A Specific Approach

We seem to have a consensus on a specific research topic: Is voter turnout/political participation influenced by media coverage? In order to make a well-founded assessment of this research question, it would be safe to analyze a ten-year period. Since media has evolved exponentially in the last ten years, this would give us a clear view of the situation. In order to do so, however, we would need to target a group that has been eligible to vote for the last ten years. In this case, we could try to correlate an increase in the levels of media coverage from 2001 to 2011 (which seems easy enough to do) and see if there is also an increase in the voter turnout/political participation. This would allow us to assess our research question and would allow us to display and organize our information in a nice time-series graph. This will also allow us to tailor more specific questions (something that should be taken into consideration, given that this assignment is due on Tuesday). What do you guys think?

Is there a way that we can do it without our questions only being interested in a certain demographic of people? I am not sure that it is best to limit the people who are relevant to our research. Is there a way that we could look the reasons why people vote for a specific party? If we focus on where they get their political information from (ie: media outlets) we could look at whether the amount of increased media coverage has caused an increase in political knowledge/interest.

I think your ten year time series format focusing on eligible voters will be effective. In terms of the broad consensus issue: voter turnout/political participation as a result of media coverage, I think based on the questions suggested that this should be divided into three central issues. The first being a definition of what media coverage in fact encompasses (Is it just TV/Print/Radio/Major News Sites, or should we include new information outlets like blogs, facebook, and twitter?). Second, the relationship you mentioned between growth in media coverage and the effect this has on voter turnout over time. Finally, whether or not there is a partisan element to coverage, and whether this has the effect of redirecting voters from one party to another, or swinging undecideds. We can then decide whether we want to focus this media analysis locally, or take a broader approach focusing on Canada or the US, and figure out the questions specifically in the Question Wording section.

According to the majority of the comments it seemed we have come to agree that our survey question will deal with the role of the media in regards to voter turn out. Which ever direction we take it would be essential for us to analyze some kind of a time line that would support our research. However I wondering if it would be possible for the focus of our survey to not be on voter turn out but something else. Though its a great idea and we would be able to find an extensive amount of research I feel the topic is a little over used. I liked the idea of presenting the effect social media sites or news networks on politics. In class today the Owen talked about the events taking place in Egypt and how Twitter and Facebook may have influenced this revolution. A few questions I was thinking of are... "Do social media sites lead to an increase in political activism?" or in regards to election and campaigns "Does the Media play a role in influencing governmental agendas?" These are just suggestions. I also like Jennifer's question about where people obtain their news on political matters.

Yeah I think Andrew has a good point. We need to elaborate on what we mean by ‘media coverage’. I think we should include all the media sources you discussed (i.e. TV/Print/Radio/Major News Sites/Blogs/Facebook/Twitter). Part of my hypothesis is that media coverage increases from 2001 to 2011 and this is partly due to the increase in popularity and number of new age social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter. I also hope to see a positive relationship between the growth in media coverage and the effect this has on voter turnout over time. Could you please elaborate, however, on the partisan element you want to quantify.

I also like your questions Fatou, especially: "Do social media sites lead to an increase in political activism?" That would be really interesting to measure. How would you go about this project? What would be the causal mechanism that connects X to Y? And is there some confounding variable Z that makes the observed association between X and Y spurious? Sounds like an exciting endeavor, especially since it can shed light on the crisis taking place in Egypt.

The causal mechanism that may connect X and Y can be analyzed by looking at the amount of political advocacy groups currently on facebook or Twitter dealing with current events that promote or discuss political activism. We would then have to figure out what influence these pages have had on the general public. This is where our survey questions could become very effective if we for example asked things like "Do you affilitate yourself with a political advocacy group on social network sites or How often do you recieve updates on events which would involve your advocacy for a particular global issue..."

There is a definate possibility that there may be a confounding Z variable but then we can shift the focus of our topic and instead determine whether social media sites have facilitated political activism.

I agree that looking at political activism along with voter turnout would be interesting. It may be possible that our research may not show a link between increase in media with increases in voter turnout, but instead increases in other modes of political participation such as: signing petitions, organizing/attending events or protests, joining interest groups, communicating with local MLAs or MPs etc. Personally, I think social media has increased political participation in other avenues outside of voter turnout, and if we could measure those changes along with voter turnout it could provide us a more accurate measurement of political participation and its relationship with the increase of media in the last 10 years or so.