alter side being covered. When we say Null hypothesis gives direction to the research, the importance of alternate hypothesis cant be ignored. In the point of null hypothesis being rejected, alternate hypothesis is useful and put to further test. The reason we state the alternative hypothesis this way is that if the null is rejected, there are many possibilities. For example, is one possibility, as is. Many people make the mistake of stating the alternative hypothesis as which says that every mean differs from every other mean. This is a possibility, but only one of many possibilities. To cover all alternative outcomes, we resort to a verbal statement of ‘not all equal’ and then follow up with mean comparisons to find out where differences among means exist. (Define Ha) 3. Decide alpha (α level) Understanding what can happen in hypothesis test, we can construct the type I error and type II error table to define the Alpha (α) level. Decision Applying Hypothesis Test Ho is true Ho is false Accept
Ho Correct Decision Type II Error
β = probability of Type
II Error Reject
Ho Type I Error
α = probability of
Type I Error Correct decision From the above contingency table, it is evident that any hypothesis test results in two types of errors, Type I and Type II. To summarize, Type I Error occurs when you reject the hypothesis that was supposed to be accepted and Type II error occurs when you accept the hypothesis that was supposed to be rejected. Both the errors are hazardous to the experiment, but out of the two errors, Type I is more grievous in nature and hence arrangements have to be made prior the start of the experiment. It is necessary to set the α level of the experiment. In other words, it is the level of confidence. The typical value of α is 0.05, establishing a 95% confidence level. For general purpose, we will assume α = 0.05, unless stated otherwise. 4. Collect the Data Data collection is the soul of research. Here we are primarily concerned with the Primary data collection. In order to understand, which statistical test has to be applied on the data, it is important to understand the data is collected in which manner. The data primarily gets collected in two of the forms, either Experimental or observational. There are various other methods also of Primary data munotes.in

Page 106


106 Public Relations Research - I
106 collection. In Social science experiments, mostly it is questionnaire design, focus group discussion or Expert interview and they fall under observational study. 5. Calculate Test Statistic (Application of tests) Depending upon the nature of data collected, various tests can be applied on the data to test the metric of the hypothesis. Every test in statistics has its own merit and demerit as well. The data collected and the quantum of the data collected helps make a decision on which test will be best fit for the study. This is crucial stage, as it is going to define the conclusion and before conducting the test, one has to be very sure as to which test to apply to the study. Observational study have already predefined tests to be applied and any one of them can be considered for study. 6. Acceptance / Rejection Region Once you apply the test, depending upon the nature of the test, there is always a region of acceptance or region of rejection of hypothesis. This region basically is the range of values that falls in that region to help researcher whether to reject the hypothesis or accept the hypothesis. Without the conclusion over hypothesis stated earlier, any research is not considered complete. 7. Conclusion (Hypothesis) The research study concludes when the researcher either accepts or rejects the null hypothesis. When the hypothesis is rejected, a series of steps follow over the alternate hypothesis and then even that is put to test. The acceptance of null hypothesis ensures the study to complete and a theory over the hypothesis can be generalized. While drafting conclusion, one has to be careful of language. The conclusion should primarily speak only about the hypothesis derived conclusion and any form of personal bias or research error has to be avoided in this. References:
Brase C. H., & Brase C. P. (2006), Understandable Statistics: Concepts and Methods, Tenth Edition Brooks/Cole
Pagano R. R. (2013), Understanding Statistics in the Behavioral Sciences, Tenth Edition, Wadsworth Cengage Learning
https://online.stat.psu.edu/stat502_fa21/lesson/1/1.2
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hypothesis munotes.in

Page 107


107 Public Relations
Research - I 9 TYPE I ERROR AND TYPE II ERROR In this chapter, you will understand 1. Type I error and Type II error 2. Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient 3. Chi-square test 4. Kendall Rank correlation 5. ANOVA 9.1 TYPE I AND TYPE II ERROR Error is natural but if not known the nature it can cause substantial effect on the research study. It is very important that, a researcher must know the type nature of the error and precaution that can be taken to avoid such errors. Type I error A type I error occurs during hypothesis testing when a null hypothesis is rejected, even though it is accurate and should not be rejected. In other words, it is also known as false positive because it refers to the existence of the characteristic that does not exist. It is important to understand that the type I error does not primarily state that we inaccurately accept the alternative hypothesis of an experiment. The probability of committing the type I error is measured by the significance level (α) of a hypothesis test. The significance level indicates the probability of erroneously rejecting the true null hypothesis. For instance, a significance level of 0.05 reveals that there is a 5% probability of rejecting the true null hypothesis. This means that in your study the findings are significant when in fact they have occurred by chance. It is not possible to completely eliminate the probability of a type I error in hypothesis testing. However, there are opportunities to minimize the risks of obtaining results that contain a type I error. One of the most common approaches to minimizing the probability of getting a false positive error is to minimize the significance level of a hypothesis test. Since the significance level is chosen by a researcher, the level can be changed. For example, the significance level can be minimized to 1% (0.01). This indicates that there is a 1% probability of incorrectly rejecting the null hypothesis. However, lowering the significance level may lead to a situation wherein the results of the hypothesis test may not capture the true parameter or the true difference of the test. munotes.in

Page 108


108 Public Relations Research - I
108 Example of a Type I Error Mr. Arnav is a financial analyst. He wants to study a hypothesis to understand whether there is a difference in the average price changes for large-cap and small-cap stocks. 1. Research Question: Does the average price changes affect the large-cap stocks more than small-cap stocks? 2. Null hypothesis: There is no significant difference in the average price changes between large-cap and small-cap stocks. 3. Alternative Hypothesis: The difference between the average price changes does exist. For the significance level, Mr. Arnav chooses 5%. This means that there is a 5% probability that his test will reject the null hypothesis when it is actually true. Now if Arnav’s test incurs a type I error, the results of the test will indicate that the difference in the average price changes between large-cap and small-cap stocks exists while there is no significant difference among the groups. Type II Error A type II error occurs when the researcher accepts the hypothesis that was supposed to be rejected. It is a statistical term used within the context of hypothesis testing that describes the error that occurs when one fails to reject a null hypothesis that is actually false. A type II error produces a false negative, also known as an error of omission or false negative error. A type II error is defined as the probability of incorrectly failing to reject the null hypothesis, when in fact it is not applicable to the entire population. It can be reduced by making more stringent criteria for rejecting a null hypothesis, although this increases the chances of a false positive. Analysts need to weigh the likelihood and impact of type II errors with type I errors. A type II error, also known as an error of the second kind or a beta error, confirms an idea that should have been rejected, such as, for instance, claiming that two observances are the same, despite them being different. A type II error does not reject the null hypothesis, even though the alternative hypothesis is the true state of nature. In other words, a false finding is accepted as true. Similar to the type I error, it is not possible to completely eliminate the type II error from a hypothesis test. The only available option is to minimize the probability of committing this type of statistical error. Since a type II error is closely related to the power of a statistical test, the probability of the occurrence of the error can be minimized by increasing the power of the test. 1. Increase the sample size One of the simplest methods to increase the power of the test is to increase the sample size used in a test. The sample size primarily determines the amount of sampling error, which translates into the ability to detect the differences in a hypothesis test. A larger sample munotes.in

Page 109


109 Public Relations
Research - I size increases the chances to capture the differences in the statistical tests, as well as raises the power of a test. 2. Increase the significance level Another method is to choose a higher level of significance. For instance, a researcher may choose a significance level of 0.10 instead of the commonly acceptable 0.05 level. The higher significance level implies a higher probability of rejecting the null hypothesis when it is true. The larger probability of rejecting the null hypothesis decreases the probability of committing a type II error while the probability of committing a type I error increases. Thus, the user should always assess the impact of type I and type II errors on their decision and determine the appropriate level of statistical significance. Example of a Type II Error Mr. Arindham wants to conduct a study to understand the effect of emotional messages on the retention of the brand. 1. Research Question: Does the emotional messages have an impact on the retention of brand? 2. Null hypothesis: There is no significant impact of the emotional messages on the retention of the brand. 3. Alternative Hypothesis: There is a significant impact of the emotional messages on the retention of the brand. For the significance level, Mr. Arindham chooses 5%. This means that there is a 5% probability that his test will reject the null hypothesis when it is actually true. If the test incurs a type II error, then the results of the test will indicate that there is no significant impact of the emotional messages on the retention of the brand. However, in reality, there is an impact of the emotional messages on the retention of the brand. While summarizing

munotes.in

Page 110


110 Public Relations Research - I
110 Image source: https://www.simplypsychology.org/type_I_and_type_II_errors.html 1. The chances of committing these two types of errors are inversely proportional: that is, decreasing type I error rate increases type II error rate, and vice versa. 2. The consequences of making a type I error mean that changes or interventions are made which are unnecessary, and thus waste time, resources, etc. 3. Type II errors typically lead to the preservation of the status quo (i.e. interventions remain the same) when change is needed. So, Understanding the error and then eliminating it to the minimum remains the goal for the researcher. 9.2 SPEARMAN'S RANK-ORDER CORRELATION The Spearman's rank-order correlation is the nonparametric version of the Pearson product-moment correlation. Spearman's correlation coefficient, (ρ, also signified by rs) measures the strength and direction of association between two ranked variables. The Spearman's Rank Correlation Coefficient is used to discover the strength of a link between two sets of data. Spearman’s rank-order correlation is given by the following formula: where di = difference in paired ranks and n = number of cases. Requirements of Application of test You need two variables that are either ordinal, interval or ratio. Although you would normally hope to use a Pearson product-moment correlation on interval or ratio data, the Spearman correlation can be used when the assumptions of the Pearson correlation are markedly violated. However, Spearman's correlation determines the strength and direction of the monotonic relationship between your two variables rather than the strength and direction of the linear relationship between your two variables, which is what Pearson's correlation determines.
munotes.in

Page 111


111 Public Relations
Research - I About Monotonic Relationship:
A monotonic relationship is a relationship that does one of the following: 1. As the value of one variable increases, so does the value of the other variable. OR 2. As the value of one variable increases, the other variable value decreases. Just observe the images above, there are two examples shown of monotonic variables but both of them show different relationships. The middle image above shows a relationship that is monotonic, but not linear. Spearman's correlation measures the strength and direction of monotonic association between two variables. Monotonicity is "less restrictive" than that of a linear relationship. A monotonic relationship is not strictly an assumption of Spearman's correlation. That is, you can run a Spearman's correlation on a non-monotonic relationship to determine if there is a monotonic component to the association. However, you would normally pick a measure of association, such as Spearman's correlation, that fits the pattern of the observed data. That is, if a scatterplot shows that the relationship between your two variables looks monotonic you would run a Spearman's correlation because this will then measure the strength and direction of this monotonic relationship. On the other hand if, for example, the relationship appears linear (assessed via scatterplot) you would run a Pearson's correlation because this will measure the strength and direction of any linear relationship. You will not always be able to visually check whether you have a monotonic relationship, so in this case, you might run a Spearman's correlation anyway. Research Example 1: A teacher wants to apply Spearman’s Rank Correlation to the marks of 10 students in Advertising and Journalism end semester examination. The below given marks are out of 100. Roll No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Advertising 87 55 65 45 96 98 67 76 44 39 Journalism 92 49 70 41 95 89 64 80 40 52
munotes.in

Page 112


112 Public Relations Research - I
112 Solution: For calculating Spearman’s Rank Correlation, we would need d and d2. So the following table will be the solution table. Roll
No Advertising
Marks Journalism
Marks Advertising
Rank Journalism
Rank d d2 1 87 92 3 2 1 1 2 55 49 7 8 1 1 3 65 70 6 5 1 1 4 45 41 8 9 1 1 5 96 95 2 1 1 1 6 98 89 1 3 2 4 7 67 64 5 6 1 1 8 76 80 4 4 0 0 9 44 40 9 10 1 1 10 39 52 10 7 3 9 ∑d2 20 Applying the formula, Rs= 1−(଺∑ௗమ௡యି௡) Rs= 1−ቀ଺∑ௗమ௡(௡మିଵ)ቁ Rs= 1−ቀ଺∗ଶ଴ଵ଴ (ଵ଴మିଵ)ቁ Rs= 1−ቀଵଶ଴ଽଽ଴ቁ Rs= 1−0.1212 Rs= 0.88 as n = 10. Hence, we have a ρ (or Rs) of 0.88. This indicates a strong positive relationship between the ranks individuals obtained in the Advertising and Journalism exam. That is, the higher you ranked in Advertising, the higher you ranked in Journalism also, and vice versa. Therefore, Spearman’s Rank Correlation helps you understand the relation between the two sets of data and enables to build either strong / weak positive / negative correlation between set of Data.
munotes.in

Page 113


113 Public Relations
Research - I Also note, when the data in the data set is same, the rank is to be given by average. Lets look at the next example to understand this. Research Example 2: A Product Manager needs your help to apply Spearman’s Rank Correlation to the sales of two products namely fan and tube light in 10 regions in the last quarter. The below figure is given in ‘000. Region 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Fan 87 55 67 45 96 98 67 76 44 39 Tube
light 92 49 70 41 95 89 64 80 40 52 Solution: For calculating Spearman’s Rank Correlation, we would need d and d2. So, the following table will be the solution table. Region Fan Tub
light Fan
Rank Tube light
Rank d d2 1 87 92 3 2 1 1 2 55 49 7 8 1 1 3 67 70 5.5 5 0.5 0.25 4 45 41 8 9 1 1 5 96 95 2 1 1 1 6 98 89 1 3 2 4 7 67 64 5.5 6 0.5 0.25 8 76 80 4 4 0 0 9 44 40 9 10 1 1 10 39 52 10 7 3 9 ∑d2 18.50 Applying the formula, Rs= 1−(଺∑ௗమ௡యି௡) Rs= 1−ቀ଺∑ௗమ௡(௡మିଵ)ቁ
munotes.in

Page 114


114 Public Relations Research - I
114 Rs= 1−ቀ଺∗ଵ଼.ହ଴ଵ଴ (ଵ଴మିଵ)ቁ Rs= 1−ቀଵଵଵଽଽ଴ቁ Rs= 1−0.1121 Rs= 0.89 as n = 10. Hence, we have a ρ (or Rs) of 0.89. This indicates a strong positive relationship between the ranks obtained by the regions for Fan and Tube Light. That is, the higher you ranked in Fan, the higher you ranked in Tube Light also, and vice versa. Sums for Practise: Apply Spearman’s Rank Correlation method in the following research study. 1. Following is the data collected from sales of two products for a period of 12 months. The company needs to understand the relationship between the sales. (The figures are in ‘000) Product
A 22 34 31 23 33 45 56 32 30 20 Product
B 32 45 32 12 10 13 22 23 47 56 2. Following is the data collected from newspapers for a period of four months. The company needs you understand the relationship between the readership of the two newspapers. (The figures are in ’00) Newspaper 1 23 12 26 33 46 Newspaper 2 10 12 24 50 45 3. Find below the marks of 2 subjects namely biology and physics of ten students for exams conducted in the last year. The marks are out of 100 Student 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Biology 45 56 65 44 45 39 78 49 78 66 Physics 67 45 40 49 66 78 77 70 80 92 4. Researcher wants to study the effect of a drug on patients with blood pressure issue. He has selected five patients and studied the effect of two drugs on them. munotes.in

Page 115


115 Public Relations
Research - I Patient 1 2 3 4 5 Drug 1 120 132 140 136 129 Drug 2 129 128 135 139 124 5. Researcher wants to study the impact of two set of emotional messages on sales of product. (Sales figure in ’00) Month April May June July August September Emotional
Message
1 23 24 33 28 29 40 Emotional
Message
2 24 28 30 32 20 39 9.3 CHI-SQUARE TEST Chi-square test is the most commonly used inference test with nominal data. It is parametric test. The word Chi is a Greek letter denoted by the symbol x, so chi-square is denoted by the symbol χ2. Because the distribution is of chi-square values, the χ2 values begin at 0 and then are all positive. In the chi-square distribution, chi is pronounced like the first two letters in the word kite. The graph of the x2 distribution is not symmetrical, and it depends on the number of degrees of freedom. As the degrees of freedom increase, the graph of the chi-square distribution becomes more bell-like and begins to look more and more symmetric. A nominal variable is a categorical variable that differs by quality, but whose numerical order could be irrelevant. For instance, asking somebody their favourite actor / actress would produce a nominal variable. Asking somebody's marks, on the other hand, would produce an ordinal set of data. Chi-square can be best applied to nominal data. Social science experiments are mostly study of behavioural, consumption and / or thinking patterns. Hence Chi-square gives best results. Chi-square is a statistical test used to examine the differences between categorical variables from a random sample in order to judge goodness of fit between expected and observed results. Since chi-square applies to categorical variables, it is most used by researchers who are studying survey response data. This type of research can range from demography to consumer and marketing research to political science and economics. munotes.in

Page 116


116 Public Relations Research - I
116 = chi square = observed value = expected value Chi-square is applied on test of homogeneity and test of independence. Test of Homogeneity: A test of homogeneity tests the claim that different populations share the same proportions of specified characteristics. Test of Independence: A test of independence tests the claim that the variables are independent of each other. Research example: Test of Independence There are some players want to learn play football. The coach wants to understand the relationship between the learning time taken by the players to learn football and the physical condition of the players. So, now the researcher will create a null and alternate hypothesis and then examine the data over that. H0: Learning time and physical conditions are independent. H1: Learning time and physical conditions are not independent. The coach has collected the following data. Let’s understand application of Chi Square test. Learning Time
Physical
Conditions 1 Day 1-3 Days 3-5 Days 5-10
Days Total Slim Built 32 22 23 33 110 Average Built 24 30 28 15 97 Obese Built 24 22 22 25 93 Total 80 74 73 73 300 The data that is collected by the researcher is known as Observed Frequency. For application of Chi-Square test we need to calculated the expected frequency.
munotes.in

Page 117


117 Public Relations
Research - I Ei = ௥೘ ∗ ௖೙் where Ei = Expected Frequency, 𝑟௠= Total Row, 𝑐௡ = Total Column, T = Grand Total Let’s construct the Contingency Table: Learning
Time 1
Day 1
Day 1-3
Days 1-3
Days 3-5
Days 3-5
Days 5-10
Days 5-10
Days Total Oi Ei Oi Ei Oi Ei Oi Ei Slim Built 32 29.33 22 27.13 23 26.77 33 26.77 110 Average Built 24 25.87 30 23.93 28 23.60 15 23.60 97 Obese Built 24 24.8 22 22.94 22 22.63 25 22.63 93 Total 80 74 73 73 300 Cell
No Observed
Frequency
Oi Expected
Frequency
Ei Oi – Ei (Oi – Ei)2 (Oi – Ei)2 /
Ei 1 32 29.33 2.67 7.1289 0.243058 2 24 25.87 -1.87 3.4969 0.135172 3 24 24.8 -0.8 0.64 0.025806 4 22 27.13 -5.13 26.3169 0.970029 5 30 23.93 6.07 36.8449 1.539695 6 22 22.94 -0.94 0.8836 0.038518 7 23 26.77 -3.77 14.2129 0.530926 8 28 23.60 4.4 19.36 0.820339 9 22 22.63 -0.63 0.3969 0.017539 10 33 26.77 6.23 38.8129 1.449866 11 15 23.60 -8.6 73.96 3.133898 12 25 22.63 2.37 5.6169 0.248206 Total 227.6708 9.153053 Applying the formula of Chi-Square χ2 = 9.15 Then for conclusion we must understand the concept of degree of freedom Degree of Freedom = (Number of Rows – 1) x (Number of Columns – 1) d.f. = (R – 1) (C – 1) = (3 – 1) (4 – 1) = 6
munotes.in

Page 118


118 Public Relations Research - I
118 Now as per the researcher has defined the level of significance, there will be a table value of chi-square as well. Here we will take level of significance is 1% i.e. 0.01. So the table value for 0.01 level of significance and degree of freedom 6 is 16.812. Now lets write the conclusion from it. Inference: From the above, the calculated value of chi-sqaure is smaller than the table value. i.e. 9.15 < 16.812. Therefore, we reject the null hypothesis. So we conclude that, Learning time and physical conditions are not independent. Sums for Practise: 1. A chocolate vending machine is supposed to vend chocolates at random, as if from an infinite set. In a test, you counted 1600 cards, and observed the following: Dairymilk 5 Star Perk Munch Bournville 504 320 200 276 300 Could it be that the suits are equally likely? Or are these discrepancies too much to be random? 2. In the garden pea, yellow cotyledon color is dominant to green, and inflated pod shape is dominant to the constricted form. Considering both of these traits jointly in self-fertilized dihybrids, the progeny appeared in the following numbers: 193 green, inflated 184 yellow constricted 556 yellow, inflated 61 green, constricted Do these genes assort independently? Support your answer using Chi-square analysis. 3. Is gender independent of education level? A random sample of 395 people were surveyed and each person was asked to report the highest education level they obtained. The data that resulted from the survey is summarized in the following table: munotes.in

Page 119


119 Public Relations
Research - I High School Bachelors Masters Ph.d. Total Female 60 54 46 41 201 Male 40 44 53 57 194 Total 100 98 99 98 395 Question: Are gender and education level dependent at 5% level of significance? In other words, given the data collected above, is there a relationship between the gender of an individual and the level of education that they have obtained? 9.5 ANOVA Developed by Ronald Fisher, ANOVA stands for Analysis of Variance. One-Way Analysis of Variance tells you if there are any statistical differences between the means of three or more independent groups. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) is a statistical formula used to compare variances across the means (or average) of different groups. A range of scenarios use it to determine if there is any difference between the means of different groups. An ANOVA test is a way to find out if survey or experiment results are significant. In other words, they help you to figure out if you need to reject the null hypothesis or accept the alternate hypothesis. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) is used as a marketer, when you want to test a particular hypothesis. You would use ANOVA to help you understand how your different groups respond, with a null hypothesis for the test that the means of the different groups are equal. If there is a statistically significant result, then it means that the two populations are unequal (or different). Research Example: The study has collected two sets of Data for study in order to understand the set to show any difference in characteristics. Some examples in the case are as follows: 1. A researcher wants to study is there any impact of celebrity endorsement on sales of a product. For this he takes three different celebrities in same product but different brand. He will then collect data towards sales of these three brands over a period of time and then analyse. 2. A manufacturer has two different processes to make light bulbs. They want to know if one process is better than the other. 3. Students from different colleges take the same exam. You want to see if one college outperforms the other. All the above examples are of ANOVA where the variance will be analysed. munotes.in

Page 120


120 Public Relations Research - I
120 Now let’s understand how to apply ANOVA to a research Example and then conclude the same study. For understanding purpose, lets take example one from the above listed case. Now the case will be given the data tabulation and then further analysis will be placed on it. Research Example: 1. Following is the data of different celebrities over different products across region. Sales of the products Celebrity A B C 1 6 5 5 2 7 5 4 3 3 3 3 4 8 7 4 Solution through direct method: First we calculate the mean of each of these samples: Sales of the products Celebrity A (X –
X̅1)2 B (X –
X̅2)2 C (X – X̅2)2 1 6 0 5 0 5 1 2 7 1 5 0 4 0 3 3 9 3 4 3 1 4 8 4 7 4 4 0 Total 24 14 20 8 16 2 Mean X̅1 = 6 X̅2 = 5 X̅3 = 4 Mean of the Sample means xതത (6+5+4) / 3 = 15 / 3 = 5 Total of Within Sample 14 + 8 + 2 = 24 Let’s Calculate SS within and SS between Samples SS Between = n1 (X1 – X)2 + n2 (X2 – X)2 + n3 (X3 – X)2 = 4 (6 – 5)2 + 4 (5 – 5)2 + 4 (4 – 5)2 = 4 + 0 + 4 = 8 SS Within = ∑(X – X̅1)2 + ∑(X – X̅2)2 + ∑(X – X̅3)2 = 24 SS for Total Variance = ∑ ( Xij – xതത)2 munotes.in

Page 121


121 Public Relations
Research - I = (6 – 5)2 + (7 – 5)2 + (3 – 5)2 + (8 – 5)2 + (5 – 5)2 + (5 – 5)2 + (3 – 5)2 + (7 – 5)2 + (5 – 5)2 + (4 – 5)2 + (3 – 5)2 + (4 – 5)2 = 1 + 4 + 4 + 9 + 0 + 0 + 4 + 4 + 0 + 1 + 4 + 1 = 32 Alternatively, SS total = SS between + SS Within Therefore, 32 = 8 + 24 We can now set up the ANOVA table for this problem Source of
Variation SS d.f. MS F-ratio 5% F -Limit
(from the F -
table) Between
Sample 8 (3 – 1) = 2 8 / 2 = 4 4 / 2.67
= 1.5 F (2,9) = 4.26 Within
Sample 24 (12 – 3) = 9 24 / 9 =
2.67 Total 32 (12 – 1) = 11 The above table shows that the calculated value of F is 1.5 which is less than the table value of 4.26 at 5% level with d.f. being v1 = 2 and v2 = 9 and hence could have arisen due to chance. This analysis supports the null-hypothesis of no difference is sample means. We may, therefore, conclude that the difference in sales due to variety of celebrities is insignificant and is just a matter of chance. Sum for practise: Four brands of flashlight batteries are to be compared by testing each brand in five flashlights. Twenty flashlights are randomly selected and divided randomly into four groups of five flashlights each. Then each group of flashlights uses a different brand of battery. The lifetimes of the batteries, to the nearest hour, are as follows. Brand A Brand B Brand C Brand D 42 28 24 20 30 36 36 32 39 31 28 38 28 32 28 28 29 27 33 25 Preliminary data analyses indicate that the independent samples come from normal populations with equal standard deviations. At the 5% significance level, does there appear to be a difference in mean lifetime among the four brands of batteries? munotes.in

Page 122


122 Public Relations Research - I
122 9.6 KENDALL’S RANK CORRELATION Kendall's rank correlation provides a distribution free test of independence and a measure of the strength of dependence between two variables. Kendall’s coefficient of concordance, represented by the symbol W, is an important non-parametric measure of relationship. It is used for determining the degree of association among several (k) sets of ranking of N objects or individuals. When there are only two sets of rankings of N objects, we generally work out Spearman’s coefficient of correlation, but Kendall’s coefficient of concordance (W) is considered an appropriate measure of studying the degree of association among three or more sets of rankings. This descriptive measure of the agreement has special applications in providing a standard method of ordering objects according to consensus when we do not have an objective order of the objects The procedure for computing and interpreting Kendall’s coefficient of concordance (W) is as follows: 1. All the objects, N, should be ranked by all k judges in the usual fashion and this information may be put in the form of a k by N matrix; 2. For each object determine the sum of ranks (Rj) assigned by all the k judges; 3. Determine Rj and then obtain the value of s as under: s = ∑ (Rj – 𝑅ఫഥ)2 4. Work out the value of W using the following formula: W = ௦భభమ௞మ(ேయିே) Research Example: Seven individuals have been assigned ranks by four judges at a certain music competition as shown in the following matrix: Individuals A B C D E F G Judge 1 1 3 2 5 7 4 6 Judge 2 2 4 1 3 7 5 6 Judge 3 3 4 1 2 7 6 5 Judge 4 1 2 5 4 6 3 7 Is there significant agreement in ranking assigned by different judges? Test at 5% level. Also point out the best estimate of the true rankings. munotes.in

Page 123


123 Public Relations
Research - I Solution: As there are four sets of rankings, we can work out the coefficient of concordance (W) for judging significant agreement in ranking by different judges. For this purpose we first develop the given matrix as under: Individuals N = 7 A B C D E F G 𝑅ఫഥ = ∑R j / N Judge 1 1 3 2 5 7 4 6 Judge 2 2 4 1 3 7 5 6 Judge 3 3 4 1 2 7 6 5 Judge 4 1 2 5 4 6 3 7 Sum of Ranks (Rj) 7 13 9 14 27 18 24 ∑R j = 112 𝑅ఫഥ = 16 | (Rj – 𝑅ఫഥ)2 81 9 49 4 121 4 64 s = 332 Applying Kendall’s Correlation Co-effeicent W = ௦భభమ௞మ(ேయିே) W = ଷଷଶభభమସమ(଻యି଻) W = ଷଷଶభలభమ(ଷଷ଺) W = ଷଷଶସସ଼ = 0.741 To judge the significance of this W, we look into the Table No. 9 given in appendix for finding the value of s at 5% level for k = 4 and N = 7. This value is 217.0 and thus for accepting the null hypothesis (H0) that k sets of rankings are independent) our calculated value of s should be less than 217. But the worked out value of s is 332 which is higher than the table value which fact shows that W = 0.741 is significant. Hence, we reject the null hypothesis and infer that the judges are applying essentially the same standard in ranking the N objects i.e., there is significant agreement in ranking by different judges at 5% level in the given case. The lowest value observed amongst Rj is 7 and as such the best estimate of true rankings is in the case of individual A i.e., all judges on the whole place the individual A as first in the said music competition.
McLeod, S. A. (2019, July 04). What are type I and type II errors? Simply psychology: https://www.simplypsychology.org/type_I_and_type_II_errors.html
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/type_1_error.asp munotes.in

Page 124


124 Public Relations Research - I
124
https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/other/type-i-error/
https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/other/type-ii-error/
https://www.scribbr.com/statistics/type-i-and-type-ii-errors/
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/type-ii-error.asp
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/type_1_error.asp
https://statistics.laerd.com/statistical-guides/spearmans-rank-order-correlation-statistical-guide.php
Brase C. H., & Brase C. P. (2006), Understandable Statistics: Concepts and Methods, Tenth Edition Brooks/Cole
Pagano R. R. (2013), Understanding Statistics in the Behavioral Sciences, Tenth Edition, Wadsworth Cengage Learning munotes.in

Page 125


125 Public Relations
Research - I 10 PUBLIC RELATIONS TECHNIQUES Relations based on trust. Professional relations are based on mutual benefits. These benefits are dependent on how precisely we keep our words and do the needful to all our stakeholders against certain monetary or nonmonetary benefits. So the Public relations begins with, “What you say, what you do and what others say about you.” The concept of public relations has been around as long as individuals have required to convince other individuals to get them to act on something, not to act on something, or keep on acting something. Public relations developed a recognized profession in America roughly around late 1800s and early 1900s. In the beginning the public relations methods were used to stimulate settlement. .” Primary role of PR is classifying, building, and maintaining relationships amongst an organization and its stakeholders, the form of the occupation transformed. Instead of one-way communication, many corporates and brands have initiated active and communication focusing on interactive modes rather than one way. 10.1 WHAT IS PUBLIC RELATIONS? “A strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics”. - The Public Relations Society of America PR assist to influence an audience’s insights by establishing relationships and determining the public discussions about a brand, company or organization. Such public discussions frequently take place through popular mass media platforms and social media, so the public relations professionals require to know how to perform with and inscribe effective communications for the media for immediate publications. PR professionals are responsible for an extensive series of communication activities which may include cumulative brand presence and awareness, initiating events, and drafting media content. munotes.in

Page 126


126 Public Relations Research - I
126 Sometimes need to handle unwanted situations with effective crisis communication and assist to recover a brand’s honor and status throughout a undesirable event/s. 10.2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK OF PUBLIC RELATIONS The publicity model, PR and communications specialists utilize the idea of persuasion to form the opinions and views of targeted audiences and stakeholders. As per this model objectivity and accuracy is irrelevant and organizations do not expect the feedback from audience feedback and do not conduct research in the audience analysis. It is considered as a one-way method of communication. The public information model interchanges away from the scheming strategies conducted in the publicity model and gives more precise and correct information. The communication design is one-way but proposed the accuracy, transparency and clarity. PR professionals do not depend on the research in audience analysis to direct their plans and strategies. The two-way asymmetrical model proposed more “Systematically persuasive” way of communicating with key audiences. The sender/content creators do enough research for better understanding of the audience’s approaches, attitudes and behaviors, which in turn notifies the communication plan and formation. In this model also we practice persuasive communication to advantage the organization ax well as stakeholder too. The model is mainly prevalent in advertising and customer marketing, arenas that are precisely concerned in cumulative the profits. One of the most important models of the Public Relations Practice is a two-way symmetrical model. This module claims that the public relations professionals must assist as a connection amongst the group/company/organization/corporate/government and its publics, rather than as an inducer. The PR practitioners are representatives and utilize communication to guarantee the benefit of all stakeholders. Symmetrical means made up of exactly similar parts facing each other. This model attempts to create a mutually beneficial situation. The interactive symmetrical model is believed the maximum principled model, one that specialists must seek to use in their techniques. 10.3 PUBLIC RELATIONS: NEED AND IMPORTANCE In past many companies did not realize the need and importance of public relations, unless a crisis happened. In contemporary world also some PR munotes.in

Page 127


127 Public Relations
Research - I professionals face difficulties in believing top management of their value to the function of the company. Aa more quality information voluntarily accessible to audience at various verticals, corporates and organizations are extra susceptible than continually to misinformation about the brand. An audience’s approach and views about a business can critically stimulus its growth. So, the PR expert helps to direct and control talks about a business or client and manage its status in the market. Looking towards PR as an important management activity of a business or an important strategy to achieve one’s distinct reputation. This will help to go through vital goals such as creating faith between significant publics, cumulative news and social media occurrence, and upholding a reliable vibe across communication platforms. Public Relations : Key roles and Responsibilities Broadly public relations professionals can be categorized in two segments based on their roles responsibilities: 1) Communication managers 2) Communication technicians. The communication managers support in the deliberate scheduling of an organization’s communication strategies. The term “Communication manager” comprises numerous comparable public relations standards such as : Professional consultant, problem-solving facilitator, and communication liaison. Professional consultants create a specific communication plan to help attain organizational objectives. Problem-solving facilitators provide crisis management to an organization during an obstacle. Liaisons speak on behalf of the brand and facilitate communication between the organization and its key publics. Communication technicians transcribe all sort of media content required to communicate through various media and non-media tools of public relations. Such as, pitches, feature articles, press releases and related communication resources and contribution in event planning. Collectively, managers & technicians play a dynamic role in affiliation building and the managing of a brand. Special Interest Group means “a body of persons, corporation, or industry that seeks or receives benefits or privileged treatment, especially through legislation.” Almond & Powell have distinct the interest groups, and discoursed their part in the broader framework of interest enunciation. In the social order, there is a procedure of awarding people’s strains beforehand the policy-makers. munotes.in

Page 128


128 Public Relations Research - I
128 According to Almond & Powell, “The process by which individuals and groups make demands upon the political decision-makers we call interest articulation.” As Almond and Powell said the interest articulator may be as diverse as an disorderly crowd or a efficient orderly society. Acknowledging that their description may not be faultless, yet Almond and Powell say: “By ‘interest group’ we mean a group of individuals who are linked by particular bonds of concern or advantage, and who have some awareness of these bonds. The structure of interest group may be organized to include continuing role performance by all members of the group, or it may reflect only occasional and intermittent awareness of the group interest on the part of individuals. So, an interest group is an connotation of public to attain precise aims, and for this determination it may even force the organizations of the government. Deliberating the pressure groups, David Truman describes them thus, “Pressure groups are attitude groups that make certain claims upon other groups in the society.” The actions of the government have straight effect on the citizens of the state. On the other hand, actions of the people cannot help upsetting the verdicts of the government. This effort can be successfully done only by organized groups of people. Hitchner & Levine wish the use of the jargon interest groups. “An interest group is a collection of individuals who try to realize their common objectives by influencing public policy.” Hitchner & Levine claim that interest groups and pressure groups are not the same thing. The concept of pressure groups have a undesirable implication as it suggests use of pressure and force, or unsolicited interfering, by assemblies to attain their purposes. Interest groups as defined as the “non-state actors, or individuals, or modern states. But, politics alone is not the objective of their activities.” Hitchner & Levine, states that “The interest group system is thus a part of both the general culture and social framework and the political structure of a particular state.” Interest groups are organizations or associations of people for the achievement of certain specific goals, who, if necessary, force and manipulate the state. They are frequently involved in the burden politics, or may at periods include themselves in pressure politics, and at additional eras make other purposes to endorse their benefits. A unique characteristic of interest or pressure groups is that all of them may pursue to stimulus state and public policy-makers, without munotes.in

Page 129


129 Public Relations
Research - I endeavoring to take over straight the regulator and hold of the government. Public Relations plays an important role in understanding their needs and demands and putting them across for the benefit of society or members of the society. On the other hand, political parties are mainly worried with governance – to challenge elections and try to get the maximum of positions in the legislature. Neumann identified the discrepancy amongst political groups and the interest groups thus: Basically, pressure groups are the symbolic representation of consistent interests seeking influence. 10.4 POLITICAL COMMUNICATION Political communication is an collaborating procedure about the transmission of information amongst political representatives, news media and to the public. The procedure functions descending after central organizations to people, flat in connections amongst political performers, and also ascendent from public belief to establishments. Political communication has continuously been vital to the democratic and policymaking procedures but since the early after globalization certain important growths have basically changed this procedure, mainly postwar tendencies in the mass media affecting after the traditional biosphere of mass media including new media as far as news broadcasting is concerned. As PR professionals one need to understand the role and position while dealing with the communication strategy or activity for such groups to attain highest possibilities of goals and objectives. Ethics in Research Most of the people contemplate of ethics (or morals), as a set of rules for positioning between right and wrong. Similarly, while performing research, we have to remember certain does and don’ts. In this chapter we will try to understand ethical perspective of the research. Lets look at the certain ethics and ethical practices in research. 1) Honesty Attempt for morality in all methodical communications. Fairly reported information, outcomes, approaches and actions, and magazine status are always admired and cherished by the research fraternity. Do not construct, fabricate, or parody data. Do not cheat contemporaries, research sponsors, or the public. munotes.in

Page 130


130 Public Relations Research - I
130 2) Objectivity Try to evade prejudice in research, analysis, data explanation, and other features of research where impartiality is anticipated or essential. Avoid or lessen prejudice or self-deceit. 3) Integrity Retain your potentials and contracts; act with honesty; endeavour for reliability of thought and action. 4) Carefulness Avoid uncaring faults and carelessness; prudently and disapprovingly inspect your own effort and the effort of your peers. Retain decent archives of research events, such as data collection, research design, and correspondence with agencies or journals. 5) Openness Segment information, outcomes, notions, tools, references. Be positive about criticism and novel ideas. 6) Accountability Take accountability for your share in research and be ready to stretch an account. 7) Intellectual Property Honour copyrights, patents, and additional systems of intellectual property. Don’t use unpublished data, methods, or results without permission. 8) Confidentiality Maintain the confidentiality while doing research and data collection and other related activities. 9) Publish Responsibly Follow the order of research and formats while publishing your work 10) Legal Aspect Beware of all necessary rules and regulations and legal aspects concerned with your research activity and topic you are dealing with. These are the few research ethics need to understand and practice more carefully. munotes.in

Page 131


131 Public Relations
Research - I 10.5 RESEARCH SKILLS AND TECHNIQUES FOR JOURNALISTS The Journalism in based on research. Research starts with curiosity and in journalism curiosity is the source of news. Here are certain skills journalists can adopt while doing an academic and non-academic research. 1) Interview: Collecting authoritative information is the key objectives behind any interview. What to ask and what not to ask is an art one can learn on field but is the objectives behind scheduled interview is fixed then its easier to draft he questionnaire and get the appropriate responses. Interviews are also useful to verify the collected information from other sources to understand the reliability of the information. Interviews also help to explore the different perspective and report or research can be more inclusive in nature. 2) Reporting: Observation is one of the first few qualities any journalists should have. Identification and observations help reporter to find out the context and corelations of the event with the larger audience. Empathy and compassion also required while reporting. 3) Ethics: Public Interest is the highest priority as journalism is accountable to its audience. Ethical practices help us to be objective and transparent about our work and responsibilities. 4) Writing Skills: Clarity is the key in writing. This skills help any journalists or researchers to avoid ambiguity, fallacy and polysemy in the writings. 5) Digital Skills: Finding sources and grading the accountability of them on internet is a need of highly competent world. munotes.in

Page 132


132 Public Relations Research - I
132 11 GRAPHS AND DIAGRAMS- HOW TO READ DATA We live in a world of data! From simple to complicated and scattered to neatly arranged based on several factors – we are entirely encapsulated in it. Furthermore, at some point or another, we have all used a graph to represent this aforementioned data in the form of a comparison, a trend, or just a division of the whole (like a pie). Let’s be honest – what a graph is, what are its advantages, and what are its disadvantages have been discussed at length by numerous people, around the globe, over the past decades. Yet, it retains its gravity with the increasing number of settings it can be used in, so much so that a graph generator, free of cost can be used to provide you the most beautiful infographics in half the time. So before we dive into the specifics of their usage in Research Papers, let’s take a quick recap, shall we? 11.1 WHAT IS A GRAPH? A graph, in layman terms, is a pictorial representation of organized data that helps the readers of the same understand complex information more easily. While each kind of visual aid comes with its own pros and cons, some of the main features that underlie each can be summed up as below: ● They provide information in the form of easy-to-understand images. ● Different data types require different graphs. ● They are often unable to display the major assumptions and causes behind the data fluctuations. ● They are easier to manipulate than factual information. ● When do you need a chart or graph in the research paper? A research paper is in itself a resultant report of all the investigations and surveys you conducted, be it through primary or secondary data. However, not everyone can understand those figures or calculations and at times the reader might have to read the entire copy just to get to the numbers. This calls for a simpler approach to ease the process. You may end up using a chart for any one or multiple reasons mentioned next. munotes.in

Page 133


133 Public Relations
Research - I To prove your point It is far easier to attest to your standing when you have a graphical representation alongside the tabulated results. Your reader might be much more comfortable when they don’t have to try and understand the calculations just to realize what your final conclusion is. To make your information more comprehensive The level of your audience’s comprehension can be directly related to the ease with which they can make sense of the compiled data. Using a chart can help enhance this ease further. A graph can describe more information with minimum real estate Conveying more details in the least amount of words and space is an art that can be practiced with the help of graphs. A diagram that pictorially represents the entire data collection and its output is also more visually appealing. Deliver complicated points With illustrations and grids, you can put across the complex data in a simplified version which drives your point home while being easier on the reader’s eyes. Compare data When you are looking to compare two or more sets of data consisting of a whole lot of factors and numbers, it is a good idea to use visual aids like a chart that can help the reader understand the comparative state of each element at a glance. 11.2 HOW TO TELL A STORY WITH CHARTS AND GRAPHS The main functions of a chart are to display data and invite further exploration of a topic. Charts are used in situations where a simple table won't adequately demonstrate important relationships or patterns between data points. When making your chart, think about the specific information that you want your data to support, or the outcome that you want to achieve . Keep your charts simple – bombarding an audience with data will likely leave them confused and uncertain, so remove any unnecessary elements that could distract them from your central point. Assess If You Actually Need a Graph/ Chart Oftentimes, students and researchers alike tend to use graphs more than needed in their papers to make their point stand out prominently. munotes.in

Page 134


134 Public Relations Research - I
134 However, there are cases where you can simply put across your premise as well as results in just a few sentences. In such scenarios, it is advisable to avoid the usage of charts as they can lower the authority of your more important diagrams further in the research. Select the Right Graph for the Message As mentioned earlier, different types of data require different kinds of charts. On one hand, pie charts could be ascertained as perfect for displaying an approximate division of hours of a day and the way they are spent but on the other, a line graph would be more suitable to show a market trend spread over a few months or years. A wrong graph chosen to plot your data might just make it more difficult for the user to make sense of the research rather than simplifying it and that is the absolute last thing you’d want. Using a graph creator online can be a way to go to avoid the same. Therefore, your understanding of the variety of these diagrams is equally important. Broadly, they can be categorized into the following. Visual representations help us to understand data quickly. When you show an effective graph or chart, your report or presentation gains clarity and authority, whether you're comparing sales figures or highlighting a trend. But which kind of chart or graph should you choose? If you click on the chart option in your spreadsheet program, you'll likely be presented with many styles. They all look smart, but which one works best for your data, and for your audience? To figure that out, you need a good understanding of how graphs and charts work. This article explains how to use four of the most common types: line graphs, bar graphs, pie charts, and Venn diagrams. Types of graphs and charts ● Bar Graph

munotes.in

Page 135


135 Public Relations
Research - I ● Pie Chart
● Line Chart
● Scatter Plot

munotes.in

Page 136


136 Public Relations Research - I
136 ● Flowchart
● Histogram
● Pictograph

munotes.in

Page 137


137 Public Relations
Research - I ● Gantt Chart
● Bullet Chart
● Venn Diagrams Venn diagrams show the overlaps between sets of data. Each set is represented by a circle. The degree of overlap between the sets is depicted by the amount of overlap between the circles. A Venn diagram is a good choice when you want to convey either the common factors or the differences between distinct groups. 11.3 USING VENN DIAGRAMS: AN EXAMPLE Figure 9 shows sales at Perfect Printing. There are three product lines: stationery printing, newsletter printing, and customized promotional items, such as mugs.
munotes.in

Page 138


138 Public Relations Research - I
138 Figure 9: Example of a Venn Diagram By separating out the customers by the type of product that they buy, it becomes clear that the biggest group of customers (55 percent of the total) are those buying stationery printing. But, most stationery customers are only using Perfect Printing for stationery (40 percent). They may not realize that Perfect Printing could also print their company newsletters and promotional items. Perfect Printing could consider some marketing activity to promote these product lines to its stationery customers. Newsletter customers, on the other hand, seem to be well aware that the company also offers stationery printing and promotional items – 23 percent of newsletter printing customers also buy other products. Focus on Readability The most important function of a chart is to bring to the forefront the crux of a topic, that can be understood by anyone reading it, even without a firm grasp of the subject at hand. Having said that, we would like to strongly emphasize the need for a legible diagram. If your reader cannot decipher the diagrams you’ve used, its presence is as good as none. Per our observation, several students, researchers, and even scientists make this error of integrating so much data in one graph that it becomes unintelligible. An incomprehensible illustration is viewed by most as nothing more than an image, thus hampering the reading experience of your report.
munotes.in

Page 139


139 Public Relations
Research - I To ensure your chart is readable, formatting it optimally is a crucial step. It includes not just the font type, font size, and symbols used therein but also elements like the colors used, caption & title given to the graph, names used for each axis as well as an index or data field for reference. Some useful considerations regarding readability: ● The text used on a diagram should always be kept to a minimum while making sure the message is not being lost. ● Symbols used should be distinct so as to avoid confusion. ● De-clutter the figure by removing all non-essential data and elements from the grid and adding it to the footnote instead.
Reference 1. ● The background of the chart should be in good contrast to the chart itself, to make certain that the data stands out prominently. ● The axes should not be named simply “temperature” & “time” for instance unless it provides a complete clarification of the segments. ● Choose the graph’s layout to maximize readability.
munotes.in

Page 140


140 Public Relations Research - I
140 Reference 2. Maintain the Look-and-Feel A chart’s visual appeal is just as important as the data it is representing, if not more. An attractive diagram compels the reader to stop and go through the information it is rendering instead of glimpsing it once and moving ahead. You can ensure this step by simply keeping in mind the following tips. Informative Title The heading you give to your graph is of significant importance because it lets the reader know what is it that the picture is portraying. It should be self-explanatory and clear because based on that the user will be making a decision to read or not read the chart. Acknowledge the Source Adding a small footnote recognizing and pointing to the source of the information being displayed lends credibility and authority to your data. Brand Integration If you are doing the research under a specific college, university or company, remember to use their mandatory colors and logos. Accurate Dimensions Give the first preference to a 2D chart as it is simpler to understand. Nevertheless, if you find yourself in a position to use a 3D graph, see to it that the same is comprehensible and includes only the truly important elements on the grid.
munotes.in

Page 141


141 Public Relations
Research - I Indexing Do not, under any circumstances, forget to add a relevant key to the diagram that gives clarity to the presented data. Keep all The Junk and Fluff Aside As we mentioned above, a clean chart is the need of the hour. Clearing up your figures of all the unnecessary elements helps the most important information stand out, giving the reader exactly what he/ she came for. ● Use the minimum amount of text on your chart. You can add any notes you wish to in the footnote of the same. ● Use short forms and abbreviations wherever possible. ● Avoid using too many colors or the graph might become too loud and noisy for the reader. Avoid Using 3D Graphs If at all feasible, we would highly recommend you avoid the use of 3D Graphs. While at a glance they may make an attractive picture, but in actuality, they can often be misleading. A three-dimensional chart, be it in the form of a pie chart or a bar graph can be difficult to interpret due to the differences in perspectives. When viewed from different angles, the figure could point to different results due to a distorted visual relationship. This also affects the information being derived from it. Moreover, 3D spacing makes a comparison between the values and volumes of each factor challenging. 11.4 MAKE GRAPHS WITH NO GRID LINES Illustrated above under our ‘Focus On Readability’ section, you can find the perfect example of why using grid lines can sometimes be a bad idea. Remember, if the reader is looking for incremental differences with exact data points, they can always refer to your tabulated facts and figures. However, what they are indeed looking for in the graph is a general trend. Thus eliminating the grid lines might actually be a good proposition. Our Brain Focuses on What Stands Out While designing an infographic one of the most essential things to keep in mind is that you have a lot of data and not all of it is as highly significant. Always ensure that you are highlighting the important parts in a way that they are vividly noticeable and attract attention. munotes.in

Page 142


142 Public Relations Research - I
142 You would not want your readers to miss out on those bits in a sea of data and the only way to make certain that they don’t is by creating the graph accordingly. People Comprehend Visually Elegant Data Take a quick look at the picture below.
I’m certain that while spotting the animals in the first two images would have been simple, it would have taken a little more effort for your brain to process its presence in the third one. This happened because where in the first two, contrasting colors were used for the animal and the trees behind, there was no such differentiation in the last picture. This is to illustrate our simple point that your mind, just like your reader’s, is programmed to comprehend information that is visually refined. Therefore, using colors that aren’t too loud and similar is the right choice to make. ● How to read graphs and diagrams easily #1 Read the labels and units You do not want to spend too much time looking at a table or a graph before you get to the questions; to save time, read the labels and units. When you come across a graph or table, read the title as well as any additional labels like on the x- or y-axis or column headers. As you are reading, note the units used.
munotes.in

Page 143


143 Public Relations
Research - I When you get to the questions, knowing the basic labels and units on the graphs/tables can help you quickly decide on an answer choice. For example, maybe you are not sure exactly which table or graph has the information you need to answer a question, or you are not sure what the correct unit is. Well, if a quick look at the answers choices shows, say, kilogram per cubic meter, then all you have to find is find the table or graph that has values with the unit kilogram per cubic meter and you are well on your way to the answer. So pay attention to those units! #2 Pay attention to types of change Pay attention to whether a table or graph is showing independent amounts or cumulative amounts of change. For example, you could see cumulative change in a stacked bar graph, and independent change in a line graph. Also pay attention to how much the amounts are changing. Often you will be asked which of something changed the least or the most. Keep in mind that a horizontal line – even with a higher y-value – can show that something is remaining constant, or not changing, even compared to a line or curve with a lower y-value. When a line or curve increases or decreases rapidly – there is a greater slope or steepness to the line or curve – then this indicates that something has changed significantly. Keep in mind that if the question asks which of something changed the most, this could be an increase or decrease in change, so don’t ignore lines, curves, or values in a table that are decreasing; these could represent the greatest amount of change. 3 Compare tables and graphs Remember #1… the reason you need to pay attention to the labels on the tables and graphs is because sometimes you need to compare the information found in various tables and graphs. Note what makes the tables the same and what makes them different. Think about each as a paragraph: when you read, you should check in with yourself and make sure that you understand the main idea of each paragraph. Well, the same is true with data representation. You look at it and ask yourself, “What is this showing me?” Maybe you come across two graphs, one for experiment 1 and the next graph for experiment 2. So then you ask yourself, “What is different and the same from experiment 1 to experiment 2?” Keep the questions broad – main idea, changes in variable or units – and keep your answers simple as well. Just like I say you should only return to a Reading passage with a clear purpose, well, the same is true for a table and graph. You can stare at it all day long, but the munotes.in

Page 144


144 Public Relations Research - I
144 information is not going to jump out at you. You need to be looking for something! #4 Connect information in a table with what is in the passage So maybe you are not so sure what the “something” is that you are looking for in the table or graph. You do not have a purpose. Well, then you need to figure out how the table or graph is connected to the passage. Is it supporting an argument in the passage with some data? Is it offering data for an experiment described in the passage… perhaps setting you up so that you can draw a conclusion? In order to understand the tables and graph, you need to understand the passage itself and understand how they relate to the passage. #5 Make inferences – what can you conclude? So how do you know what you can conclude? Again, remember #1- first you must know what the table or graph is showing. Then (#4) consider how it relates to what is described or discussed in the passage. Based on both of these strategies, ask yourself: is there a pattern or trend in the data that will allow you to infer or make a prediction? Does the data support what you’re being asked to conclude or infer? For example, there was a passage that discusses public transportation. The passage included a circle graph showing the various reasons why the people who were surveyed rode public transportation – things like, for work, when the car doesn’t work, because it is less expensive, or because it is good for the environment. But the question asked you to infer whether the percentages would change for various reasons if the survey took place on a weekend instead of a weekday. Neither the passage nor the graph discussed how public transportation riding habits would change or stay the same from a weekday to the weekend. Thus, the graph did not support any ability to conclude or infer about weekend public transportation riding. You need to keep a critical eye and be sure that you’re inferring a conclusion that is aligned with what the data will support. 11.5 Summing Up Research papers are some of the most important documents you write and publish in your entire life and good statistical and scientific visualizations are the key to making them that much better. Your charts will always be dependent on the kind of data you wish to represent, but these tips are going to help you across all domains. Communication and Media Research in India munotes.in

Page 145


145 Public Relations
Research - I 12 DEVELOPMENT OF COMMUNICATION IN INDIA: PROSPECT, ISSUES AND TRENDS
Development and communication are two terms heavily loaded with different conceptions and haave various theoretical underpinnings. The communication media, within the context of development, are generally accustomed support development initiatives by the dissemination of messages that encourage the general public to support development-oriented projects. Although development strategies in developing countries diverge widely, the same old pattern for broadcasting and therefore the press has been predominantly the same: informing the population about projects, illustrating the benefits of those projects, and recommending that they be supported. Communication becomes a vital catalyst for change, but not its cause. Local folk media, for instance, is utilized to reduces media's bias toward literacy and supply information during a traditional, familiar form. Development journalism provides people with information on change in their society, and works at the local level to advocate change. Where mass media is now employed in developing societies, community newspapers and radio prove way more accessible and useful than television. The rapid spread of entertainment television within the developing world is proving to be more an interruption to traditional social structures than an agent of progress. Development Communication in India Tracing its history we've to travel back to communities who listened to rural radio broadcasts within the 1940s, the Indian school of development communication. One distinguishing element
munotes.in

Page 146


146 Public Relations Research - I
146 of these early programs was that they focused on the employment of indigenous languages –Marathi, Gujarati and Kannada. India's earliest organized experiments in development communication were held within the 1960s, sponsored by India's universities and other educational institutions, and by the Bretton Woods-school institutions. Educational institutions that played a crucial part during this effort include the University of Poona, the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi University, the Christian Institute for the Study of faith and Society and therefore the University of Kerala. India could be a developing country with lot of achievements all told the fields of recent day life including that of science & technology, agriculture and industry. Now development communication is such a tool of development that it's highly necessary for a developing nation like us. it's therefore been increasingly recognized that people's active participation is a necessary component of sustainable development. Any intervention with the intent of achieving a true and sustainable improvement within the living conditions of individuals is doomed to failure unless the intended beneficiaries are actively involved within the process. Unless people participate altogether phases of an intervention, from problem identification to research and implementation of solutions, the likelihood that sustainable change will occur is slim. Development communication is at the very heart of this challenge: it's the method by which individuals become leading actors in their own development. Communication enables people to travel from being recipients of external development interventions to generators of their own development. The 20th century has witnessed the immense impact of communication technologies, from the spread of audio recording, motion pictures and radio as world-wide phenomena to the emergence of television as a dominant influence in nearly every institution, to the explosion of the net at the turn of the new century. The digital revolution is way from over, as new inventions repeatedly challenge assumptions that were themselves formed only yesterday. this can be an exciting and critically important moment for communication scholars to contribute to understanding, and shaping the parameters of our changing technological and academic environment. Because it's communication with a social conscience, development communication is heavily oriented towards man, that is, towards the human aspects of development. although it's primarily related to rural development, it's also concerned with urban, particularly suburban problems. It plays two broad roles. the primary could be a transformational role through which it seeks social change within the direction of upper quality of life and social justice. The second may be a socialization role through which it strives to keep up a number of the established values of society that are consonant with development. In playing these roles, development communication creates an enhancing atmosphere for the exchange of ideas that produce a contented balance in social and economic advancement between physical output and human relationships. munotes.in

Page 147


147 Public Relations
Research - I 12.1 EXPANSION OF MEDIA IN INDIA
India currently has 70,000 newspapers and 800 television channels. except for this, areas like radio, cinema, web portal, online newspapers, mobile news, event management, social media, advertising, promotion etc. also are expanding. Besides, job opportunities are created within the field of Media Research, External Media, Publishing, Documentary and Film, promotion, Education, Information and promotion of presidency of India and various State Governments, Corporate Sector, Government Offices. It is also enlightening to work out how research interests change over time and interact with the technologies that are available. A solid understanding of any research area must include an understanding of its development over time. because it seems, the history of media effects research could be a fascinating field of study in its title. An understanding of that histor will offer an appreciation of the scholarly tradition reflected in later chap ters of this book. The questions that you just will raise about the study of media effects will almost certainly differ as a results of knowing a number of the his tory behind the subject. Examples of media effects extend back to the 19th century, when the impact of newspapers on political beliefs seemed obvious. With the Payne Fund studies, the research community generated the primary systematic try to investigate the impact of media. These studies revealed that exposure to movies did have various effects on children. These results, combined with the apparent impact of the infa mous "War of the Worlds" broadcast, introduced the "legacy of fear"-the concept that media were extremely powerful and will bring on effects that were often harmful. The research on comic books within the 1950s cared-for reinforce the legacy of fear and therefore the curative model of mass communication. A study of voting behavior, The People's Choice, revealed a way more limited impact of mass media and ushered within the limited-effects perspective. As this angle took hold within the 1950s, television exploded on the scene and attracted research attention within the 1960s and 1970s. This early research led to a more sophisticated view of media effects that prevails to the current day. a part of that sophistication is reflected within the number and differing types of media effects that students now recognize.
munotes.in

Page 148


148 Public Relations Research - I
148 12.2 SIGNIFICANCE OF COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA RESEARCH IN INDIA Mass media plays a job in shaping people’s preferences and shaping how they give some thought to a situation, incident, product, or idea. There are various psychological, physical, and social effects of mass media on
people everywhere India. So, there's a robust must study the connection between mass media channels and their audiences and analyse how they convey with one another. it's a handy tool to know how different types of mass media, like television, cinema, newspapers, magazines, and radio, meet the requirements of individuals and entertain them. It also causes to gauge what proportion time someone is spending on a selected media form and the way that media channel affects society. So, media research results play a large role in helping various kinds of media forms with their significant decisions. Moreover, there's an enhanced demand for brand new and transparent information nowadays, as people long for transparency, which has actually enhanced the importance of media research and made it absolutely necessary for both the general public and personal sectors. Here are certain factors that reflect on the importance of media research in today’s world: 1) Gives useful information As one of the leading marketing research firms in India, the US, the
munotes.in

Page 149


149 Public Relations
Research - I UK, and other parts of the planet, we believe that media research helps you understand and determine new trends and obtain valuable insights into the sphere of mass media and communication, which further enables you to see how you'll be able to reach bent on more people within a brief span of your time. 2) Helps you frame news better
A thorough media research study helps you understand how you can frame news better and make it more accessible to your target audience. It helps you with the analysis and composition of views, news, and data. 3) Makes your story better and more accurate
Thorough media research also helps you create more accurate and objectively apt stories. it's impossible to try and do so if your efforts don't seem to be directed towards investigating each aspect of a story. Communication media refers to the means of delivering and receiving data or information. Communication matters because
munotes.in

Page 150


150 Public Relations Research - I
150 connection matters. In telecommunication, these means are transmission and storage tools or channels for data storage and transmission.The study of communication and media enables us to grasp the globe around us; it prepares us to be future leaders and problem-solvers, and it challenges us to be curious and passionate critical thinkers. 12.3 COMMUNICATION RESEARCH METHODS In the field of communication, there are three main research methodologies: quantitative, qualitative, and rhetorical. As communication students progress in their careers, they will likely find themselves using one of these far more often than the others. ● Quantitative Research
Quantitative research seeks to establish knowledge through the use of numbers and measurement. Within the overarching area of quantitative research, there are a variety of different methodologies. The most commonly used methodologies are experiments, surveys, content analysis, and meta-analysis. To better understand these research methods, you can explore the following examples: (1) Experiments: Experiments are an empirical form of research that enable the researcher to study communication in a controlled environment. For example, a researcher might know that there are typical responses people use when they are interrupted during a conversation. However, it might be unknown as to how frequency of interruption provokes those different responses (e.g., do communicators use different responses when interrupted once every 10 minutes versus once per minute?). An experiment would allow a researcher to create these two environments to test a hypothesis or
munotes.in

Page 151


151 Public Relations
Research - I answer a specific research question. As you can imagine, it would be very time consuming — and probably impossible — to view this and measure it in the real world. For that reason, an experiment would be perfect for this research inquiry. (2) Surveys: Surveys are often used to collect information from large groups of people using scales that have been tested for validity and reliability. A researcher might be curious about how a supervisor sharing personal information with his or her subordinate affects way the subordinate perceives his or her supervisor. The researcher could create a survey where respondents answer questions about a) the information their supervisors self-disclose and b) their perceptions of their supervisors. The data collected about these two variables could offer interesting insights about this communication. As you would guess, an experiment would not work in this case because the researcher needs to assess a real relationship and they need insight into the mind of the respondent. (3) Content Analysis: Content analysis is used to count the number of occurrences of a phenomenon within a source of media (e.g., books, magazines, commercials, movies, etc.). For example, a researcher might be interested in finding out if people of certain races are underrepresented on television. They might explore this area of research by counting the number of times people of different races appear in prime time television and comparing that to the actual proportions in society. (4) Meta-Analysis: In this technique, a researcher takes a collection of quantitative studies and analyzes the data as a whole to get a better understanding of a communication phenomenon. For example, a researcher might be curious about how video games affect aggression. This researcher might find that many studies have been done on the topic, sometimes with conflicting results. In their meta-analysis, they could analyze the existing statistics as a whole to get a better understanding of the relationship between the two variables. ● Qualitative Research

munotes.in

Page 152


152 Public Relations Research - I
152 Qualitative research is fascinated by exploring subjects’ perceptions and understandings as they relate to communication. Imagine two researchers who want to know student perceptions of the essential communication course at a university. the primary researcher, a quantitative researcher, might measure absences to grasp student perception. The second researcher, a qualitative researcher, might interview students to seek out out what they like and dislike a few course. the previous is predicated on hard numbers, while the latter is predicated on human experience and perception. Qualitative researchers employ a range of various methodologies. a number of the foremost popular are interviews, focus groups, and participant observation. To higher understand these research methods, you'll explore the subsequent examples: (1) Interviews: This typically consists of a researcher having a discussion with a participant based on questions developed by the researcher. For example, a researcher might be interested in how parents exert power over the lives of their children while the children are away at college. The researcher could spend time having conversations with college students about this topic, transcribe the conversations and then seek to find themes across the different discussions. (2) Focus Groups: A researcher using this method gathers a group of people with intimate knowledge of a communication phenomenon. For example, if a researcher wanted to understand the experience of couples who are childless by choice, he or she might choose to run a series of focus groups. This format is helpful because it allows participants to build on one another’s experiences, remembering information they may otherwise have forgotten. Focus groups also tend to produce useful information at a higher rate than interviews. That said, some issues are too sensitive for focus groups and lend themselves better to interviews. (3) Participant Observation: As the name indicates, this method involves the researcher watching participants in their natural environment. In some cases, the participants may not know they are being studied, as the researcher fully immerses his or herself as a member of the environment. To illustrate participant observation, imagine a researcher curious about how humor is used in healthcare. This researcher might immerse his or herself in a long-term care facility to observe how humor is used by healthcare workers interacting with patients. munotes.in

Page 153


153 Public Relations
Research - I ● Rhetorical Research Rhetorical research (or rhetorical criticism) could be a variety of textual analysis wherein the researcher systematically analyzes, interprets, and critiques the persuasive power of messages within a text. This takes on many forms, but all of them involve similar steps: selecting a text, choosing a rhetorical method, analyzing the text, and writing the criticism. To illustrate, a researcher can be curious about how mass media portrays “good degrees” to prospective college students. to know this communication, a rhetorical researcher could take 30 articles on the subject from the last year and write a rhetorical essay about the factors used and therefore the core message argued by the media. Likewise, a researcher may well be fascinated by how women in management roles are portrayed in television. they might select a gaggle of popular shows and analyze that because the text. This might lead to a rhetorical essay about the behaviors displayed by these women and what the text says about women in management roles. As a final example, one may well be inquisitive about how persuasion is employed by the president during the White House Correspondent’s Dinner. A researcher could select several recent presidents and write a rhetorical essay about their speeches and the way they employed persuasion during their delivery. ● Mixed Methodology Taking a mixed methods approach ends up in a quest study that uses two or more techniques discussed above. Often, researchers will pair two methods together within the same study examining the identical phenomenon. Other times, researchers will use qualitative methods to develop quantitative research, like a researcher who uses attention group to debate the validity of a survey before it's finalized. The good thing about mixed methods is that it offers a richer picture of a communication phenomenon by gathering data and knowledge in multiple ways. If we explore a number of the sooner examples,
munotes.in

Page 154


154 Public Relations Research - I
154 we are able to see how mixed methods might end in a far better understanding of the communication being studied. Example 1: In surveys, we discussed a researcher inquisitive about understanding how a supervisor sharing personal information together with his or her subordinate affects the way the subordinate perceives his or her supervisor. While a survey could give us some insight into this communication, we could also add interviews with subordinates. Exploring their experiences intimately could give us an improved understanding of how they navigate self-disclosure during a relationship supported power differences. Example 2: In content analysis, we discussed measuring representation of various races during clock time television. While we are able to count the appearances of members of various races and compare that to the composition of the final population, that doesn’t tell us anything about their portrayal. Adding rhetorical criticism, we could discuss how underrepresented groups are portrayed in either a positive or negative light, supporting or defying commonly held stereotypes. Example 3: In interviews, we saw a researcher who explored how power might be exerted by parents over their college-age children who are away at college. After determining the tactics utilized by parents, this interview study could have a phase two. during this phase, the researcher could develop scales to live each tactic so use those scales to grasp how the tactics affect other communication constructs. One could argue, as an example, that student anxiety would increase as a parent exerts greater power over that student. A researcher could conduct a hierarchical regression to determine how each power tactic affects the degree of stress experienced by a student. Each methodology has its own merits, and that they often work well together. As students advance in their study of communication, it's worthwhile to be told various research methods. this permits them to check their interests in greater depth and breadth. Ultimately, they're going to be ready to assemble stronger research studies and answer their questions about communication more effectively. Media Research
munotes.in

Page 155


155 Public Relations
Research - I Media Research is that the study of the consequences of the various mass media on social, psychological and physical aspects. Research segments the people supported what television programs they watch, radio they listen, media they access and magazines they read. Media research also includes studying the expansion of those channels and their achievements and categorizing people supported what reasonably content they need been consuming. It involves several aspects, like the medium’s nature, how it works and functions, technologies that make it what it's, similarities and differences between it and other media forms, services provided by it, its effectiveness, how it will be enhanced, and also the cost related to it. It is a market survey that enables you to guage data in an unbiased manner. So, media research is thorough and beneficial in some ways when it involves understanding how your audience perceives your products or services and what aspects of it they like and what parts of it they require better. In fact, it's essential to manage and regulate media channels to handle socio political or economic issues. Furthermore, since the choice process depends on the information you’ve, many survey companies provide media research services that are meant to be utilized within the long term, so it's incredibly useful within the growth phase because it also allows you to grasp a media agency’s competitors. It includes achievements and effects of media and a study about the event of media. Newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, Cinema or other mass media analysis and collection of information’s. It helps to grasp the ways within which media can meet the wants of the audience. Whether it can provide information and entertainment to more and differing kinds of individuals. New technological improvements that helps to boost or enhance the medium. Thus so as to cope with social and political issues insightfully, management and regulation of media is required. Unbiased evaluation of information is achieved through media research. 12.4 PARAMETERS IN MEDIA RESEARCH 1. The nature of medium being used 2. The working of the medium 3. Technologies involved in it 4. Difference and similarities between it and other media vehicles 5. Functions and services provided by it 6. Cost associated and access to new medium 7. Effectiveness and how it can be improved As decision process depends on data, thus media research has grown to be utilized for long range planning. Research is in growth phase due to competitions between different media. munotes.in

Page 156


156 Public Relations Research - I
156 Critiquing any one theory of communication / media ➢ Agenda setting theory Agenda-setting describes the "ability (of the news media) to influence the importance placed on the topics of the public agenda". The study of agenda-setting describes the way media attempts to influence viewers, and establish a hierarchy of news prevalence. Nations judged to be endowed with more political power receive higher media exposure. The agenda-setting by the media is driven by the media's bias on things such as politics, economy and culture, etc. evolution of agenda-setting and laissez-faire components of communication research encouraged a fast pace of growth and expansion of these perspectives. Agenda-setting has phases that need to be in a specific order in order for it to succeed. munotes.in

Page 157


157 Public Relations
Research - I 13 WHAT IS AGENDA SETTING? What issues are important to you? Why are these issues of importance? Media coverage not only directs what we think but also shapes how we think. This influence provides the media with a powerful tool to influence government and the way people view it. Agenda setting is the idea that what the public thinks about is set by the media. The agenda setting theory was first introduced by Dr. Maxwell McCombs and Dr. Donald Shaw in 1972. This theory states that the news plays an integral part in the shaping of political realities. The amount of time spent on an issue and the information relayed in a news story, along with the story's position, determines how much a reader learns and the amount of importance placed on the issue. The agenda setting theory of McCombs and Shaw states that when the media reflect on the views of a candidate during a campaign, they are also shaping and determining the issues of importance. This can ultimately set the agenda for a political campaign. When analyzing agenda setting, there are two basic assumptions to be considered: 1. Media and the press filter and shape reality rather than reflect it. 2. When the media focuses on just a few issues and subjects, the public tends to perceive those issues as more important. ● Agenda Setting Theory: Gatekeeping, Framing and Priming Bernard Cohen’s oft cited quote, “the press may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about” was the first landmark study that connected media and foreign policy way back in 1963. McCombs and Shaw concretised this idea in 1972 proving that “agenda setting” for political campaigns was affected by the rate at which the news media covered a particular story and the extent to which the public thought it important. It outlined the media’s role as a “gatekeeper of public information” through its selection of what
munotes.in

Page 158


158 Public Relations Research - I
158 constituted news. This process of influence was seen as being three staged. First by discussing certain issues, the media was flagging an agenda (media agenda); the issues discussed were salient to public interest (public agenda); and finally these issues were viewed as being important to policy makers (policy agenda). However the question of the causality between the issue’s salience in terms of public opinion and media influence was left open. Iyengar and Kinder (1987) tried to establish causality by reworking the hypothesis to include the concepts of “priming” and “framing”. They argued that the media “does not alter reality” but “changes and shapes perceptions” by presenting an issue in a particular context (framing) and positioning it by the act of highlighting and association (priming) thereby influencing judgment. They proved that a report linking poor economic growth with a presidential policy triggered the perception of a drop in presidential performance. Zaller and Feldman described it as “top of the head” judgment. So while priming occurs “when a given message activates a mental concept which [when repeated] for a period of time increases the possibility of that concept”, framing is how “news messages help determine what audiences focus on” depending on effects of “message patterns and audience schema that guide this information.” 13.1 TECHNOLOGY AND AGENDA SETTING Advances in technology provide many new avenues for influencing the masses. At the onset of the agenda setting theory, communication was conducted primarily via print and radio, followed by film and television. Today, communication sources are nearly unlimited, allowing for greater public engagement and setting the trend for increased attention on agenda setting. To demonstrate the effect of technology on agenda setting, let's explore the Occupy Wall Street movement. The Occupy Wall Street movement consisted of a diverse group of gender, color, and political viewpoints that opposed social and economic inequity. The movement emerged in July of 2011 with presence via a website, Facebook, and Twitter. The goal was to
munotes.in

Page 159


159 Public Relations
Research - I gather a group of 20,000 on September 17, 2011, on Wall Street in New York City's financial district. The movement was left largely uncovered by mainstream media until late September of 2011, when YouTube footage of an activist being pepper sprayed by a New York police officer was aired. Following this social media coverage, the movement began to gain a significant presence across the country. By utilizing social media, activists have an effective platform for setting agenda in society. ● Has Indian Media become an agenda setting institution?
Indian media Agenda setting is functionally dependent on the reception of the media by the audience at large. We shall thus divorce not agenda setting from propaganda.Higher level of need for ideological orientation depends on interest and uncertainty of the audience2 . This leads us to something called the gullibility index of the audience.Indian media has been exploiting this uncertainty and interest of the audience very well recently. While doing this, the media is constantly shaping a media agenda for themselves viz. the priority of news items which is functionally dependent on TRP or ‘what sells.’ E.g. stories which monger hate/ fear or stories which portray strong nationalist fervor receive aggressive portrayal. The media can shape the political and social reality. The mere extent of coverage some news item received, the degree of attention that media content receives is a marketable commodity.The recentness and amount of exposure largely skews the public opinion in favor of or against the matter concerned.
munotes.in

Page 160


160 Public Relations Research - I
160 Pulwama attack and indian media E.g. In the 2019 general elections the exposure and extensive coverage of the Pulwama attack portrayed and created a necessity of national security being an issue of national importance from the lens of elections. Beyond the extent of coverage what automatically follows, is the moral decency and factual accuracy in portrayal. Media ethics seem to have long ago sold their existence to slavery of glamour,dogmatism, bootlicking and the logically unfound merriment and pride in being a stooge.The inevitable concomitant of this is the evil of presupposition which overruns the species named ‘media’. Named ironically so because, nothing passes unadulterated and permeated by a biased influence of a heavy opinion which more often than not weighs down the fact to press a favorable agenda. Media often do not acknowledge by means of responsible action and affirmation, the force they command as a means of amending existing frameworks through resocialisation. “In some instances, established traditions are used to influence agenda setting institutions and in some others agenda setting institutions influence the existing tradition.” -Maxwell comb and Donald shaw2 Another important aspect of agenda setting is the manner of portrayal. There is a clear asymmetry between the news houses as the sellers of dramatized news content and those consuming it as a vital source communiqué of tidings and exposé of secrecies. The consumers are manipulated into predilection of dramatized manipulations of media content which make the content more buyable, but take no cognisance of the psychological and social manners that it is setting.
munotes.in

Page 161


161 Public Relations
Research - I 13.2 MODUS-OPERANDUS: Muslim Only Congress,hindutva ko hadapne ki jung are commonly seen typically on hindi drama houses. The blatant misuse of question mark to misquote uncertainty as a suggestive statement, the zealous vehemence of the anchors and every not so intellectual argument being called a jung of sorts has deep rooted implications on the observing minds.Such content has a very high emotional susceptibility quotient assuming the primer of accessible socio-religious fervor and sharp social, political and religious contours.This may be apparently gimmicky but continuous exposure to it leads to serious indoctrination especially of gullible minds of the information age who have high interest and higher uncertainty as stated previously. Easy access to such propaganda, affects the restraint from cognitive effort to explore the realities of it. In recent times this propaganda has seemed to have had certain serious consequences(observations only) which I would love to highlight at the cost of digressing from the primary theme of agenda setting, seeking limited relevance of the explanation. With the consistent bombardment of emotionally appealing, objectively misaligned rhetoric to set an agenda with the public, be it political or social; There is a sense of rising social anomie.Defiance of social order is a rising common. The sense of public morality influenced by diverse, uncommon and often antithetical interpreted institutions like religious denominations, dominates the sense of constitutional morality. A fallout of this non-conformity is rising social disharmony and friction.E.g. The BJP minister Anurag Thakur shouting ‘desh ke gaddaro ko’ and a large crowd following with ‘goli maaro saale ko’ highlights this worrisome situation to which reckless agenda setting by media has contributed significantly.There is also a rising sense of irrationality or moral cretinism(The right becomes the wrong and vice versa) or even more dangerous moral nihilism(nothing is morally right or wrong). This in effect can be described as a loss of distinction between the correct and the wrong, what is a sure wrong thus becomes ‘maybe correct’ with varying degrees of conviction. E.g. The telangana rape accused encounter’s portrayal of media captured and emancipated the hidden feelings of disappointment and anger within the people’s mind very well. While the task of the media should have been to address and explain the difference between revenge and justice; The portrayal of the
munotes.in

Page 162


162 Public Relations Research - I
162 incident was such that it mobilized a large group of people including some of my professors to support that encounter killing. Money matters: Favors in cash and kind and the rising realm of paid news largely influence the narrative of the media.”Paid news” is a pervasive, structured and highly organized practice in Indian newspapers and other media outlets, where news space and favorable coverage is exchanged for money. Prime time is the single most important frame for agenda setting. The increasing importance to prime time viewership and the TRP business, forces the media house into pushing entertaining content as news, thus digressing from the responsibility assumed as a media house. Prime time news is believed to have influence on the effectiveness of a policy. But with political narratives dominating media and content consumption emotionally arousing or dramatic,Media is rapidly moving from conveying agenda to formulating or manipulating it. Conveying is replaced by influencing. Information asymmetry between rungs of people and the state is always absorbed by the media in varied proportions. But here, the value judgment of media houses becomes a fundamental determinant of social or political importance of events. Media sets the tone of social interaction and power dynamics. E.g. The Aasud yatra by the farmers for the alarming farmer suicide statistic(one every 3 hours} deserved much more priority on media agenda than it got. 13.3 PERCEPTUAL PRIMING: One response to a situation automatically pushing other response is known as priming e.g. The topic of the election pushes the response to EVM hacking . Priming can be conceptual, semantic but more important and relevant to this study is perceptual priming. Whereby, manufactured perceptions manipulate social reaction to stimuli. Media houses often come with a specific ideological agenda which they want to infest their viewers with and it has a clear mark of bearing of their ownership and profit motives. The sharp-left right divide as is seen in the Indian media today is unprecedented.
munotes.in

Page 163


163 Public Relations
Research - I e.g. ‘Sudhir Chaudhary reporting AAP victory in Delhi in the light of people of Delhi being selfish and voting for freebies as against national issues’ highlights the subscription of that media person to hyper-pseudo-nationalist fervor and loyalty to the saffron reign. Media sets a background of analysis/filter to human perception.It titillates imagination to interpret things in a certain manner. In the Indian case it has often been the narrative of Nationalism and in many cases Hindu nationalism.Reception of content on the social media is likewise extremely polarised.This polarization also necessitates a narrative which homogenized certain groups by stereotyping and attaches to them single point irreconcilable identities. The ‘Tukde tukde gang’, ‘Saffron terrorism’ are such identities ascribed to social groups aggressively by the media to serve the purpose of priming. Thus, these gradually become active filters to judgment of any scene. We the people: Media houses often fabricate a political agenda.It is generated by the political affiliation of media houses, profit pressure, suppression of journalists expression,etc. Fear and greed are traded for a spine in mass media including the new media. Another ignored trend is that of aggressive pack journalism; aligning to the left narrative or the right narrative is not subject to rationale but only depends on ideological expectation from the channel, the peers or the public. Political fabric now has sharp political contours where right wing nationalism is synonymous with the BJP and ‘secularism’ as the media would put it is an obviously seconded principle. Ephemeral bursts of agenda motivated comments accompany a larger sustained agenda goal. E.g. Cut clips of Rahul Gandhi saying something insane are abundant and frequently fed. This is an attempt to reduce Rahul Gandhi(You won't hear his name anywhere..) to a mere object of ridicule and the epithet ‘pappu’ ascribed to him. While Modi is constantly being compared to Nehru and his actions immunized against critique by putting his stature at a high pedestal where infallacy is obvious. This kind of centrifugation to effect an hierarchical heterogenization within political ranks is typical political agenda setting especially through the new media. This agenda is repeatedly fed until it approaches a kind of universality. The same is true about media as a means of selling dreams to set an agenda.This was typically seen in 2014 general elections and the
munotes.in

Page 164


164 Public Relations Research - I
164 propaganda machinery had its root in setting political agenda by the media.The lines between news, opinion, endorsement and advertising were sprucely blurred. ‘Acche din’ was a marketable dream which was woven with the Gujarat model to create an intersubjective illusionary fantasy. The influence it wielded, the utilization of the favorable political backdrop that it precipitated and the coverage that media accorded to it, brought about a revolutionary majority as its result. Agenda setting by the media has though rarely, also yielded some positive externalities.In cases like the anti corruption movement of Anna hajare, a section of media put their weight behind the movement. This set the direction of the public agenda demand and gave an upward thrust to the movement and an aggressive nudge to policymakers’ agenda. ● Agenda-setting in Business News Coverage: Agenda-setting in news coverage for business has expanded to other forms of media to showcase the importance of media usage to businesses and consumers. Businesses are focusing on hiring more journalists and training them so they can perform better. In training the journalist, businesses can ensure that the reporters avoid bias and keep in mind the business’ values. This is why when reading newspapers, certain articles influence people differently because editors are working behind the scenes to figure out the placement of articles and how long or short the stories will be. This showcases the importance agenda-setting has on newspapers since it gives the companies the ability to format stories they want their readers to read and therefore create a mindset that leans a certain way. ● Agenda-setting in Mass Media: Agenda-setting in mass media determines what viewers hear and see. This was founded by journalist Walter Lippmann in the 1920’s. He also found out that the media determines what pictures are formed in our minds therefore, refiguring the events to make it simpler for viewers to understand. After learning about this, researchers Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw took it a step further and wrote about it in their book Emergence of American Political Issues. The book focused on how workers in the press are always looking through the media to select what is written or aired for viewers. They are bringing to light that agenda-setting is in every medium people read and has been a part of our culture for a long time. Agenda-setting creates media that viewers want to see and hear at a given moment and is noticeable when related to politics.
munotes.in

Page 165


165 Public Relations
Research - I ● Agenda-setting in advertising. Ghorpade demonstrated that the media's agenda-setting can "go beyond the transfer of silence to the effect of intended behavior" and is thus relevant to advertising. ● Agenda-setting in interpersonal communication. Although agenda-setting theory is related to mass communication theory, it can be applied to interpersonal communication as well. Yang and Stone investigated whether people who prefer interpersonal communication have the same agenda as others who rely on mass media. According to them, the public agenda suggested by the media can flow through interpersonal communication as well. ● Agenda-setting in crime. Agenda-setting can be connected to cultivation theory. Lowry et al. conducted a longitudinal study and revealed that network television news covering crimes often made the public not only concentrate on criminal cases but also tremble with fear. ● Agenda-setting and stereotypes. Besova and Cooley (2010) found that the agenda-setting function of the media has a major effect on public opinion and how Americans perceive or judge a particular issue. They also found that negative media coverage, as opposed to neutral or positive, has greater agenda-setting power which can contribute to the formation and perpetuation of stereotypes. For example, the media often portrays foreign countries stereotypically by only covering certain stories concerned with certain issues. Only 5.6% of the international news produced by the United States media covers Africa which likely means viewers do not receive a well-rounded view of the entire continent. 13.4 CONCLUDING: With the kind of influence they commanded, media houses naturally got into agenda setting. But soon after, agenda setting has blended in the need to feed the culture of attention grabbing. Contrary to the pack journalism there has also kicked in competitive journalism. Ideological differences between media houses are put forth with aggression. E.g. Exit poll figures formulate political opinion.The conservatism in prediction reflects the ideological inclination of media houses and sets an obvious political agenda. Such media framing also includes the kind of fabricated overlap between criminal allegation and criminal prosecution that the media creates, through their course of public (mis)information. Agenda setting by the media has lost its argumentative and questioning base and the larger social good is seconded to self seeking motives. Media houses have gotten into a habit of sensationalizing class issues and conveniently ignoring the more important issues in public discourse. Media no longer absorbs the vacuum between the most marginalized and the lawfully able and resourceful. E.g. The coverage higher universities get vis a vis the abysmal primary education elsewhere, No talks about investigating the causes of graduate unemployment in India but long discussions on the Budget speech, etc. munotes.in

Page 166


166 Public Relations Research - I
166 Media was essentially supposed to be in its own capacity, an independent knowledge institution pivoted on and around reason. But with more than frequent agenda setting, media and media personnel have now become very predictable and can be taken for granted. The resistance and the ever important venturing opposite of the flow got lost in setting agenda along the flow, to go longer. Defiance backed by intellectual integrity is easily offset e.g. Punya prasoon Bajpayee, Gauri Lankesh etc. Flock-Alignment with the set agenda has now almost attained normalization like every other phenomenon. The purpose, principle and potential of the likes of Arnab Goswami, the so-called channel they run and its irrelevance with principles of anything close to sound,responsible journalism, shall need another separate analysis. The larger umbrella belief which summarizes much of this brainwashing by the media is…the “Sab Chor Hai saale!”…whitewash on society. To conclude the sequel in Mark Twain's words; “It is easier to fool people than to prove to them that they have been fooled.”
munotes.in

Page 167


167 Public Relations
Research - I 14 CASE STUDIES 14.1 WHAT IS CASE STUDIES
While the term “case study” (or “case method”) is widespread in social methodology and media research, it's nevertheless a posh concept. McCartney defines a case study as ‘A descriptive report analysing a unit as an entire (e.g. individual, family, organisation, etc.) in qualitative terms’ whereas Robert K. Yin defines a Case Study as “An empirical inquiry that investigates a up to date phenomenon within its real world context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context don't seem to be clearly evident.” A case study can combine completely different methods (qualitative and quantitative ones) and analytical approaches, but is defined by the circumstance of that specialize in a case (or variety of cases) and is particularly established in qualitative media research (being also the most focus of this article). Second, the term “case study” is very vague because it can name either the method of doing research or the presented result. And, third, a main problem when doing case studies is that the construction of the case borders. 14.2 NATURE AND TYPES OF CASE STUDIES

munotes.in

Page 168


168 Public Relations Research - I
168 All in all, case studies are often located within the tradition of quantitative furthermore as qualitative media research. Within quantitative media research case studies are considered as “exploratory research”. supported this, further standardised research should be undertaken. The argument is that the next number of cases allows more general conclusions than specializing in only 1 case. A more sophisticated understanding of case studies – which is printed during this article – is established in qualitative media research. One can argue that every qualitative study relies on “cases” within the sense that an engagement with contextualised social phenomena is that the foundation of qualitative research intrinsically. Beside that, a more concrete understanding of the case study grasps research investigating specific cases separated from each other. The aim of those studies is either the “thick description” of a case or case research with the aim of creating general or theoretical conclusions. 14.3 SYSTEMATISING CASE STUDIES Robert E. Stake has proposed to distinguish three types of case studies: (1) intrinsic (2) instrumental (3) collective case studies An intrinsic case study is undertaken because the researcher wants a higher understanding of this particular case; the aim isn't theory building. An instrumental case study analyzes a selected case to supply insight into a more general issue or to redraw a generalisation. The collective case study focuses on different cases to research a general phenomenon; during this sense, it's an instrumental study extended to many cases. Case Studies In Current Media Research
As the discussed examples show, case studies are common in current qualitative media research. Especially when specializing in audience
munotes.in

Page 169


169 Public Relations
Research - I studies and appropriation research, it becomes obvious that lots of far-reaching research focuses on specific cases thoroughly. Studies on the cases of various social groups also are the indicator of other early research on media appropriation, especially within the tradition of gender studies. But also, current efforts to argue for a more comprehensive cultural studies orientation in media research are especially oriented on cases along the “circuit of culture.” Most of those studies don't seem to be “intrinsic case studies” but specialize in specific cases as a place to begin for theoretically oriented research. In doing so, they show the outstanding significance cases have for qualitative media research: research therein tradition takes up with variety of single cases and has the aim of investigating these cases as exhaustively as possible to form their meaning structures and patterns accessible for further, critical theorising. For this, the info sample of research isn't defined prior to but within the process of researching these cases, and qualitative data are often combined with quantitative. Three tendencies within the use of case studies in current qualitative media research are often observed. First, the potential of case studies was underlined during the past decade, especially by research on media events integrating qualitative and quantitative data. Media events show exemplarily how far our present media cultures are marked by outstanding incidents which demand detailed analyses. Research like this is often not just an outline of something exceptional but a very important foundation to grasp our increasingly mediatized presence. Second, in all, one can ascertain a theoretical orientation in current case studies within qualitative media research. While there is also “intrinsic” motivations for researching specific cases like outstanding media events such research is very undertaken to create more general conclusions or for theory formation. One can understand this as an indicator of an increasing theoretical discourse in media research, which lies beyond the deductive/hypothesis-testing paradigm of much standardised media research and is more aimed toward material-based enhancements of theoretical discourse. this can be the purpose where media and cultural theory meet one another. Third, while case studies are a general moment of qualitative media research, a noteworthy number of them understand research on specific cases – and not along predefined categories and samples – as the way of critical reflection. The underlying idea of this argument is that case studies make it possible to bring into academic discourse “voices” and “particularities” that are normally excluded in media research. The critical potential of case studies, then, lies within the trajectory of taking specificities seriously while still contextualising them in wider connections like power relations. These three points show that case studies are an inherent a part of current media research. In this, an “intrinsic” munotes.in

Page 170


170 Public Relations Research - I
170 orientation on specific cases is increasingly combined with a critical target theory development. 14.4 USING CASE STUDIES IN PRACTICAL Case Studies can function follow-ups to other materials on ethical theory or they will be used on their own to cite overlooked ethical implications. they will be utilized in a course entirely focused on the ethics of media or communication, or they will be accustomed add a partial specialise in ethics to a variety of communication, journalism, or media courses. for example, one may lecture on the ethics of trust within the print media, so use a case study on sports blogging and trust. Alternatively, one might lecture on the varied sorts of sports blogging and use a case study as a spotlight for discussion over the moral issues concerning sports blogging. Either way, case studies are great ways to evoke discussion over difficult ethical issues. How might one use case studies in their class
Some teachers use case studies to try and do two things. First, students may be tasked with identifying the moral interests at conflict within the decision made or to be made within the case study at hand. what's the choice that's ethically problematic here? What reasons or interests does one immediately see for each side of this controversy? Cultivating sensitivity to the varied sides to an ethical issue develops the kind of charity and sympathy many see as vital features to an ethical decision-maker. And often, our first reaction isn't our most justified or defendable reaction after we predict about our reasons for a small amount. Second, students is asked to develop a grip on the choice made or to be made what should the agent do (or what should they need done)? More importantly, why is that the proper action to take? This part goes deeper than merely noting interests on either side of this controversy, as students are asked to argue for why one interest or value takes priority over another interest or value. Sometimes, there are creative solutions which will be envisioned to deal with all the concerns within the case study. The fundamental point to the employment of case studies in teaching ethics is to impress discussion, questioning, and argument. they're not primarily wont to solve problems, convey settled principles, prove certain theories, then forth. Many
munotes.in

Page 171


171 Public Relations
Research - I instructors use them within the following way. Students are put into small groups and asked to read the case study. Each group talks over the case, directed by instructor prompts or the “discussion” questions listed at the tip of the many case studies. Following this, the trainer brings the whole class together and discusses what each group considered each starting question. Students might then be encouraged to interact in reason-based discussion and debate about the case decisions in question. Disagreement, when it results in the comparison and analysis of justifying reasons and values, could be a welcome register using case studies to show ethics. the trainer may conclude discussion with a summary of the interests and positions debated by students, but rarely is there one right answer (and set of reasons) that gains reasoned acceptance by all. Learning the method of critical ethical thinking and reasoned disagreement is one amongst the most ends of using case studies. Here are some samples of case studies within the media research that are presented: (1) MEDIA'S GENDER GAP: Investigating relationships between women's news production and consumption - By Alyssa Zeisler The media gender gap is well established: women are underrepresented in newsrooms and leadership roles are primarily held by and most frequently filled by men. 3 There exists another equally well established but less discussed gender gap: women tend to read less political and international news4 than men. This gender gap in news consumption has b oth commercial implications (vis-a-vis audience size and revenues) and editorial implications for news producers. The news industry has been under financial stress with significant job losses. Media companies require new audiences and revenues to survive. With 163 million women in the U.S., increasing readership by women could offer additional revenues through increasing subscriptions and advertising impressions. There are also significant implications at the societal level: more women reading political news would create a more informed voting population, which could in turn shape government policies. 10 As awareness of the gender consumption gap and the possible benefits of increasing women’s news readership has become more prevalent, media companies have begun to innovate and experiment with different methods to engage women readers. Three primary solutions have emerged: create content specifically for women, develop marketing to target women, and push for gender parity for women in newsrooms. There are also significant implications at the societal level: more women reading political news would create a more informed voting population, which could in turn shape government policies. munotes.in

Page 172


172 Public Relations Research - I
172

Simply put, bringing more women into the newsroom seems to impact what is written about, in what way, and by whom. This conclusion is supported by a content analysis of three U.S. daily newspapers and published in the Journal of Communication22: “female reporters drew upon a greater diversity of sources... and wrote more positive stories than did male reporters.”
munotes.in

Page 173


173 Public Relations
Research - I AUTHOR'S NOTES- The overarching hypothesis of this research is that the gender makeup of a newsroom will impact that organization’s audience. The methodology involved correlating female bylines and female leadership in newsrooms with the percentage of women in each company’s respective audience. Analysis of this data was suggestive of a relationship that warrants further investigation. As more data becomes available, consideration of relationships between bylines, leadership, and audience demographics could also be used to investigate how racial, income, sexual orientation, and other imbalances in a newsroom might influence readership. According to Sratup Talky, The case study on- History, Present and future of Indian Media is presented as such. (2) History, Present and future of Indian Media: Media as we know it has become an indispensable part of our lives. Without it, I think we’d barely sustain the economic and demographic environment lest having a path carved to move forward. The enormous sea of information that we have access to, is to the grace of this media. We have come decades ahead from telegrams and fax messages which were the primary mediums of passing sensitive information to the world of the internet and smartphones where nothing really is ever sensitive. The 24*7 media has taken us into the whirlpool of its headlines and breaking news and keeps us on our toes with the latest updates. Print media, Cinema, broadcasts, radio, and now the Gen Z favorite digital media are now the new improved, tech-savvy, and info-rich tools used to pass on information to the masses. 14.5 HISTORY OF INDIAN MEDIA Indian media is the largest and the oldest media that has seen itself unfold during the 18th century. The footfalls of pre-independence saw the birth of print media in 1780. Hicky’s Bengal Gazette was the first newspaper introduced under the British Raj. As the fate of India unfolded in the hands of the colonizers there were several other newspapers that steadily made their presence established. This print media later proved to become a powerful weapon at the hands of freedom fighters who spread the message of independence to the masses. The Madras Courier (1785) and the Bombay Herald (1789) were the ones that followed in the early 18th century. Pre-Independence Pre-Independence saw a multitude of print media founders support and aggregate the freedom struggle. Mirat-ul-Akbar ( a Persian Journal) by munotes.in

Page 174


174 Public Relations Research - I
174 Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Rast Goftar by Dadabhai Naoroji, Kesari by Bal Gangadhar Tilak. The Indian Opinion by Mahatma Gandhi were some of the prominent newspapers that took responsibility to encourage masses to come forward for the freedom movement. After Independence Even after Independence, the print media was dominated by English newspapers. Firstly, because of the exalted position of the language and secondly because of the Morse code on typewriters which were difficult for vernacular languages. Steadily, Indian languages rose to the occasion and started printing their own press. Indian press witnessed its first-ever revolt when the (then) Prime Minister Indira Gandhi announced a nationwide emergency during 1975-1977. This has set a precedent for how nations should not be treating their press. This suspended basic civil liberties-press being among several others. The Draconian law The Draconian law under the government threatened and arrested anyone who reported against the tyranny. The 21 month period of emergency had the Indian media on its leash and the publications had to run their content through a Chief Press Advisor before publishing. Radio broadcasting was first initiated in 1927 but became a state-owned department in 1930. The ministry of broadcasting and information then held the apparatus including Doordarshan, the first Indian Television channel. It is one of two statutory bodies of the Indian Public Broadcaster Prasar Bharati.
Indian Cinema The Indian Cinema dates back to 1913 when Dadasaheb Phalke, a scholar on Indian languages and culture, pioneered the motion picture industry by producing the first full-length motion picture “Raja Harishchandra”.
munotes.in

Page 175


175 Public Relations
Research - I Indian cinema has been tested in many waters to become Bollywood today. Today, India is the second-largest producer of movies in the world. Indian cinema with respect to its viewers has been very protective of the content and subject matter that is shown to the masses. India holds very dearly to its religious and social-political views. Indian audiences are still not very accepting of mature and sensitive topics such as same-sex relationships, casteism, and politics. There have been excellent filmmakers who have tried to carve out these subjects keeping in mind the sensitivity of the Indian audience. We are yet to reach the maturity mark as a collective audience when it comes to raw and unfiltered content.
Indian media 14.6 THE PRESENT OF THE INDIAN MEDIA The media and entertainment industry has grown exponentially over the past few decades. Today, with more than 118000 registered publications for newspapers and periodicals and makes India the second-largest country in newspaper consumption. Television Media India has 850 TV channels across all spoken languages with 197 million households having television sets in use. Every language in the Indian subcontinent has its own set of channels of entertainment. Colors, Zee, Star are some of the leading networks spread pan India covering news and entertainment in all the main languages. India is currently witnessing the exit of single-screen theatres as major multiplex players like Cinepolis, INOX, PVR, and Carnival Cinemas have taken over the screenings. India has lost about 12% of single-screen theatres due to the novel corona Virus outbreak. These theatres are unlikely to return to business and may be taken over by multiplex chains.
munotes.in

Page 176


176 Public Relations Research - I
176 OTT Platforms in India The Over-the-top (OTT) platforms have been around since 2008. But their viewership rose significantly when we were forced into our homes for almost a year thanks to the pandemic. OTT platforms were devoid of censorship and operated pan India since the internet has no geographical barriers. Today OTT platforms in India have valued at a revenue of Rs 40,000 crore with 40 mainstream OTT platforms running under the Indian umbrella. Amazon Prime, Disney+ Hotstar, Netflix India, SonyLiv, Alt Balaji, Voot are some of the established OTT platforms which are giving the DTH industry a run for its money. Growth of Indian channels, and media outlets Currently, the country consumes media through platforms such as TV, OTT, Print, VFX, Radio broadcasts, Gaming, and digital advertisements. India’s Ad revenue is forecasted to expand at a CAGR of 4.3% between 2021-2024. Due to the rapid growth in the number of internet users, the digital avenues are looking at a projection to reach a CAGR of 26% by 2024 including print and TV platforms, making India the six-largest demographic with an industry revenue worth $2.9 Billion.
Digital advertising revenue in India from financial year 2010 to 2020 How Indian media has changed the course of country’s politics and dynamics News Media With news giants like NDTV, CNBC, Aaj Tak, and ABP networks, India has around 892 news channels. These media houses have gained power over the course and have divided the Indian audiences into two wings.
munotes.in

Page 177


177 Public Relations
Research - I Some of the media houses are owned by the wings themselves. The politics and propaganda attribute to the success and TRPs of these media houses. A free press is becoming a serious worry in terms of authenticity and is lacking awareness. In recent times, journalism has cost a few passionate journalists their lives, and freedom of expression which one of the basic human rights in our constitution is ceasing to have much value. The political dominance over the free press is evident and intimidating. 14.7 INDIA'S FREEDOM STATUS India’s status has been degraded from ‘Free” to “Partially Free” by the NGO Freedom House due to a “crackdown on expressions of dissent by the media, academics, civil society groups, and protesters”. According to the Freedom in the World report, 2020, India’s score has decked to 67 from 70 out of 100. This is extremely serious and unnerving as we are losing the democratic status that we’ve held on since our independence. “Under Modi, India appears to have abandoned its potential to serve as a global democratic leader, elevating narrow Hindu nationalist interests at the expense of its founding values of inclusion and equal rights for all,” the report said. The free reign enjoyed by the digital media became a recent target of the nationalist government when it introduced new Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021 (Rules) for the functioning of OTT platforms. The new code of ethics needs to classify the content based on the viewer’s age, theme, tone, and impact. Future of Indian Media “With India’s decline to Partly Free,” the report said, “less than 20 percent of the world’s population now lives in a Free country, the smallest proportion since 1995.” The current state of media and entertainment is a little gloomy and seems to be surrounded by the clouds of arbitrary laws and coercion. The growth in terms of numbers is truly exponential. With OTT and Social Media platforms, media is pushing itself towards its highest potential. Content is King: but what if this content is under constant surveillance and the freedom of expression is compromised. The future is blurry for Indian Media and entertainment with an arbitrary wave riding its proficiency. Will India go back to being “Free” again? Or will it succumb to the political propaganda and lose its free press. These are the questions that are doing rounds of discussions among the intellectuals of our country. munotes.in

Page 178


178 Public Relations Research - I
178 Who owns NDTV in India? New Delhi Television Ltd. is an Indian news media company that owns and operates the broadcast news channels of NDTV India and NDTV 24x7. Who is the first woman journalist in India? Homai Vyarawalla was India's first woman photojournalist. Conclusion Indian media is a mess and we need to learn to distinguish between faux news and genuine journalism. As citizens, it is our responsibility to maintain the status of a democratic nation on the world front.
munotes.in