RESEARCH 101
A student says, “My mother, grandmother and every teacher I have ever had told me that this is true, so it must be true.”
What way of knowing is being used?
WHAT IS TENACITY
Netflix is deciding whether to invest heavily in a new programme.
The executives don't simply ask, “Do we like this show?”
What should they be interested in understanding before making the decision?
Information about their audience, including what audiences want, consume, prefer and respond to.
A researcher tells participants what the study involves, explains the risks and benefits, and allows them to decide voluntarily whether they want to participate.
Which Belmont principle is most directly involved?
Respect for Persons.
A diary written by a participant during the event being studied is generally what type of source?
A primary source.
A researcher wants to understand what it is like for Jamaican university students to experience cyberbullying.
Which qualitative design is the strongest fit?
PHENOMENOLOGY
A student says:
“I don't have any data yet, but something tells me that UTech students would rather get their news from TikTok than television.”
She may have a starting point for an investigation, but her statement is not yet research evidence.
What way of knowing is she relying on?
WHAT IS INTUITION
ZIP 103.5 discovers that young listeners are spending more time on TikTok, YouTube, Spotify and podcasts.
The station concludes:
“Young people are leaving us because they like TikTok.”
What is wrong with that conclusion?
The information shows a change in media consumption, but does not establish why young people are consuming those platforms or whether that is actually why they are spending less time with ZIP.
A researcher wants to study teenagers' social-media behaviour.
The researcher argues:
“The research could produce valuable information, so any risks are acceptable.”
Which Belmont principle challenges this reasoning?
Answer: Beneficence.
The principle requires researchers to maximise benefits while minimising harm and ensuring that risks are reasonable and justifiable.
A textbook summarises and interprets the findings of dozens of previous researchers.
Is the textbook generally functioning as a primary or secondary source?
A secondary source.
A researcher spends several months observing the communication patterns, rituals, language and behaviours of a particular online gaming community.
Which qualitative design is most appropriate?
Ethnography.
A researcher begins with the belief that a particular media theory explains audience behaviour. Instead of simply accepting the theory, the researcher collects observations and evidence and uses logical reasoning to evaluate whether the evidence supports the explanation.
Which two ways of knowing are being brought together?
WHAT IS RATIONALISM AND EMPERICISM
A radio station wants to know:
“What should we change about our morning show?”
The research team proposes asking only:
“What music do you like?”
Why is that an inadequate research question for the management decision?
It investigates only one aspect of the audience's preferences. The station would also need to understand factors such as who the audience is, when/how they listen, what they like or dislike about the station, what other platforms/content they consume, and what is happening in their media environment.
A researcher decides to study a vulnerable group because:
“They are easier to recruit and they probably won't challenge the researchers.”
Which Belmont principle is most clearly threatened, and why?
Justice, because justice concerns fairness in who bears the burdens and who receives the benefits of research and cautions against unfairly targeting vulnerable groups.
You find two sources about misinformation.
Source A is a peer-reviewed journal article containing an abstract, methodology, results, discussion and references.
Source B is a TikTok video by a person who says:
“I've been researching this for years.”
Which source would generally provide stronger scholarly evidence, and what feature of Source A makes it particularly useful for evaluating the research itself?
Source A. Its methodology allows the researcher to examine how the study was conducted, while its results and discussion show what was found and how the findings were interpreted. The lecture identifies the abstract, introduction, methodology, results, discussion and references as key components of a peer-reviewed journal article. LECTURE 4
A researcher wants to examine one specific Jamaican radio station's transition from traditional broadcasting to a digital-first strategy.
The researcher plans to use interviews, observations, documents and media artefacts.
Which design is the strongest fit, and why?
Case study, because the researcher is conducting an in-depth investigation of a bounded case in its real-life context using multiple sources of information
A student wants to research whether Jamaican university students trust information they encounter on TikTok.
She begins with this:
“Do university students trust TikTok?”
Her lecturer says, “That's a topic disguised as a question. You still need to tell me exactly what aspect of trust, among whom, and in what context you intend to investigate.”
What is the fundamental problem with the student's research question?
It is too broad and insufficiently focused. It does not clearly identify the population/context or specify what aspect of trust is being investigated.
ZIP 103.5 finds that 18–24-year-olds listen less to the station between 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m.
Before changing its programming, the research team investigates:
Which four broad areas of market research are represented here?
Audience
Content
Competition
Context
A researcher secretly records students' conversations because participants might behave differently if they knew they were being recorded.
The researcher argues:
“But the research findings will be useful.”
Is usefulness alone enough to justify the method? Explain using TWO ethical principles or considerations from the course.
No.
Possible considerations:
A student finds an article that perfectly supports her argument.
She does not check who wrote it, when it was published, where the information came from, how the research was conducted, or whether other credible sources support it.
She says
“But it agrees with my argument, so it is a good source.”
What fundamental research mistake has she made?
She has confused agreement with credibility/quality. A source must be evaluated before being used. Finding information that supports your argument does not make the information accurate, credible or appropriate.
A researcher interviews 12 people who have all experienced the same phenomenon: losing a close friend through social media-related conflict.
The researcher is not primarily interested in the individuals as a group or culture. Instead, the researcher wants to understand the common meaning of the experience.
Which design is most appropriate, and what would the researcher be looking for in the interviews?
Phenomenology.
The researcher would look for themes, commonalities and the essential meanings underlying the participants' lived experiences. LECTURE 6
Two students are arguing.
Student A says:
“I know Jamaican young people don't trust traditional media because everyone I know says so.”
Student B says:
“I know they don't because a popular influencer said it last week.”
A third student says:
“Neither statement is enough. We need systematic evidence.”
Identify the ways of knowing represented by A and B, explain why neither is sufficient on its own, and identify the broader research principle represented by the third student's response.
A is relying primarily on experience/intuition, potentially reinforced by personal experience. B is relying on authority, because the influencer is being treated as a source of knowledge. Neither is sufficient because neither provides systematic investigation capable of supporting a research conclusion. The third student's position reflects research/scientific inquiry, which involves systematic investigation and evidence rather than simply accepting a belief. Research is presented as systematic investigation involving gathering and analysing information
ZIP 103.5 asks 500 young people:
“Do you listen to ZIP?”
Sixty percent say yes.
Management immediately concludes:
“Excellent. Young people still love ZIP.”
You are the research consultant.
Give THREE reasons why the conclusion is premature and identify at least TWO additional things you would want to know before management makes a programming decision.
Additional information could include listening frequency, preferred content/music, listening times, platforms used, likes/dislikes, reasons for listening, and competing media consumption.
The killer point: The research question produces a number, but the number does not necessarily answer the management problem.
A researcher wants to investigate whether social media affects teenagers' emotional well-being.
The proposed study will:
You are the ethics committee. Identify the ethical problems and match each problem to the relevant ethical principle or consideration.
You are researching:
“The influence of TikTok on news consumption among Jamaican university students.”
You find four sources:
A. A 2017 newspaper article about Facebook use among American teenagers.
B. A 2026 peer-reviewed study examining TikTok and news consumption among Caribbean university students.
C. A 2026 TikTok video by a Jamaican influencer saying, “Everybody gets their news from TikTok now.”
D. A 2025 scholarly article examining TikTok use among university students in South Korea.
Rank the sources from strongest to weakest for supporting your specific research topic and explain your reasoning.
B is strongest because it is recent, scholarly, geographically relevant and directly connected to the topic.
D is scholarly and recent and involves university students and TikTok, but the geographical context differs.
A is older and concerns a different platform, population and national context.
C may provide an example of public discourse or an influencer's claim, but it is not automatically reliable evidence for the claim that “everybody” gets news from TikTok.
A researcher begins with this question:
“How do Jamaican university students develop strategies for dealing with misinformation on social media?”
The researcher does not want to test an existing theory.
Instead, the researcher plans to:
Which qualitative design is this, and what makes it different from simply conducting a series of interviews?
Grounded theory.
The key distinction is that the research is not merely collecting people's experiences. The researcher is using an iterative process of data collection and analysis to develop a theory grounded in the data. Grounded theory does not begin by imposing a pre-existing theory on the data. LECTURE 6