Assignment Four

Task 4 in our design studies class asks us to pick two articles from my bibliography from assignment 3, read them in full and then write a short summery of each of the authors ideas, adding our own thoughts on the subject.

Over the past few weeks I have been looking at how design can help tip social behaviour, movements or trends. I decided to look at how and where people obtain information from and how opinions are formed and shaped, who are society’s main influences and how people access information in the 21st century, looking at the internet and social networking in particular.

The first article I have chosen to look at Japanese Network Capital: The Impact of Social Networks on Japanese Political Participation by Ken'ichi Ikeda and Sean E. Richey.

This paper looks at what impact social networks have on political participation and behaviour in Japan. It aims to find out what environment has the biggest impact on promoting political participation. It looks at the way people interact within social networks and who with and if that has a bearing on how they participate in political matters.

It tests this within different network structures to see the impacts of political participation. This study recognizes the importance and growth of social networks especially in the last ten years and looks at many factors such as involvement in formally organized voluntary associations and informal social networks, it examines whether hierarchical networks have a different impact on participation rather than equal relationships and tests the openness to outsiders in these networks.

It covers three main ideas which are, people who are involved with voluntary associations and civic organizations participate more in politics. The second idea is that there is less impact in organizations where there is a hierarchical relationships, in Japan traditionally there is a cultural divide between two social groups, the meue who are superior and the meshita who are inferior. It is seen that the meshita almost always follow the meue’s judgment and therefore may not develop their own citizenship or decision making skills. Alternatively it is also possible that a hierarchical network could increase participation as the meshita could follow the meue’s advice and instructions. The third idea is that participation within organizations which are open to outsiders increases participation as this exposes members to outside issues and problems which may give them the motivation to get involved in politics.

Other factors which the authors believe might promote political participation is daily informal conversations with peers regarding politics as this gives people a chance to gain information with out the risk of looking ignorant. They believe that communication has a important role to play in helping people understand and digest news and important information, the article suggests that without the support from networks our understanding is limited.

Through face-to-face interviews which the authors carry out and data from the Japanese Election and Democracy study they explore these ideas in more depth. Through the comprehensive questioning with the interviewees they explore the type of social network the person is associated to for example is it hierarchal or does it interact with outsiders, who do they speak to most regarding politics and is this person is a source of political information? How often they participate in political activities such as voting or contacting their city hall and other information such as their education, age and income.

I find the conclusions made from the research proves that the more involved a person is in a civic organization the more the person participates in politics, as well as political activity increasing when the individual receives political information from someone they trust. Interest and efficacy also significantly promote participation in politics however income, city size and residency have hardly any effect. This part of the study show that social networks are important as they increase political involvement.

A finding which dose not match the original ideas is that membership of formal and informal associations which have hierarchical relationships do increase participation more than non hierarchical networks. I find this very interesting as the opposite was thought to have been true so this leaves questions regarding why this is.

People may participate more because they are being influenced by older and wiser people that they respect, or it may be that they feel pressured into participation and are simply obeying orders from their superiors. To determine what the most probable explanation for this question they carried out further research which then concluded that people within hierarchical networks are taking the advice of their superiors, and not participating reluctantly due to social pressure.

Openness to others in formal social networks was proven to have a significant positive effect however no data to support whether openness within informal networks has the same impact was proven. The paper suggest that more research needs to be done in this area.

The main finding in this paper is that unlike what they predicted to begin with, hierarchy promotes political participation. It proves that networks have a substantial impact over Japanese political participation.

The second article I chose to look at is What do Americans Really want to know? Tracking the behaviour of News Readers on the Internet. By David Tewksbury.

This paper interested me as it aims to determine exactly what Americans are reading, where they source their information and how often they read the news. It questions whither there are possible long term problems for democratic societies if the public chose to read public affairs less frequently than other news items.

The internet provides a huge amount of choice regarding different types of news articles this gives the user a large level of control over what they read, and the ability to only select stories that interest them. This would mean the user could only be reading a very limited variety of topics, which may have negative repercussions for society.

A society has a duty to keep up to date with information about matters in the public domain so they can use that information to make informed decisions regarding politics and other important matters of the community. However if a society dose not actively chose to read about these subjects but prefers “soft” news such as sport and entertainment, it raises the problem that people are not well enough informed and it dose not matter how much information the media prints if they are not going to read it. Tewksbury wants to find out exactly what type of news Americans are seeking, this would help tailor public affairs news to an audience who may not necessarily seek it.

The paper addresses a problem which other researchers have faced in pervious studies is that people are poor at reporting their own habits, they understand the obligation to read civic news so may only scan or read the headline of the article but claim to have read all of it, which gives an incomplete picture of how people receive the news. However the nature of the internet makes it easier to observe and examine the behaviour of the reader than ever before.

Data from a survey done of over 3000 American adults was used to determine basic news reading habits, such as whether they listened to the news on the radio regularly, watched network news programmes on TV and how closely they follow certain topics.

Tewksbury also uses NetRaitings to help provide data, they are an internet ratings company who gather information from a diverse panel who are recruited by random digit dialling and install tracking software on the their computer which records all URLs which the person goes to.

The results from the research show that online news readers are more likely to read a newspaper or watch a news programme like CNN and listen to the news on the radio but less likely to watch local Television network news. This suggests that online news readers are consumers of news formats that have fewer time constraints.

Sports content was the most commonly viewed news article by the panel compared to national, world, politics, opinion, editorial, and state and local news which together is almost the same percentage as sport content. The study shows that people who read the news more frequently tend to view a more diverse subject of topics. Health, state and obituaries were among the least viewed subjects.

There is a clear inconsistency between the two research methods used to gather this information as during the survey over half of the people claimed to get international news online where as on the NetRaitings sample only 17% of people was observed doing this at least once in the two month period. Which would conclude that online news readers do not select public affairs content as often as they select other news content.

This could be for a number of reasons, the first being that people do things differently than they do offline, it could be that people are simply supplementing what they are reading offline with online articles. It could also be that the sights that the researchers selected for study in this paper could not be reprehensive of the average online news reader, however I think this might be unlikely as they are among the largest news providers online. The third reason is that maybe people just don’t like reading about public affairs?

Regarding the article What do Americans Really Want to Know? I find their conclusion interesting, and the problem perhaps of a designer. They conclude that they do not know the reason why readers prefer soft news articles to public affairs. By rethinking how people view news stories online and the layout and interface of news websites and by redesigning how the news is delivered could spark more interest for the less read stories.

For example I know personally I am more likely to follow up a story I hear about through Twitter or through word of mouth than go directly to a news webpage and search for it myself. So news sights could perhaps think of new mediums for which to get public affairs across. Likewise they should be looking at what is happening on blogs, forums and sights like Twitter to find out exactly how the users are reporting news and events, and what type of stories.

I think social networks have a large influence on how you read the news and what type of news articles you read. This in turn has an effect of how you participate in political matters as if you are not informed about public affairs you cannot participate fully in your community, which in turn affects the long term health of the society.

Both the articles help me to understand how people receive and process information By understanding that hierarchical networks promote political participation I can use and manipulate this information, if I needed to market a product at a certain group of people, for example, the lower social group I could market it at the higher social class and the lower class will follow by example.

For further research I could look into what has happened since these studies have been published and the present date, look into wither more studies have been conducted to follow on from these findings and if so what do they find. I could research if I can find any business models that reflect the findings of the studies or if any news networks have been successful in gaining more readers of public affairs stories.

I could carry out my own surveys and research looking at my own social network in particular to understand the theories laid out in the articles clearer and in context of my own surroundings.

Ikeda K, Richey S. (2005). Japanese Network Capital: The Impact of Social Networks on Japanese Political Participation. Political Behavior. 27 (3), 239-260.

Ken'ichi Ikeda, Sean E. Richey. (2005). Japanese Network Capital: The Impact of Social Networks on Japanese Political Participation. Political Behavior. 27 (3), 239-260.

Tewksbury, D. (2003). What do Americans really want to know? Tracking the behavior of news readers on the Internet. Journal of Communication. 53 (4), 694-710.