Title The Impact of Social Media: Conducting Independent Enquiry About Social Media Teacher's Slides for HKDSE Liberal Studies (July 2018) Author(s) Pountney, L; Chan, HW; McDonald, TN Citation Pountney, L, Chan, HW & McDonald, TN. The Impact of Social Media: Conducting Independent Enquiry About Social Media Teacher's Slides for HKDSE Liberal Studies (July 2018). Hong Kong: Department of Sociology, The University of Hong Kong. 2018 Issued Date 2018 URL http://hdl.handle.net/10722/256612 Rights This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Updated: July 2018 The Impact of Social Media Conducting Independent Enquiry About Social Media Part B (3 lesson-version) sociology.hku.hk/impact-social-media
Sharing about 1. What issue am I going to study? 2. Why is my issue significant? 3. What are my enquiry question and focus questions?
Part B: Relevant Concepts and Knowledge Facts / Data What concepts and methods are relevant to your IES?
1. What is a Concept? Example: What is gender? Gender is biological. Men and women have different bodies from birth. I disagree, gender is social. We learn how to act like a man or a woman as we grow up. A key concept speaks about an important idea that a number of different people, normally experts, might agree on. Not everyone will agree on a particular concept, though, and different people may suggest different understandings of a key concept.
2. How Do You Operationalise a Concept? Make abstract concepts measurable so they are concrete enough to observe.
Enquiry question: How does social media affect education? Define the Key Terms of Your Enquiry Question and Focus Questions! How do teachers and students use social media? How useful do parents from various socio-economic classes see social media in terms of their children s formal and information education? How do teachers develop school policy to regulate the use of social media in school?
Operationalization: How Do You Make these Abstract Concepts Measurable? Social media Socio-economic classes positivist Education Formal education hawthorn effect consent Informal education School policy 7
Example: Let s Define and Operationalize Social Media (p.12-14) What do you think social media is? Do you find it difficult to define social media? Why? 8
Example: Let s Define and Operationalize Social Media (p.12-14)
Example: Let s Define and Operationalize Social Media (p.12-14) How do the researchers of the Why We Post Project define social media? They define social media as a place within which people socialize and as the contents people posted on social media platforms. How is their definition different from the definition of previous studies? The researchers do not define social media as platforms for people to communicate with each other. Why do they define social media in ways different from other researchers? If social media is defined as platforms, then a comparative study of social media is not possible. There are no regional variations in how social media platforms work. However, what people post on social media does have regional variations. They define social media in different ways to suit the needs of their research.
3. Choosing Your Research Method Choose and justify the method you use to collect data
Secondary Data Search through academic journals, government reports, and research papers etc.
Video Watching: Questionnaire VS Interviews (P.19) Watch this video at: https://youtu.be/1_q9ekkyuk0
Video Watching: Questionnaire VS Interviews (P.19)
Kahoot: Which methods are suitable?
Your Turn P.15 of Student Pack What do you think is the best way to define social media in your IES? How is your definition of social media useful to your analysis? How would you operationalise (to make measurable) the concept social media? What are the other key concepts in your enquiry question and focus questions? How would you define, operationalise and explain them? For those who are interested in social media studies: sociology.hku.hk/social-media-concepts
Your Turn P.21 of Student Pack Which methods would be most suitable for and why? Who would you wish to research as your questionnaires respondents or interviewees? Why? What sorts of skills might you need? How would you record and analyse your results? What have you learnt from this activity about the challenges of researching the impact of social media? How can you overcome those challenges?
Upcoming What to do after collecting data?