Research Methods - Skills Check

The two main methods of research in the media industry are Quantitive and Qualitative research, Quantitive research is the systematic empirical investigation of observable phenomena through statistical, mathematical or computational techniques, Qualitative research is primarily exploratory research. It is used to gain an understanding of underlying reasons, opinions and motivations. It provides insights into the problem or helps to develop ideas or hypotheses for potential quantitate research.

The pros and cons for these types of research might be that quantitive research might be harder to obtain and might not always provide what you are a producer are looking for, but the obtained information can be very useful nevertheless and is crucial for any new business. Qualitative research is very useful to provide you with the information needed when starting a new business and just as quantitate research it is crucial to any new business, the cons of it might be that it might not be reliable.

Quantitive research produces mathematical information, statistics, numbers and such. Quantitive research can be more insightful and it provides you with opinions and things like that.

To find out how many people watched last night's news I would use quantitive research because it would provide me with statistics that will become useful in finding out how many people watched last night's news

Three organisations that provide this type of information are BARB (Broadcasters' Audience Research Board), RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research) and NRS (National Readership Survey). These organisations provide the contractor with quantitive research, they provide information such as: watch time, in which room what is being watched, what channels are bring watched, etc.

Audiences are normally categorised based on their gender, income/wealth, geography, age

Studio Photography 2

 This could be a shot for a travel and tourism magazine, maybe advertising a British vacation in December or September

 This would be for a political or a business magazine

 Maybe a magazine for young entrepreneurs

 Same with this one

And this one maybe, or this could be used for a movie magazine

 This photo and all the ones below would be used for a serious political or business magazine or a magazine about movies and actors

Purpose of Research 2

Market research is the process of collecting valuable information to help you find out if there is a market for your proposed product or service. All the information gathered from the market research helps budding entrepreneurs make wise and profitable decisions

Market research would be used if the person designing or releasing the product wants it to become profitable, the creator needs to know what people want and needs to tailor his product to their needs or alternatively needs to see what kind of people would like his product and needs to tailor it to them.

Market research would provide the creator with the basic over-view and the basic landscape of the public opinion on things and on what people want and what they are willing to pay for. The kind of information that would be found in market research might be who is currently buying what you have for sale, what the people who buy your product are like, why people are not buying it, who is your competitor, what is the right price and etc.

An example of market research might be the Coca-Cola fail in the mid 1980s during the decline of coca-cola. The company believed that the decline of coca-cola was its taste, and not the marketing, so ''New Coke'' was born, New Coke was a much sweeter version of the original cola. The Coca-Cola company did blind taste tests with 20,000 people and the majority favoured the New Coke over the original version and Pepsi. What went wrong was that they assumed that taste was the deciding factor in consumer purchase behaviour. The consumers also weren't told that Coca-Cola was going to discontinue the original coke in favour of the new recipe. The other thing that went wrong was that no one at the Coca-Cola company realised the symbolic value and emotional involvement people had with the original coke, that may have been the deciding point in the failure of New Coke.

Production research is always needed when developing a new product. It is research to help give information on the characteristics of the product. It focuses on the production of a product, in other words, how it's made. For example, advertisements are all made to sell themselves to the audience, so its down to the producers of the adverts to use production research to get more information on characteristics

When companies do production research it helps them see an overview of the commercial viability, which is businesses skills to be successful and gain profit. The company has to be commercially viable first otherwise the won't be as profitable as they want to be and will start to go downhill

Purposes of Research

RAJAR stands for Radio Joint Audience Research, BARD stands for Broadcasters' Audience Research Board.

RAJAR works for the BBC and licensed commercial stations and BARB works for BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, BSkyB and the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising), Both RAJAR and BARB are contracted out by different companies to gather data and that is how they get funded.

Both BARB and RAJAR have paying individuals who have agreed to be part of the program, BARB has approximately 11,500 individuals and RAJAR has approximately 100,000 individuals who are paying to be a part of the program and who provide the data.

Their data is crucial to media producers because thanks to their data the media producers know what people want to watch so that they don't have to bother making something people won't like. RAJAR's and BARB's data is very important to many different companies who work in the media industry and it is not just about tv shows.

What the data provides might be good and it might also be bad, depending on how you look at it, on one hand you've got the majority of the people watching what they want and the producers of whatever it is get payed well and become successful, on the other hand you've got people that aren't the majority and perhaps don't want the same things as everyone else, so they won't get the product they want, but it also makes it hard for indie producers to make a start and it can also be hard for tv shows that somewhat differ from the norm. 

Both BARB and RAJAR are definitely doing quantitate research, they monitor how long someone watches a  show, what show is being watched, what room it is being watched in, all the date then is collected overnight and published as overnight ratings, there is a lot of math and a lot of numbers that are very important to this reasearch and without them all this research wouldn't work.

Jasper James Portrait

Photoshop edits Before and After

First I removed the green background using the magic wand tool with a high toleration to get all the green, I later removed the rest of the green from the hair and clothes using the colour replacement tool and just using my hair colour as the replacement. I then got a picture of the mojave desert which was later edited to look more purple to resemble a nuclear wasteland, dust clouds were also added. I then got a picture of a Fallout Vault suit, cropped it, added it into the file and then just played around with the size and the angle to fit my body

Viral Marketing Campaign

The Viral marketing campaign will include posters, videos, ARG's and a scavenger hunt of some kind. The posters will be the classic world war 2 recruitment and propaganda posters created by the American and British government, but reworked to be in German and be about Germany and against the allies. The videos will be historical events of the 20th century such as the moon landing or the end of world war 2, but yet again reworked to include the germans as the successors and as the victors. The ARG will be the classic Wolfenstein 3D reworked to include the new German uniforms and general reworked graphics, one of the interesting things about the original games were the secret rooms found behind busts of Hitler and paintings and such, well in this version behind the secret walls will be clues about the new game. The scavenger hunt will include finding the posters in the real world and defacing them, instructions on what to do with those posters and which ones to deface, the information on that will be given to certain people who will then have to spread the word, these specific people would be one of the first people to discover the clues inside the ARG.

The audiences are categorised in ways that will make them easier to appeal to, those categories might include their socio economic stand, their location and their likes and interested .


The NRS is the National Readership Survey which is a joint venture company in the UK between the Institute of Partitioners in Advertising, the Newspaper Publishers association and the periodical Publishers Association. It provides audiences research for print advertising train in the UK

The standard Q reader would probably be between 20-45 years old, more likely male, a standard worker or maybe a labourer.

The average reader would be a music fan in their 20s-40s

Subject is smiling, looking away from the camera with his body pointed towards the edge of the room. The study used a three point light set up with the key light, backlight and fill light.

Health and Safety in Photography

Studio lights are normally very powerful and very bright, not looking directly at them would be the best idea

Lots of lights means lots of cables which provide a trip hazard, being careful and looking where you're going would be a good precaution

Powerful power sources are dangerous in and of themselves so they should be taken care of and checked on

The base of the background could be a potential trip risk if not assembled or set up properly

A limited amount of people in the studio at a time to avoid risks of tripping over people or cables

Viral Campaign posters