Research Questions

I have posed my questions to my 3 roommates; Rachel, Liv, and Julia, and this is how they evaluated my questions. 

1. Is social media and alternative journalism helping or hurting the journalism/news industry?

  • Rachel: "I like this question because most things technology based revolves around social media, but this poses a completely different way that technology can affect an industry."
  • Julia: "This is an interesting thought, I am not sure how it would affect something like that."
  • Liv: "Being in Newhouse and taking a lot of journalism classes, I would say it has a huge affect on the industry because it can be a good source and people use it for good reasons, but it can also lead to rumors and news that is fake."

2. Is face to face communication depleting in society and how is that affecting human relationships?

  • Rachel: "I want to be a counselor/therapist when I graduate, and technology is having a huge affect on and straining a lot of relationships, so it is a good question to pose."
  • Julia: "I like this question and think that it is changing a lot of relationships, but not necessarily in a bad way."
  • Liv: "I think it is changing and affecting relationships in a bad way because technology and lacking of face to face emotions is making them seem less real and trustworthy."

3. How is social media changing the way children grow up and perceive themselves, and how can this be detrimental to their mental health later in life?

  • Rachel: "I think it is very unhealthy that so many kids have access to social media so young, it hurts their self image."
  • Julia:"Being an education major and actually going in and teaching kids that are under the age of middle schoolers, and they already all have Iphones and social media, I can see how it affects them in a negative way."
  • Liv: "When we were young and didn't have social media, we all went through an awkward phase and didn't have photo editors and filters and makeup to make ourselves look different, we had to accept ourselves for what we looked like. 

Reflection
The questions that I had come up with actually sparked basically an hour discussion between my roommates and I, which is very interesting because we usually are not all engaged in the same discussion for that long of a time. When I asked them to evaluate my questions, they at first seemed disinterested because we are all very busy with our work, but once I actually laid out my questions, they were very engaged. Each person seemed to have something very interesting to say on the topic, and I was surprised at how much each of them related to the topic and had good points on both sides of the arguments of the questions.  The appearance of the question and how I relayed it was also very important to their reaction. Since it was not just a yes or no question, each question could be evaluated on a higher thinking level because it was enabling them to think about what they wanted to say and think back on their own lives and how it affected each one. Technology is a very relateable subject to people our age because our generation got into social media when most of our self image and attributes were solidified, so it did not have as large of an effect on our age, meanwhile these children now are growing up with it, so it is affecting their mental state a lot more. The only really good thing in my eyes about social media is the alternative journalism aspect where when the news and papers refuse to cover certain stories, we have the power to make those stories of oppression rise.


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