CHAPTER – II
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
CHAPTER - II
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
2.1 Introduction:
In this chapter, the researcher has reviewed the literature and researched articles which have helped her to go through the research and find the suitable methodology for the particular topic.
Social Networking once meant going to a social functions like family get-togethers, class reunions, festivals, social functions such as a cocktail party, conference, or business luncheon. Today, much Social Networking is achieved through Websites such as Facebook, Orkut, MySpace and Twitter.
Social Networking Services more often than not, have been accused of impacting an individual’s social and personal sphere in a number of ways, of which not all were positive. Also, the booming domain of online Social Networking Services, at the rate of its growth, has instigated scholarly research and attracted specialized studies about the same. Although, the fact that it impacts an individual’s life is accepted and agreed upon, but researchers have presented varied and vivid results from an array of studies carried out in the recent past. Due to some startling observations made by researchers in the past about the negative influences that were said to be observed in the youngsters addicted to online social networking, through websites like Orkut, Facebook, Twitter etc., the change in humanity’s regular communicating habits is apparent.
No wonder, they have been in lime light, on and off, for the good, bad and ugly reasons. Evidently, much of the studies have gone into online Social Networking, as compared to other streams of communication. An attempt to study how have the services, been consuming space in human life, especially among young adults has been done to understand the not so obvious reasons for an obvious phenomena.
Considering the dynamic nature of this contemporary media form, many news reports and articles were reviewed as they were the best way to get an idea about the latest developments in the field. Also, to understand what could have been a better place to study the Internet born phenomena, than the Internet itself. Thus, a lot of content available online was considered for the study. Also, existing journals and research papers were a major knowledge base to provide inputs for the study.
2.2 The Network in the Garden: An Empirical Analysis of Social Media in Rural Life:
Eric Gilbert, Karrie Karahalios and Christian Sandvig
In the literature review chapter, the researcher has analyzed and reviewed a researched article published from the Department of Computer Science and Speech Communication, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The title of the research journal is “The Network in the Garden: An Empirical Analysis of Social Media in Rural Life” by Eric Gilbert, Karrie Karahalios and Christian Sandvig. In this article, the researchers have done a survey on the use of social media in rural areas of America specifically Facebook and My space.
They say that rural communities are famous for using technology in novel ways. When something is introduced to them they don’t readily accept it. It will take time for them to get used to the technology and be the regular user of the same technology. To address the gap between the urban and rural areas in using, this empirical paper has been designed by the researchers which helped investigating the behavioral differences between more than 3,000 rural and urban social media users. Using a data set collected from a broadly popular social network sites, the researchers analyzed users’ profiles, 340,000 online friendships and 200,000 interpersonal messages.
Using social capital theory, the researchers predict differences between rural and urban users and find strong evidence supporting their hypotheses. Namely, rural people articulate far fewer friends online, and those friends live much closer to home. The study results also indicated that the groups have substantially different gender distributions and use privacy features differently. Thus the researchers conclude by discussing design implications drawn from their findings; most importantly, designers should reconsider the binary friend-or-not model to allow for incremental trust-building.
To investigate the impact of rural life on social media, the researchers focused on MySpace.com, the most popular online social network site in the United States. According to the researchers, they offer different features to get close to the people from all over the world. The researchers study focuses on a broadly popular site that has always been open to everyone. So, in this research first the review of demographics of rural America has been done which says about the rural area as a town with less than 2,500 people in America. The social technology in rural America is well used as they are getting used to the new technology, says the study.
The study introduced the following hypotheses concerning rural and urban use:
H1: Rural users will have far fewer friends and comments than urban users.
H2: Females will account for a greater proportion of rural users than urban users.
H3: Rural users will set their profiles to private at higher rates than urban users.
H4: Rural users’ friends will live much closer than urban users’ friends.
H5: As compared to urban users, rural users’ distributions of friends will preference strong ties over weak ties. [1]
To test the hypotheses, the researchers sampled 2000 rural and 2000 urban MySpace users from 4000 different zip codes in the United States. The scripts were distributed online through My Space. The zip codes method helped the researchers to answer the fundamental question of their study without making the design in a complex way. The study was made simpler by extracting the unused and orphaned accounts. After collecting 2000 rural and 2000 urban users, the researchers removed accounts that had never been used, resulting in a sample of 1,661 rural users and 1,721 urban users.
The study clearly shows that the rural users do not use social networks to find many friends far from home. The findings indicated that rural social networks span other rural areas, creating limited access to social capital and there is also political discourse through social media. This result was through surveys and interviews conducted in these rural areas with specific target groups. Thus, this finding has shown that the rural youth have access to Social Networking Site especially My Space and is used to the new technology. Their access to the social media is to build and expand their friendship with people from other part of the world. The study has proved that rural and urban people use social media in different ways for different purposes.
2.3 Political communication and participation trend in the social media: Focus on the O1-S-O2-R model application:
Kweon, Sang-Hee and Kim, Wi-Geun
The third analysis is made on the researched paper by Kweon, Sang-Hee and Kim, Wi-Geun from the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea under the title “Political communication and participation trend in the social media: Focus on the O1-S-O2-R model application”. This paper explores political communication in the online social network space. This study was made to understand and know the factors affecting political participation on the internet. The target was male and female adults who were equal to or over the age of 19. A total of 861 respondents were considered for the final analysis to test the research questions.
The O1-S-O2-R model was applied on the data to conduct a research questions. Factors affecting awareness of politics on the internet and political act on the internet were empirically analyzed and described. The result proves that factors affecting the direct act of participation in politics through the internet are demographic that is they are depended on the geographical area and individual characteristics, purpose of political act on the internet, use of political websites and awareness of comments on the internet. Totally it speaks about the internet educated users who will be a part of political awareness through social media.
“The O1-S-O2-R (Orientation 1-Stimuli-Orientation 2-Response) model is one, wherein, complex orientations (O1 and O2) are added to the S-R (Stimulus-Response) model, a traditional psychological model (Bryant and Zillmann, 2002; Fukuyama, 2001). Predisposition 1 (orientation) of the recipient refers to the use of media or political inclination before the stimulus (S) and this includes demographic variables and the dependence of online users. Predisposition 2 (orientation 2), which appears after the use of the internet, pertains to the type, awareness and attitude of the political communication message through online activity. As a variable, R denotes the online political act. This model is very helpful in finding out the influence of personal orientation on the selection of political message and that of stimulus (S) on online political awareness (O2) as well as in determining the linear causal relation between political act variables (R).” [2]
Social Networking Sites have caused the revolutionary change in the form of new media throughout the public sphere and political structure. This study was carried out by the researchers to identify systematically the factors affecting political participation on the internet as an activity. The study by the researchers helped them to analyze the various means of political communication through internet. According to the O1-S-O2-R model, the activity of political participation on the internet as a response results from each causal relation of orientation, online activity and result orientation. Systematically, identifying the factors affecting political participation on the internet required checking the causal relation of the different factors.
The study was based on the following hypothesis:
“Hypothesis 1: In political participation on the internet, the predisposition of internet users affects their online activity.
Hypothesis 2: In political participation on the internet, the online activity of internet users affects their result orientation.
Hypothesis 3: In political participation on the internet, the result orientation of internet users affects their response.”[3]
The study was divided into four main groups like Predisposition, Online Activity, Result Orientation and Response
· The predispositions for the survey on participation in politics through the internet were demographic characteristics, individual characteristics and extent of media use. The demographic characteristics included gender, age, educational attainment and family income.
· To survey participation in politics through the internet, online activity consisted of the purpose of political act on the internet, use of political websites and online network activity.
· The result orientation for measuring participation in politics through the Internet consisted of awareness of public opinion on the internet and awareness of comments on the internet.
· The response included the direct participation and the use of media to involve themselves in political activity online.[4]
The study resulted showing online social networks can have enormous influence on different areas. In the field of politics in particular, the online communication and the use of social media provides a new online public sphere and gives awareness of political communication and activities. Individuals and online media are factors affecting the recipients' predisposition, political communication and participation. The change in the new structure derived from the findings of the survey. It showed influencing factors on political awareness and participation of the public is connected with the size of the social network media. It is also depended on the awareness and activity of individuals and political participants. In other words, this study empirically determined the use of media, network forming style, capital of political communication, social media and the type of activity of political community, and systematically analyzed, described and predicted the causal relation as to how they affect participation in politics and political capital.
2.4 New Media and Children: Internet content preferences of primary school children in Turkey:
The purpose behind doing this research is to show the use of internet in the world of children. As the technology develops and expands, computers and new media play a very significant role. The aim of this survey is to study the internet habits of 6-13 age groups of children. New media is the digital platform developed by computer technology and is widely used by all for different purposes.
The new media tools build bridges between old and new social images. They are the generator of popular culture. The new media is user friendly and is easy to access. Digital media influences everyday practices of human life in many ways. Now even children have involved themselves into online media for different purposes.
“According to the researchers the five fundamental factors which make the media new are modularity, quantity representation, variability, decoding and automation”. [5]
The survey included samples from Eastern Anatolia, South Eastern Anatolia, Marmara, and Aegean provinces. This survey has an investigative quality. The primary school children were asked to complete the questionnaire and the children belonged to 6-13 age groups of students. The survey aims to reveal the new media preference of the children. The questions were on children using internet and internet tools, demographical information of the participants, the variation of their internet content preference, their aims to use the internet, their ways of using the social and network sites in the internet and their rate of holding e-mail accounts and Social Networks. Students were randomly selected for the survey.
The questionnaire was applied to test the habits of children using internet and new media. Most of the questions were Yes/No questions as well as multiple choices. The questionnaire was pretested on sampling of 15 primary school children. Considering the results of the pretest, the necessary corrections were made and were finalized. The questionnaire had 19 questions. The data analysis is done through SPSS 10.0 programme. The data concerning internet usage of the
Children were processed by Chi Square test analysis method.
“The results of the field survey reveals: 61.9 % of children have internet access at home. In addition, 95.8 % of the children were internet users. 49.1 % of the children use internet to play games, 26 % of them to communicate with friends and only 6.0 % of the children use internet to do “homework”. [6]
2.5 New Media and Political Communication in Asia: A critical assessment of research on media and politics, 1988-2008:
Ven Hwei and Ran Wei
This study focuses on reviewing research on the interplay between new media and political communication in Asian societies. This study contains analyzed articles concerning media use in political arenas in Asian societies that were published in 11 leading communication journals between 1988 and 2008. Analysis reveal that articles were based on theories, and survey was the most frequently used method.
Through research, the researchers came up with certain frames to analyse the study and these frames helped them to come up with certain questions which will help them to focus deep into the different categories of the study. Through the literature review they found that survey and content analysis is the most commonly used methodology in all the researches related to media and politics.
A content analysis of 11 major communication journals was conducted by the researchers. Journal selection was based on whether a journal is indexed in Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) and it should be through the 20 year time span from 1988 to 2008. Based on these consideration 11 selected journals were
· Asian Journal of communication
· International Journal of Public Opinion Research
· Communication Research
· Human Communication Research
· Journal of Advertising
· Journal of Advertising Research
· Journal of Applied communication Research
· Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media
· Journal of communication
· Journal and Mass Communication quarterly
· Political communication
All issues published between 1988 and 2008 were examined. Only articles presenting research concerning new media and politics were included for analysis. The selected articles were coded into specific categories:
· Research Paradigm
· Use of Theory
· Research Focus
· Research Method Used
· Authorship
Total of 34 articles dealing with new media and political communication were found in 11 selected journals during the period of 1988 to 2008. The study clearly indicated that the number of articles that take social science paradigm. It also shows the use of theory was common in new media. The methodology used was survey method. The study also reviewed that the Asian Communication Research attracts the attention of American Scholars. [7]
[1] The Network in the Garden: An Empirical Analysis of Social Media in Rural Life: Eric Gilbert, Karrie Karahalios and Christian Sandvig, pg 3
[2] Journal of Media and Communication Studies Vol. 2(8), pp. 177, October 2010
[4] Journal of Media and Communication Studies Vol. 2(8), pp. 179-181, October 2010.
[5] Manovich, 2001: 27-48
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