Ina Bertrand - Media Research Methods: Audiences, Institutions, Texts

Ina Bertrand and Peter Hughes

Media Research Methods Audiences, Institutions, Texts 2nd ed. 2018

ISBN 978-1-137-55215-0 e-ISBN 978-1-137-55216-7

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55216-7

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The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2005, 2018

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the following people for their invaluable assistance in researching and writing this book. Val Forbes, Eva Fisch, and Ross Schnioffsky, humanities librarians at the Borchardt Library, La Trobe University, Melbourne, found books and provided advice and criticism in relation to library and web-based research. A number of people provided invaluable advice and criticism on different aspects of the theory or practice of research: Tony Barta, Darrel Caulley, Mary Debrett, Anna Dzenis, Alison Horbury, John Langer, Ray Lewis, David Gauntlett, John Hannon, Denise Meredyth, Emma Mesikmmen, Philipa Rothfield, Terrie Waddell, and Elizabeth Wells. In relation to archival research we are indebted to: Russell Campbell, Donna Coates, Sue Harper, Roger Horrocks, Harriett Margolis, Janet Moat, Barbara OConnor, Vincent Porter, Steve Vaughn, and Chris Watson. Graeme Bertrand, Claire Hughes, and Dinah Partridge provided support of the most practical kind as well as maintaining morale!

Contents

List of Figures

The Author(s) 2018

Ina Bertrand 1 and Peter Hughes 2

The lessons to be learned from this parable, which we first heard on a Pete Seeger record from the 1950s and have since come across many times in slightly different written and oral forms, are:

Starting a serious text on research methods with a frivolous story also makes the point that research can be intriguing and enjoyable, a mix of dull routine with the excitement and satisfaction of exploring your world and perhaps finding new knowledge.

But it is not only curiosity that takes us to media research. A profound change is occurring in the world: there has been a shift in the developed economies from the manufacture of physical products to the production and exchange of information, a shift from an industrial society to a post-industrial society (Bell ), libraries are going online, software companies are buying the rights to the electronic dissemination of artworks. We can recognise the post-industrial economy in the dominance of Hollywood products in our lives; in the fact that some of the worlds richest men (Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg) made their money, not from producing cars and heavy machinery, but from lines of computer code; and from the increasing pace of convergence in the telecommunications and entertainment industries. The Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement proposed in 2015 (later called the Trans-Pacific Partnership) had a complete chapter on trade in intellectual property (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade 2015). At the time the first edition of this book was written, Google had just become a public company, Facebook had just been launched, and the iPhone was two years away. The emergence of a new mediascape was well under way. Now Google and Facebook are major corporations and smart phones are everywhere. Interestingly, in something of a return to the older industrial economy, Elon Musk (founder of PayPal) now has a company producing electric cars (Tesla), and Google and perhaps Apple are likely to follow.