ASSIGNMENT 01: QUALITATIVE RESEARCH,TEXTUAL ANALYSIS AND ETHICS IN MEDIA RESEARCH - First Blog post

I have been involved in the media industry for more than ten years; I have worked as media Liaison officer for various government intuitions. These intuitions include the Department of Public Works and Mpumalanga Provincial Legislature. I was one the first Editors of the Peer Help Newsletter of the Unisa Bureau for Student Counselling; my interest in the Media started when was I was still young, because my father worked for the SABC. I have studied Journalism, but never worked as a journalist. I am currently a Media Officer for one of the Department of Transport entities. My current work requires me to do extensive media research, media monitoring and media analysis of the South African Media landscape in all media industry print, radio, and online. I think this course will assist me in all my future work.          

Research is important because it provides you with lengthy knowledge and information about a particular topic. To me research is important because we are able to learn about new things, like people and events.  Media is the most powerful tool of communication. It helps promoting the right things on right time. The media interpret the past to us and show us what has gone into making us the way we are today. The media help us to understand the workings of our immediate world, and our individual places in it. The media are major sources of modern culture and entertainment. I think this course will require me to learn and it will also help me to think critically. I also want to study and learn the media is a major industry and its involvement in the commercial world, I will like to understand how the media help define how we communicate with one other.

 The media and technology in media is something that still needs to be explored to the fullest by adopting the leading edge of modern technological innovation, the media also explain to us how things work in general terms.

Blogging is becoming more and more popular tool used to communicate new ideas and people’s philosophies. Many blogs are written to help people who may be going through similar situations that the blogger has experienced. As new blogger I will be trying to establish myself as an expert in a field or topic of Media Studies. As blogger I will provide information to sway people's thinking in a certain direction, therefore the purpose of my blog will be my online journal that will be used in a throughout my studies in Hon Media Studies. In an academic sense, I and fellow students in the Media Studies will keep track of each other throughout the course of our studies by posting to our blogs. My posts, will give our students an opportunity to add their comment underneath the post, and so forth. As one of the lectures has said this blog will be only an opportunity to stay connected to my fellow students.  

Qualitative research is often presented as an essentially model through which we study the social world. This model act as instrumentalist to which sets of epistemological assumptions, theoretical approaches and methods are attracted. This paradigmatic claims have a tendency to resurface from time to time, manifesting itself in the effects of different cultural traditions upon intellectual styles of research.

We live in a world of multiplying media devices, ever-increasing social media usage, media conjunction and kinesis. In a culturally diverse world, the globalisation of media calls for an understanding of the legal and ethical issues that are confronting the user and the practitioner in their unique social context. Using different national examples from around the world, Legal and Ethical Issues in the Media offers a much-needed discussion of contemporary social issues and ramifications of media interaction around the world.

My five core principles of Qualitative research are as follows

– Qualitative research strategy

– Role of the researcher

– Data collection procedures

– Data analysis procedures

– Strategies for validating findings