Media Research

Research in the Print media
Methodologies used to study the print media are similar to those used in most areas of research; academic and commercial research organizations often use content analysis, experiment, focus group, and surveys, among other procedures, to study newspapers and magazines. Print media research; however, tends to be more narrowly focused and more oriented toward practical application.

Background
Magazines and newspapers were one of the first subjects of mass media research. The initial interest in such research came from colleges and universities.

In 1924-the Association of Americam Schools and Departments of Journalism first published the Journalsim bulletin. The first issue contained an article byWilliam Bleyer entitiled "Research Problems and Newspaper Analysis," which presented a list of possible research topics in journalism. Among them were the effects of form and typogragphy on the ease and rapidity of newspaper reading, the effects of newspaper content on circulation. Bleyer's article was remarkably accurate in predicting the types of studies that would characterize newspapers and magazine research in coming years.
Much of early print media research was qualitative.

The first volume of Journalism Quarterly, founded in 1928 to succeed the Journalism Bulletin, contains article on press law, history, international comparisons, and ethics.

March 1930 surveyed the research interests of those currently working in the newspaper and magazine field and found the most prevalent type of study to be the survey of reader interest in newspaper content.

As the techniques of quantitative research became more widely known and adopted, newspaper and magazine research became more empirical.
Wilbur Schramm (1957) first recognized this trend in article in Public Opnion Quarterly that reviewed 20 years of research as reported in Journalism Quarterly. Schramm found that only 10% of the 101 articles published between 1937 and 1941 concerned quantitative analyses; by 1952-1956, however, nearly half the 143 articles published were quantitative, a fivefold increase in only 15 years. The reasons for this trend, according to schramm, were the growing availability of basic data, the development of more sophisticated research tools, and the increase in institutional support for research.

By 1960 newspapers and magazines were competing with television as well as radio for audience attention and advertiser investment.

Some of research agencies are:
-Newspaper Advertising Bureau, 1960, began conducting studies on all aspects of the press and its audience. In the 1970s, it founded the News Research Center, which reports the results of research to editors.
-In 1976 the Newspaper Readership Project was instituted to study the problems of declining circulation and sagging readership.
-In 1977 the Newspaper Research Conucil (NRC), a sub group of the Newspaper Advertising Bureau, was incorporated with 75 members.
-In 1992 the Newspaper Advertising Bureau merged with the American Newspaper Publishers Association to create the Newspaper Association of America (NAA). The NAA continued the efforts of the number of studies that looked at such topics as attracting younger readers and how to use advertising to encourage newspaper reading.

Research touches nearly every corner of the publishing industry: advertising, marketing, circulation, readership, and news-editorial. Print media research is conducted by commercial research firms, in-house research organizations, professional assocations, and colleges. Moreover, print media research is likely to continue its growth. .

Types of Pring Media Research
Newspaper and magazine researchers conduct six basic types of studies: readership, circulation, management, typography/makeup, readability, and online media use. Most of their research focuses on readership; studies of circulation and management rank next.

Studies about online media examine two main topics: a) the potential competition between internet news site and traditional newspapers and b) the relationship between a newspaper's web version and its print version. Only a few studies hae been conducted of typography/makeup and readability.

1. Readership Research
Many readership studies were done in the United States in the years immediately precding and following World War II. The George Gallup organizations was a pioneer in developing the methodology of these studies. A comprehensive study of newspaper readership was undertaken by the American Newspaper Publishers Association (ANPA), whose Contunuing Studies of Newspapers involved more than 50,000 interviews with readers of 130 daily newspapers between 1939 and 1950.

Readership research became important to management during the 1960s and 1970s, as circulation rates in metropolitan areas began to level off or decline. Concerned with holdings the interests of their readers, editors and publishers began to depend on surveys for the detailed audience information they needed to shape the content of a publicaton. The uncertain economy at the beginning of the new century and increasing competition from traditional and online media have made readership research even more important today.

Research into newspaper readership is composed primarily of five types of studies: reader profiles, item selection studies, reader-nonreader studies, uses and gratificationl studies, and editor-reader comparisons.


Reader Profiles: A reader profile provides a demographic summary of the reradersof a particular publication. It depicts the income collection as well as these data can be used to focus the content of the publication, prepare advertising promotions, and increase subscriptions.
Because theer may be significant differences in the nature and extent of newspaper reading among individuals who have the same demographic characteristics, researchers recently have turned to psychographic and lifestyle segmentation sutdies to construct reader profiles.
Psychographic studies usually ask readers to indicate their level of agreement or disagreement with a large number of attitudinal statements. Subsequently, patterns of response are analyzed to see how they correlate or cluster together.
Lifestyle segmentation research takes a similar approach. Respondents are asked a battery of questions concerning their activities, hobbies, interests, and attitudes. N. Davis (2001) describes newspaper industry research that segmented readers on the basis of how people manipulated time. The research identified three groups of readers: routinized, relaxed, and harried.
Both psychographic and lifestyle segmentation studies are designed to provide management with additional insights about editorial aims, target audiences, and circulation goals. In addition, they give advertisers a multidimensional portrait of the publications's readers.

Item-Selection Studies: A second type of newspaper readership study, the item-selection study, is used to determine who reads specific parts of the paper.
The readership of a particular item is usually measured by means of aided recal, whereby the inerviewer shows a copy of the paper to the respondent to find out which stories the respondent remebers.
Stamm, Jackson, and Jacoubovitch (1980) suggested a more detailed method of item selection analysis, which they called a tracking study. It identified which parts of an article they had read. (headline, text, photo, graphic, cutline etc.) The readership of items or categories is then related to certain audience demographic and psycographic characteristic.
Reader-Nonreader studies: The third type of newspaper readership research is called the reader-nonreader study. This type of study can be conducted via personal, telephone, or mail interviews with minor modifications. It is difficult, howver, to establish an operational definition for the term non-reader.
In some studies, a nonreader is determined by a "no" anser to the question "Do you generally read a newspaper?" Others have used the more specific question "Have you read a newspaper yesterday or today?" Repondents are asked, "How often do you read a daily paper?" and they are given five choices of response: 'very often', 'often', 'sometimes', 'seldom' and 'never'. Obviously, the form of the question has an impact on how many people are classified as nonreaders.
Once the nonreaders have been identified, researchers typically attempts to describe them by means of traditional demographic variables. Sobal and Jackson-Beek (1981) reported that nonreaders tend to be older, to have less education and lower incomes, and to have more often been widowed or divorced than readers.
Chaffee and Choe (1981) found that changes in marita status, residence, and employment had an impacht on newspaper readership. whereas, Cobb Walgren (1990) focused on why teenagers do not read the newspaper. She found that both teenagers' home environment and their image of the newspaper were important in determining why teens do not read newpapers. Nonreader teens perceived that reading the paer took too much time and effort, and they were more likely to gane parents who also did not read newpapers.
Uses and Gratifications studies: It is used to study all media content. for newspaper it can determine the motives that lead to newspaper reading and the personal and psychological rewards that result from it. The methodology of the uses and grarifications study is straightforward: Respondents are given a list of possible uses and gratifications and are asked whether any of these are the motives behind their reading.
Here is a list of some things people have said about why they read the
newspaper.
I. How much do you agree or disagree with each statement?
II. I read the newspaper because it is entertaining.
III. I read the newspaper because I want to kill time.
IV. I read the newspaper to keep up to date with whats' going on around me.
V. I read the newspaper to relax and to relieve tension.
VI. I read the newspaper so I can find out what other people are saying about things that are important to me.


Editor-Reader comparison: a group of editors is questioned about a certain topic, and their answers are compared to those of their readers to see whether there is any correspondence between the two groups. As sender and receiver, in particular, has different choice to select the news items. Basically, editor ethically controlled by the social responsibility where readers have no force to follow the editor's perception.

In a related study, Bogart(1989) gave readers an opportunity to design their own newspaper. Interviewers persented a sample of readers with 34 subjects and asked how much space they would give to each in a paper tailor-made to their own interest. Major categories of news were omitted from the listings because they were topics over which editors have little control. When the results were tabulated, the contents of a sample of newspapers were analyzed to see whether the space allocations made by editors matched the public's preferences. The resulting data indicated that readers wanted more of certain content than they were getting and that they were getting more of some topics tha they desired .
Magazine Redership Research. M
Magazine readership surveys are fundamentally similar to those conducted for newspapers but tend to differ in the particulars. Some magazine research is done by personal interview ≤ respondents are shown a copy of the magazine under study and asked to rate each article on a four-point scale ( æread all,Æ æread most,Æ æread some,Æ or ædidn’t read ). The mail survery technique, also frequently used, involves sending a second copy of the magazine to a subscriber shortly after the regular copy has been mailed, with instructions on how to mark the survey copy. for example, the respondents might be instructed to mark with a check the articles they scanned, to draw an X through articles read in their entirety, and to underline titles of articles that were only partly read. Laitin (1997) presents a basic outline of the methods used to survey magazine subscribers.
Many magazines maintain reader panels of 25 to 30 people who are selected to participate for a predetermind period. All feature articles that appear in each issue of the magazine are sent to thfse panel members, who rate each article on a number of scales, including interest, ease of reading, and usefulness. Over time, a set of guidelines for evaluating the success of an article is drawn up, and future articles can be measured aganist that standard. The primary advantage of this form of panel survey is that it can provide information about audience reactions at a modest cost . Other publications might use surveys that are included with the magazine itself . The McGraw – Hill magazine group spends approximately S. 250,000 a year on readership research.

Circulation Research M The term circulation research is applied to two different forms of newspaper and magazine study. The first type of circulation research uses a particular group of readers as its unit of analysis. It attempts to measure circulation in terms of the overall characteristics of a particular market—for example, to determine the proportion of households in a given market that are reached by a particular newspapers or the circulation pattern of a magazine among certain demographic groups or in specific geographic areas. Four studies in the 1990s examined the impact of content variables on circulation. Lacy and Fico (1991) demonstrated that measures of the content quality of a newspaper were positively related to circulation figures.

Another trend in circulation research is the identification of other market level or market structure variables that have an impact on circulation.

Economic influence have also been examined. Blankenburh and Friedn (1994) discovered that circulation figures were not related to the percentage of a newspaper's budget that was spent on news-edotorial expenses, nor was there a relationship between money spent on promotion and circulation. There was, however, an influence on newspaper price; papers that cost more tended to lose circulation.

Seamon (2000) looked at several newspaper delivery variables and concluded that the age of the carrier was not a factor in missed or late delivery.

Newspaper Management Research
The growing research area in the last two decades has been newspaper management practices. This growth was due to three factors. First, newspaper companies expanded their holdings, which created a more complicated management structure. Second, media competition became more intense. Newspapers with efficient management techniques had a greater advantage in the new competitive environment. Third, the newspaper industry became more labor-intensive. Skileed and experienced personnel form the backbone of a successful newspaper. More and more managers turned to research to determine how to keep employees satisfied and productive.

The techniques used to study newpaper management are the same as those used to study any business activity: surveys, case studies, descriptive content analysis, and mathematical models.

The main topics that have attracted the most research attention in the last 5 years are goal setting by management, organizational structure, employe job satisfaction, and effects of competition and ownership on newspaper content and quality.
for more.............follow the text bood for example.

Typography and Makeup Reasearch
Print media research measures the effects of news design elements specifically typeface and page makeup on readership, reader preferences, and comprehension. By means of this, approach, researchers have tested the effects of different typography and madeup elements, including amount of white space, presence of paragraph headlines, size and style of type, variations in column width, and use of vertical or horizontal page makeup.

The experimental method is used most often in typography and makeup studies. Subjects are typically assigned to one or more treatment groups, exposed to an experimental stimulus, and asked to rate what they have seen according to a series of dependent variable measures.

Readability research
simply defined, redability is the sum total of all the elements and their interactions that affect the success of a piece of printed material.
success is measured by the extent to which readers understand the , are able to read it at formula to conduct the readability reasearch: Reading ease formula, Fog index, SMOG grading, Colze procedure etc.

SMOG Grading
McLaughlin (1969) prposed a third readability index called SMOG Grading. The SMOG Grading is quick and easy to calculate: the researcher merely selects 10 consecutive sentences near the begining of the text, 10 from the middle, and 10 from the end, and then counts every word of three or more syllables and takes the square root of the total.
the number thus obtained represents the reading grade that a person must have reachedf to understand the text. McLaughlin's index can be calculated quickly using a small, easily measured sample. Although the procedure is related to that for the Fog index, it appears that the SMOG grader is generally lower.

Cloze procedure (W. Taylor) 1953
Taylor developed yet another method for measuring readability called the Cloze procedure. this technique described above in that it does not require an actual count of words or syllables. instead, the researcher chooses a passage of about 250-300 words, deletes every fifth word from a raddom strarting point and replaces it with a blank. the reseacher then gives the passage to subjects and asks them to fill the blanks with what they think ae the correct words; he or she then counts the number of times the blanks are replaced with the correct words. the number of correct words or the percentage of correct replacement constitutres the readability score for that passage.
Nestvold (1972) found that Cloze procedure scores were highly correlated with reader's own eveluations of content difficulty. The Cloze procedure was also found to be a better predictor of evaluations tha nexeral other common readability tests.


Print Media Research and the Internet
Almost every newspapers were publishing both traditonal print and online versions. the total number of magazines/newspaper online is harder to pin down.
Since the online newspaper and magazine is a relatively recent phenomenon, most of the research is still at a rather basic level.

One group of studies is concerned with describing what types of newspapers have websites, how they are trying to made a profit, and how their online version relates to the print version.

For examle, Peng, Tham, and Hao (1999) conducted a survey of more than 60 editors of online papers and performed a content analysis of the sites of 80 papers. They found that almost all types of papers had online versions and that the two main reasons for starting the digital version were to gain more readers and to increase revenues.

Bartlet (2001) reports data that seem to suggest that publishers have a valid concern. Survey results indicated that those with greater experience and success, typically younger individuals, rely more on the Internet and less on the newspaper for their news.

SUMMARY
Research in the print media encompassed readership studies, circulation studies, management studies, typography and makeup studies, and readability studies. Readership research is the most extensive area; it serves to determine who reads a publication, what item are read, and what gratifications the readers get from their choices. Circulation studies examine the penetration levels of newspapers and magazines in various markets as well as various aspects of the delivery and pricing systems. Management studies look at goal setting and at job satisfaction. Typorgraphy and Makeup are studied to determine the impact of different newspaper and magazine design elements on readership and item preferences. Readability studies investigate the textual elements that affect comprehension of a message. A more recent research area examines the online versions of print media.