Broad topics we might want to look at
Why don't we make a list of topics we might want to explore:
-Support for HST -Whether you dislike the tax or you dislike how the government introduced it -Questions about perceptions of the impact of the tax (e.g. who will be affected most).
Does it matter to the general public/electorate how the revenue from the HST will be used? If it were used for certain things - education, health care, combating poverty, paying for a new ceiling for BC Place - would it make the HST an acceptable tax?
Is the HST a regressive or progressive tax?
How does the HST affect students?
It may also be interesting to explore the role that social media plays in political participation. For example - Have you become more active in politics as a result of something you saw/read on facebook, twitter etc.?
Another idea for a topic in the survey could be how the decline of print media has played a role in voters political awareness?
Does tweeting/joining facebook groups (say, denouncing Bush) constitute as political participation?
How much are these forms of expression taken into account by our institution? (In other words, do politicians/bureaucrats actually concerned about such phenomena?)
I like the idea of exploring how media influences voter turnout. I think it would be interesting to know specifically what affect positive vs. negative political coverage of candidates and issues has on voter turnout, e.g. Is negative media more likely to fire up the electorate, or alienate them?
I think a core question, and a timely one, is where people are getting their news in the first place (TV? Newspapers? Internet news services? P2P-type social media? Elsewhere?)
I'm also pretty interested in perceptions of media effectiveness in BC... Do people like their options? Do they feel that BC-based media is fair? Partisan? Accurate? Honest? etc.
I like the turnout idea too.
It would be interesting to see how voter turnout or other types of political participation differ between individuals with varying types of media involvement - social media, newspapers, television. Are those who participate in multiple levels more inclined to participate? Can social media help drive a political interest?
I agree that a key question would be where people are getting their news ie internet, tv, newspapers, and maybe in addition to that the company that provides it? CNN, CBC etc.
I think tweeting or joining groups could be considered part of political participation. It puts an individuals opinion in the public sphere for others to consume, can be seen as a form of online protest.
A (research) question I'd be interested in along those lines is whether social media activism (of the really basic sort, changing your profile picture to the Egyptian flag, or your location to Iran on twitter) has any sort of correlation with, if you'll forgive the slightly perjorative phrasing, more meaningful acts of engagement. By which I mean, are the people who get really into political causes on social media more likely to get involved in more traditional ways? Or less likely?
Obviously young people are generally both more active online and less inclined to political participation, but I suspect the degree to which this is true is well-established and can thus be controlled for.
In any case, as far as our survey questions go, I think asking about social media activism is definitely worthwhile, but I also think we should be sure to distinguish it from more traditional(/impactful :P) activity types.
I agree with you, Ryan. I think it's important to find out whether an increase in the use of social media sites lead to an increase in political activism, but I think it's even more important to determine exactly what types of social media are most effective in bringing about political activism. I don't think we should equate all types of social media as being equal. For example, 'liking' a facebook page or retweeting may be called 'slactivism' and not activism. We should determine A) who uses social media and B) what types of social media are most effective in creating political activism and participation.
Another, kind of simple, thing we can look at would be the various sources of media primarily used, and how they correlate to votes cast... So, for instance, we can see if there is a correlation between Cable News network ratings during election season, and how the parties perform...
I.e., is there a correlation between the avg amount of viewers in the US that MSNBC gets, and the performance of Democratic party on election day?
it might give insight into whether or not media bias has measurable effect.
I think this question has a lot of potential, but I think we may want to separate it into two distinct questions. First, is there a clear connection between a news network and a party (i.e. MSNBC and the Democrats or Fox and the republicans), such that the network is designed to increase support for that party. Second, given we do find a connection between the two, does a positive relationship exist such that increases in viewership coincide with increases in party performance on election day.
I think there's a dangerous confounding variable, insofar as news networks draw viewers that share ideological inclination (the Republican-inclined choose to watch Fox), and moreover adjust their stances to match what they think their viewers want or to fill a perceived niche in the larger news market (as MSNBC may currently be attempting to do). If we're gathering cross-sectional data (as we will be, yes?), I'm hard-pressed to think of a way to unravel that, given that respondents will be poor at judging to what extent their viewpoints led to their choice of news, and to what extent they have evolved from their news choices.
Not to be unconstructive, it's a really good question to ask, I'm just drawing a blank at present on how we might home in on it...
Should we maybe make all our questions focused around one issue that is pertinent to BC residents? Like how the leadership races for the NDP and Liberal Party are being covered in the media. We could maybe find a way to work questions about voter turnout, media choice, social media usage, political activism, media effectiveness into questions on one topic so it would be easier to analyze. Is that a good idea?
Jennifer I like your idea on focusing the issues that is pertinent to BC residents. This will give us direction in what questions to ask. I think our opening questions should get our respondents interested in the survey, then we can start to ask more detailed questions after. For example a good starter question could be Does media coverage effect voter turnout? 1. Strongly Agree 2. Somewhat Agree 3. Neutral 4. Somewhat Disagree 5. Strongly Disagree. After this "cupcake" questions we can then ask more detailed questions such as Jennifer's first post of :explore the role that social media plays in political participation. For example - Have you become more active in politics as a result of something you saw/read on facebook, twitter etc.?
What do you guys think?
Or for example another "cupcake" opening question could be "How strong would you say your knowledge is about the Political Parties platforms are in BC." 1. Very Strong 2. Strong 3. Neutral 4. Weak 5. Very Weak......This way we can kind of judge how politically involved are respondents are.
Should we have a question about how often people are participating in social media "How often do you participate in social media ex/ Facebook, twitter - 1. Frequently 2. Regularly 3. Sometimes 4. Rarely 5. Never" which could lead to "How often do you participate in political matters/protests (Probably will need better phrasing here) through social media ex/ online petitions, facebook groups, organizing protest events online 1. Frequently 2. Regularly 3. Sometimes 4. Rarely 5. Never" If we just want to look at participation of voting we can ask a question along the lines of "In the years you have been eligible to vote how many elections have you voted in 1. All of them 2. More than half 3. Less than half 4. None"
I like your idea of a "cupcake" question Aaron, something very general to get the respondent relaxed and ease into the questions. The Media coverage question would give them a sense of the questions they are to expect in later questions
I also think the search question that "how media influence vote turnout" would be an interesting one. Since there are so many kinds of media and therefore diverse ways that people get explosure to political news and messages, so how about exploring how different media impact vote turnout. Or how new media (such as social media like facebook,twitter, or digital news), compared to traditional ones(Radio,TV,ect.) influence vote turnout.
Personally I doubt the necessity of a "cupcake question." If we're trying to establish a person's perception of an issue, I certainly feel the most efficacious way is to get right into it with questions that are as general, neutral, and utilitarian as possible. However, I agree that a basic first question to establish the respondent's political activeness/awareness should be included so we could relate levels of political activity to utilization of various media options. That said, a question that asks about respondents knowledge of party's platforms is a bit too specific in my opinion; I'd prefer something a shade more general, like "How closely do you follow British Columbian politics?", followed by a very closely --> not at all scale.
Also, I agree with Ryan: certainly one of our core questions should investigate respondents' sources of news. In my opinion, that should go directly after the general question about general political activeness/awareness before getting into more complicated questions.
We need to decide whether we want to focus on the voting in one election or the voting of elections throughout the years. I think a starter question is asking whether the respondent participated in the last BC election (if we are choosing to focus specifically on BC residents). However, introducing a third-person introduction may help decrease the likelihood of a respondent lying about their activity.
As a rough example: Some people choose to vote in their provincial election. Other people are unable to or disinterested in doing so. In regards to the most recent, past provincial election, did you: A) Vote B) Not Vote C) Were Not Eligible D) Prefer Not to Answer
I think another interesting question, as mentioned above, is asking from which social media source people are receiving their political information. I really don't know how to frame this question but something along the lines of asking where the person receives their political information in regards to political parties: print (established newspapers, magazines), online (newspapers, magazines), 24 hour news channels, local news hour, new social media (facebook groups, twitter, etc).
I also definitely agree examining how the media influences voter behaviour (turnout, actual candidate/party choice, etc.) is essential. Seems like a difficult one to phrase, though, as people will likely reveal little more than their biases if you ask "How much does the media influence you politically?"... additionally, "How great of a role do you think the media plays in politics?" (or the like) measures public perception of the media's influence, which isn't necessarily a good measure of the reality. So that question should certainly be worded carefully.
How about something along the lines of "How much do you trust the opinions of the people you get your news from"? That might capture people who find themselves easily swayed by stuff they see on TV, and would probably do a pretty good job of capturing people who actively resist media opinions...
As far as perceptions vs. reality goes, yeah, I don't see the value of people's beliefs as to how much they're influenced so much, but I think their perceptions could be useful as far as how good a job each type of media does (i.e. "How good a job do you think the following types of media in B.C. do?" TV (1-5) Newspapers (1-5) etc.)
Obviously a *huge* topic, and really we might even like to break it down to the specific news services (CBC, Province, Vancouver Sun, Global/CTV/whatever other news channels we have etc. etc.), but that could get unwieldy and boring fast...
I definitely agree that shifting the question from "How much does the media influence you politically?" to a question regarding a person's perception of bias in types of media. Instead of framing it in way that sort of accuses the a person of being influenced (something most won't admit to) it focuses on specific media sources. I kind of think public perception of the media's influence would be interesting to look at, especially in comparison to the actual level of influence we detect through our other questions. I know there was a recent debate about the possibility of bias in the CBC's reporting, so it is something the public is aware of/becoming more aware of, as the topic was making news recently.
The question that concerns perceptions of how good a job media does, or referring to specific news services is a good start. Perhaps instead of naming all the possible sources of news service it could act as a follow up question to "where do you get your news from?" and in the choices of that first question we could include examples like 1) Print (The Globe and Mail, Vancouver Sun etc.). But then the problem would be people might be defensive about their news service of choice, believing it to be bias free even if it isn't. I don't know, it's difficult to word the question without sounding accusatory.
Perhaps after asking "where do you get your news from" we could just ask the participant if they would mind specifying which source it came from. Do you receive your political information from 1)print news sources 2) online news sources 3)televised news and would you mind specifying which source ie CBC, Globe and Mail This would allow for an out for the participant if they feel they don't want to answer the question. I'm not sure if that would count as two questions or not, but I think maybe this should be one of the first questions to ask before the participant could put a guard.
Hey Guys before we fiure out what questions we are going to ask I think we should narrow our ideas to ONE Research Question and go from there. I think if we do this things will get alot easier. We need one general research question that we can analyze and our survey questions can then support.