Problem Statement

Discuss about the Impact of Mass Media on Youth Culture.

Youth culture refers to the set of practices and norms which are been shared by the young people (Schiller 2017). There are several elements of the youth culture and they include that of their social interests, beliefs and behaviour. As an innovation, technology has brought in both positive and negative changes in the areas of society and culture, especially in terms of sociology, interaction and family (Ngai, Tao and Moon 2015). The positive one include the access of huge amount of information and programming at younger age, which in turn has brought in more awareness of the world to the modern’s days young people and more sophistication than ever before. On the other hand, mass media outlets have also intensified the prevalence of depression in most of the adolescents and have changes their cultural norms, which governs the traditional events like that of the mourning and funeral customs, incited new fears and have also been made use by the marketers to aggressively target the same young people for their financial profits.

Media is considered to be one of the most powerful entity present on the earth today (Vista 2015). It has the potential to make the guilty innocent and the innocent guilty. It plays a major role in increasing violence, sexual activities and risky behaviours among the youths. With the same, the content present in media that are introduced to the young people make it very difficult for the youngsters to distinguish in between the things that are real and the ones that are not (Browning and Van Eeden-Moorwfield 2017). This research proposal seeks to examine a wide number of issues with specific relevance to the young people in the modern world.

In order to research this topic effectively, the research questions of this research proposal have been narrowed down to the following:

1. What are the changes in the modern culture that have changed these experiences from the ones of decades ago
2. What are the roles that technology plays in this as a force of cultural or social change?
3. What are the issues that the modern youth is facing or confronting?

The main aim of this research are as follows:

• To present the upsides and the downsides to the communication in modern world- face to face versus mediated
• To examine how these are altering the ways in which the youth today relate to one another, the strangers, their own families and their world.
• To show the immense power of mass media in the day-to-day life of the youngsters and to examine the surrounding factors in larger society which would assist in further comprehend the everyday experiences of the teenagers in Australia.

Theoretical Perspective

The issues in the life of the teenagers and the culture in mass media society inclusive of the background sources in the developmental psychology, cultural history, theory and their family studies that all include this larger topic can be divided into three main categories. Firstly, the theoretical and historical approach to the culture theory and the technological advancement and the associated discourse surrounding the theories of both cultural as well as technological determinism, shifts and the social disconnection in the earlier established social codes of conduct in between the individuals within the American society. Although this category of the works are not confined to their own different chapter, serves to inform and to underlie all the other arguments and the sources that are presented here. Secondly, the other category of works comprise of the sources that details the youth media culture and the constantly changing dynamics of the Australian family in the current age, the popular culture on the process of development of youngsters, especially the teenage girls, along with the significance of the modes of online communication and technological innovation within this. Thirdly, the third category includes adolescent sociology and psychology in regards to virtual interaction and online space, the evolution of the death culture, the different customers in Australia, the roles of youth sociology and technology in the process of changing cultural attitudes in context to mourning, death as well as the grieving process.

Research Questions

According to Hider (2018), the knowledge in the field of social science is smattered and is comprised of many discrete parcels. He also detailed that the specificity or say, the separateness of the bodies of knowledge is an outcome, not only of diverse objects for inquiry but also of the specificity of the method. Furthermore, in this context the beliefs of Bernard, Wutich and Ryan (2016) on the subject of social science and the areas of the interaction in between the factors which includes it are advantageous as a method of conceiving of the overarching approach to my topic, questions and the problems, especially as because of the fact that the ultimate tone of my research proposal is sociological. With the same, it is also to state that there are many theoretical works in the field of technological and cultural studies which argues that all these innovations have great impact on the codes of conducts and on the cultural values of the society. For example, Fishman  (2018) work on the televisions as one of the technological innovations and his portrayal of television as an agent of the cultural change supplies her work immensely relevant to the subject of this paper for these reasons. His work assesses the technological innovation of the television from a historical and cultural view-point and he also focuses his work on the potential of the technology for engendering the shifts from the primary experiences exhibition of the public space to privacy of the people’s own homes. With the same, according to Hayter and Nieweler (2018), the blurring of the private and the public spaces, have influenced the changes in the in the formation of the community, family dynamics as well as the construction of home in the new suburban developments. In order to influence his own in terms of the significance or the role of technological developments in inciting anxiety and new fear within the societies culturally and for elaborating on different theories of technological determinism versus culturally-driven determinism, de C Milliams (2014) has made use of the theories of Warren Susman. Hellman (2018) in this context has also explored the material goods that includes ‘popular culture’ in it. He states that goods establish culture flaws and norms and therefore, they must be understood. He has also used “emulation model” of Daniel Miller that makes use of historical examples ranging from 16^th century England for Shackelto assess colonial Annapolis, Maryland.

Research Aim and Objectives

Research design defines the different methods used for collecting data and analysis. In this current study, a mixed method will be used where both quantitative and qualitative data analysis will be conducted to develop relevant findings in the study.  The current study will use sequential explanatory research design where initially quantitative data will be collected and analysed (Roux et al. 2018).  The findings of the quantitative data will compared with the findings from the qualitative analysis to validate and support the result in the study. This study is expected to provide a better result due to the use of the mixed method in the research design.

Epistemology

The branch of philosophy dealing with the sources of knowledge is known as epistemology. Epistemology will be used for classifying the ways in knowledge will be gathered in the study. Epistemology is the research which will define the ways all the knowledge and information can be included into the research project (Flick 2015). According to the research view pragmatism will be selected as the research philosophy as based on the research question both subjective and objective phenomenon should be used for in depth analysis of the research topic.

Research Methodology

In this current study, primary data collection is the method gaining knowledge. The primary data will be collected using both open ended questionnaire and close ended questionnaire (Mackey and Gass 2015). The quantitative analysis will consist of using close ended questionnaire which will be asked to the general population. The close ended questionnaire will facilitate in gaining relevant answers from the general population.  The qualitative data will consist of open ended questionnaire where the questions will be asked to experts.

The quantitative data will be statistically analysed by using tools such as Ms excel. This will consist of representing the response frequencies through graphs and charts.  The descriptive statistics will also be developed which will consist of mean, mode, median, standard deviation and variance analysis.  Regression analysis will also be conducted where the relationship between media and its impact on the youth will be measured (McCusker and Gunaydin 2015).  The degree of association and nature of relationship between the independent and the dependent variable will be calculated to create findings.  The qualitative data analysis will consist of conducting content analysis using axial coding where the core themes will break down into different components. The patterns in the answers of the questions will be analysed to develop significant findings.

Body

The study will use probabilistic sampling where randomization is the basis of selecting sample population (Palinkas et al.  2015). the sample size for the quantitative analysis will consist of 200 respondents and simple random sampling will be used to reduce the sample size to 100. The qualitative data will be collected from 15 respondents and will be narrowed down to 5 respondents using randomization.

Ethical Issues

While conducting a research, the researcher has to maintain ethical issues during the entire research process. As according to the Data Protection Act of 1998, while conducting any research, a researcher must maintain privacy of the data that are not published (Milkaite and Lievens 2018). He is under an obligation of not leaking any of the details of the respondents that he has considered to conduct his research. If any of the researchers does so, he might be held liable for breaching the Data Protection Act. In this study, the data protection act regulation will be followed so anonymity of the respondents will be maintain to protect their privacy. The respondents will be given knowledge regarding the objective of conducting the research (Harriss and Atkinson 2015). The respondents in the study will not be forced to take part and the data will not be manipulated to obtain the desired result.

Conclusion

At its most general and overarching level, this research proposal aims to explore the current youth culture and investigate some of the basic areas where intense influence which the media exerts on young people’s life could be visible, print and online space. The evidence and analysis presented within it, divided by medium, all come together to give an insight into the experiences and life of adolescents currently coming of the age in Australia. This study has developed effective models for measuring the impact of media on the youth culture. The study has formulated methodology for data collection and analysis. It is expected that the study will identify the negative impact of mass media on the current youth. However, in order to obtain the desired result the research validity and reliability will have to be high. Thus, following the given methods will result in developing effective findings and drawing significant conclusions from it.

References

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