Article Critique Q&A

For four questions of my article critique assignment, I grouped them into two types of questions: one considering the user's background and another asked about the researchers' perspective.

image sources: https://cdn.dribbble.com/users/1185927/screenshots/4655804/social-media.png

1、Audience Types: 

How do user background characteristics, total news media use, political interest, and political knowledge among representative users impact each media repertoire? (Qihuan Zhang)

How does the author discuss the results according to different audience types? Are they classified by factors such as young people's background, age, and Internet habits? What kinds of groups did the author divide them into? (Jiaqi Qing)

In this article, the researchers examined the group's age, gender, and media platform usage. But not including individual characteristics, political interest, and political knowledge. 

The average age of the resulting sample was 22.76-years-old and its gender distribution was 27 women and 23 men. Thirty of the interviewees identified primarily as full-time students and the remaining 20 as full-time employees—occupations varied, including industrial workers, professional athletes, maids, financial analysts, clerical employees, and television producers.

These platforms played a central role in people's lived experiences. More than half of all survey respondents (52.87%) agreed with the statement “I can’t let a day go by without going on social media.” 

Age, gender, and socioeconomic status were not significant predictors of variance in survey responses to this question, but for each added platform in a person’s repertoire, the probability of agreement increased by 33% (Table 4). Thus, a larger repertoire is tied to greater social media attachment.

Here is the data from the research:

2、Researchers Perspective:

How would you re-design less biased research on the same topic? (Weikang Xiong)

Hi Yue – nice presentation! Can you elaborate on why you thought the researcher’s perspectives and preconceptions were embedded within the research process? I find it difficult sometimes to spot bias in research studies, so I’m curious to get your take. (Evan Goldman)

My point in researches perspective is not so critical as people think. For me, everyone has a certain viewpoint of an object, an issue, or a person and it correlates to one's background and experience. The embedded assumption presented in this article was the researchers' negative perspective on social media platforms. For example, in the discussion part, they considered that the social media companies have peril that endangers the vibrant civic life, which needs to be examined in future studies. Also, they build upon the notion that media practice is less calculative and utilitarian than in the cases of repertoires and niches, and dovetails with the interpretive dimension of scholarship on polymedia and ideology. These methodologies project their preferences and skills onto the target audiences. It could easily reproduce the biases of designers. 

I think every research has certain perspectives embedded intentionally or unintentionally. Human-designed research naturally incorporated people's perspective. Designing the research is never natural. Each step of the research enables or restricts the ways in which people interact with information. It forms people's performances and creates meanings. As researchers stated that“a user could spend her entire online day messaging on WhatsApp, posting information on Facebook and browsing images on Instagram, without ever leaving the digital environment owned by the Facebook corporation.” If I was the designer, I would like to choose more diverse people beyond the Buenos Aires area because the user that was focused on a certain group of people who can afford technologies and get a good internet connection. But this group of people does not represent young people in a pooer area where they do not get access to the internet or some people. Moreover, researchers claim that "how this intersection of user agency and corporate power plays out will be key to determine the future of liberal democracies." I would like to conduct the research based on more diversified theories that not only hold a critical view on social media platforms but also see social media platforms on the positive side.

The following two videos introduced types of bias and how to diminish those biases in the research process.

Types of bias

Avoiding or diminishing bias in research