PROJECT SKETCHES + ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY (Dekang (DK) Zhang)
1. describe your proposed research topic or question;
My proposed research topic will be how the elections in the U.S are greatly influenced by all formats of medias, how do they manipulate the medias, especially during the time of 2016 election.
Whoever’s campaign team has better understanding how to use the new forms of media as a tool becomes the winner of the election. In these days of democracy, the social medias influences have bigger influence on the public, than any other traditional media methods before - either is the newspaper, scholarly works, or billboards. For example, a reporter or a professor with months of research works on a certain topic, will not have the same impact of a 10 seconds tik tok video made by someone who has 1 millions of follows; and to most the people, it doesn’t really matter with either the information is facto or not, they want something that’s attention grabbing, interesting and short enough that they can just go on to the next one quickly.
It’s a very different time than any other elections in the history, it’s at the prime of the internet age, the information age, almost everybody had the means to access the most up to date information everywhere, from all sorts of social medias platforms, news, internet influencers, etc.
2. explain its academic, creative, public and personal significance, relevance, timeliness, etc.;
First of all, I found it fascinating that, most of, if not all of the candidates for presidents are older generation of people who hate new forms of media like social media, and don’t like or understand the new technologies. However, this time around, they have to learn how to use them, how to work with the people they didn’t care about or despised, hence many of the most awkward videos online can be found about the 2016 elections. Donald Trump took a huge win over Hilary Clinton because he has used Twitter long time ago, to rants about anything; but for all seriousness, that is a huge advantage, it made him way more relatable, and the messages were very digestible, they were short and simple, right to the point, instantly deliver to everyone’s phone.
Secondly, the presidency and elections pretty much happened during my time of undergraduate, in the U.S, most prestigious universities are left wing in terms of political views. After Trump won the elections, I noticed the never before attentions on politics, many students and professors are angry or shocked by the fact Trump won the election. Therefore, the influences on academic works have never been this high since longtime ago (debatable, in terms compare to what time period), many of the academic topics from different subjects of fields have the topics on this election, tried to analysis what happened, what went wrong, what went right, what will be the impact afterward on things like environment, immigrants, healthcare, and international relations to other countries, etc. Due to that fact, I have done much research and have experience on these topics.
This will be a good opportunity to apply methodological approaches, and further explore this important topic, as it will be the trends of the future democracy.
3. identify your desired mode of publication or dissemination (i.e., what form will your project take?);
I am considering doing a website, because I think is the most open format, it can include videos, sources from all formats, and texts from research or websites.
4. identify your audience(s)/public(s)/interlocutor(s)/stakeholder(s); and
The first audiences will be professors and students, but it will be open to anyone in the public.
5. describe briefly your preliminary list of potential methods (of course our goal this semester is to refine and expand your methodology, and this preliminary list of methods will likely be partial — but it at least gives us a starting point, and it helps me understand what expectations you’re bringing to the class
Mixed Method
This method is a combination of both qualitative and quantitative methods. It provides a more realistic and true approach to any findings and presents multiple possibilities for those findings. This method often tends to produce interesting results for a specific set of approaches or findings.
Descriptive research
This method is used to describe characteristics of a population or phenomenon being studied. It does not answer questions about how/when/why the characteristics occurred. Rather it addresses the "what" question.
Content analysis
This is the study of documents and communication artifacts, which might be texts of various formats, pictures, audio or video.
Annotated bibliography
Append an annotated bibliography listing at least five related resources — mostly scholarly work, but also, optionally, one popular press (e.g., edited but not peer-reviewed) or research-based media production / creative project — that have engaged with your topic. Provide for each source a ~150-word annotation briefly summarizing the article’s argument and methods (please do not use AI for this; I want to know what you think!), and offering your own assessment of the value of those methods for your research.
https://com.uw.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Larson-Honors-Thesis-Final.pdf
This is a scholar work from Larson Honors is very suitable to my research topic or question, it gives many examples and analysis on how Trump use the social media to influence people, and much more influence Trump has over Hilary because that. It provides both quantitative and qualitative methods. With table contents and graphics, such as:
1. Coding Themes and Frequency
2. Multiple Theme Articles
3. States & Their Themes
4. Percentage of Articles with Theme in Red States (Out of 13 articles)
5. Percentage of Article with Theme in Blue States (Out of 60 articles)
6. Top Themes in Purple States (Out of 25 articles)
This study also gave very good examples on how Trump and his team use Twitter to easily shift people’s attention from a scandal to something else, with just one single angry tweet, the focus can change completely from scandal about Trump and women to about republican or the political issue in general.
https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.proxy.library.upenn.edu/lib/upenn-ebooks/reader.action?docID=6038702
This is a scholarly book named ‘Presidential Campaigns in the Age of Social Media : Clinton and Trump’ by William L. Benoit , and Mark J. Glantz. It is very suitable to my research or my question, because it does not only give the methods or the process of winning a political campaign, it also gives you insight on what exactly are the importance of media influence these days, how being controversial is a way of success, and to be trendy on the internet. It provides information on which are the primary media these days, key events like the: primary tv spots, social medias, tv talk shows, debates. Furthermore, this book also gives comparison between new media, like Facebook and twitter and traditional media like tv, debates, speeches. For example, new media has way more advantage over traditional media in the election process, because it allows politicians to maintain direct control over their message, without gatekeeping the function of the media, and low cost of establishing them.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8853081/
One of the most famous word coming out of the past few years, is “fake news.” As a huge topic on how the mainstream media can easily put on a subjective story, changing the story and manipulate the public views on things. This scholar work of ‘The disaster of misinformation: a review of research in social media’ by Sadiq Muhammed and Saji K Mathew provide many of how media and misinformation played the roles in keys events during the past few years, which was very rough years all around the world, essentially the same with the topic of fake news and my research question. I think it pointed out one the most important reasons why the misinformation are so common all around the world, because people are scared and anxious about uncertain situations, and the when official or mainstream media couldn’t provide the information at timely manner, they gather the information from their peers, or other informal sources of information.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050917323086
This scholar article issue named “The current state of fake news: challenges and opportunities” by Álvaro Figueira and Luciana Oliveira, gives well explanations on fake news. It's an unenviable phenomenon in our times, but there are always two sides to anything. It’s a content based research method that discusses what are the challenges and opportunities. It supports my point of views on my research topic, how fake news becomes the danger of society and how social media is treating the stake of high quality journalism. It provides a review on relevant cases, for example, how the lines have blurred between facts and speculation. There were 100 news sites that’s pro-trump, and these “do-it-yourself media” profit hugely from this. It also provides ways of fighting back fake news, with human intervention and using algorism; which will be a useful insight on expanding this research topic or give the readers on what they can take away from my research, other than simply discussing the media influence on the election. As it supposed to be a discussion that lead to a way bigger concern, not just limiting on numerous of events.
https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2016/07/18/candidates-differ-in-their-use-of-social-media-to-connect-with-the-public/
This research report by PEW RESEARCH CENTER: JOURNALISM & MEDIA STAFF, on the topic of Candidates differ in their use of social media to connect with the public, gives very direct quantitative and qualitative views on the use of media during the 2016 election. It provided many direct tweets, videos, polls, etc. from the 2016 elections, with a lot of interesting facts, such as most of the democratic candidates have their links to the traditional campaign sites, where Donald Trumps linked most to news media. Other chapters also discuss the topic on Digital news developments in U.S. presidential campaigns, 2000-2016 using content analysis method, you would be able to clearly see how much the presidential campaigns have changed throughout the years, how much more and more complicated they have become. Starting from Obama vs Romney in 2012, it has reduced the role for traditional news media, way larger digital activity, however, it was no comparison to the 2016 elections, in terms of direct interaction with public through digital media.