The research study I chose to do my qualitative criteria evaluation on was about how webmasters on Internet websites are used as mass media gatekeepers. A study on ProQuest titled, “Webmasters as mass media gatekeepers: a qualitative exploratory study”, by Fred Beard and Rolf L. Olsen was my primary information source. The reason why I chose this article was because I am very interested in the Internet as a mass informative medium. I thought it would be interesting to read a study about how and why people choose what gets put on a website for the mass population to read. Also, it was interesting to know how these webmasters are chosen and what kinds of backgrounds they have. This article had a lot of background information and listed out what the research questions for the study were. They answered the following questions, “in what ways do the personal characteristics of college and university webmasters influence their gatekeeping activities? What values do webmasters apply when they make decisions regarding the content and appearance of their web sites? What organizational and related constraints do webmasters face in the performance of their role, and how do they respond to them?”
1: Naturalistic Observation
The first criterion that is to be evaluated in any qualitative study is the “naturalistic observation” criteria. This means that everything in the study must take place in the natural environment. For this study the researchers went about accomplishing this by going to eight universities across the nation to interview the webmasters at each school. The researchers did not use any forms of ethnography but they did use observation and in depth interviews. In the article it states that, “the interviews ranged in length from 45 minutes to one hour and were audio taped.” Using this method they were able to quote exact dialogue in their report, which I feel is extremely important if you want the reader to think that the report is reliable. For example, the way the researchers went about answering the first question (listed in the intro) was to mention what some of the similar answers were, then to show a quote supporting that. This can be seen when the research article states, “two webmasters have strong news communication backgrounds, and the influence of this experience on their gatekeeping decisions is apparent. As Webmaster G observed, “I think people want to know who we are and what programs we have to offer…so I guess to me it’s the “who, what, when, where, why, and how of news writing.” The researchers did this for the other two questions and broke down the responses with similar answers into separate findings. This is an effective way of following the first criterion because it leaves no loose ends to the reader.
2: Contextualization
The second criterion to a proper qualitative research study is contextualization. In other words, everything must be in the right context. For example, if you are talking about a baseball bat you need to make sure your research is talking about the bat as an actual baseball bat not a murder weapon. I felt that this research study did a very good job keeping everything in context. The three questions above are strong and cover pretty much the entire topic of their study, “Webmasters as mass media gatekeepers.” For example, take the second question, “what values do webmasters apply when they make decisions regarding the content and appearance of their sites?” Every answer and response they listed in their study remains in the context of the question and stays on topic. When the researchers asked this question to the webmasters, they stated that the values they use are, “timeliness, organization, graphic design, and audience readability.” Other direct responses that show the study is in the right context were quoted such as webmaster E saying, “it’s really important to me that the site is fresh, kept up to date, and offering something that my competitors aren’t.” And Webmaster G concerning readability stated that, “my goal is to try to present a consistent look on all of our pages, so no matter what page someone is on, they know where they are.” It was like this with the other two questions that were asked to the Webmasters. Everything followed the right context and to me there were no absurd or out of place findings or responses that would stray away from the original context.
3: Maximized Comparisons
Maximized comparisons are the third criterion that should be followed to create a sound qualitative study. This means that in order to make generalizations about a population or group of people, the researchers must go out of their way to contact as many people from every different demographic as possible. It is hard to do this in many qualitative studies but I felt that in this study they could have tried harder to contact more webmasters. They only had eight webmasters and all from universities in the mid west. In my opinion, this makes the study a lot less interesting and less meaningful. In the study they give the reader some reasons why it is okay that they only contacted eight webmasters from mid-western colleges. These include, “ (these) colleges and universities were among the first to launch Web sites, this suggests that they have a need for formal webmasters, responsible for comprehensive gatekeeping decisions.” Also they said, “academic webmasters were chosen because colleges and universities are widespread throughout the world…thus the sample does represent a broad domain of gatekeepers.” These are valid reasons, but to me I felt that in order to make the findings of any study some what meaningful you would have to interview more than eight college webmasters all from mid-western colleges. They should have included schools from the east and west coast as well. Also, they should have included corporate and business web site webmasters. Its almost too obvious that one of the reasons why they found so many similarities in most of the interviews was because all of the webmasters are from the same area and there were so few of them.
4: Sensitized Concept
The fourth and final criterion is “sensitized concept”. This is how well the researchers of the study relate their concepts and findings so it can be understood by the masses and be clear to the ones who are interested in the field. This study did an excellent job of letting the masses know what they were talking about. In the beginning of the article they have a section dedicated to background, where they have a variety of different sources defining terms that they will be using and referring back to. The section is filled with media advocates and scholars all stating their definitions of what a gatekeeper is. One of the top definitions they found for gatekeeper was, “a process by which billions of messages that are available in the world get cut down and transformed into the hundreds of messages that reach a given person on a given day.” This is extremely effective in that not only does it help the reader understand certain terms and findings, it also helps with the reliability of the article. Also, for each of the eight webmasters that they interviewed, they have a large amount of background information. For example, the background given for webmaster C is, “…a male age 46, who holds a PhD and is an associate professor in physics…22 years of experience in computer programming and 12 in computer science…he created his institutions web site about a year after he arrived.” This helps the reader get inside and fully understand what each interviewee is all about and in turn helps the reader understand the concepts/findings that come out of the interview.
In the end, this study ended up meeting only three of the four identified criteria. In my opinion the lack of maximized comparisons severely hurts this piece of research’s creditability and reliability. All the findings make sense and shed a little bit of light on what the study was set out to do. However, only contacting eight webmasters in the entire country does not cut it. This study had the right questions and format but needed more webmasters, having a relatively small amount of webmasters makes this study seem unfinished. If another researcher would repeat the same study, I would recommend picking up where this study left off. Overall, this report was only partially effective and should not be considered a solid qualitative study.
link to the study is below:
http://sm2nn8xb3j.scholar.serialssolutions.com/?sid=google&auinit=F&aulast=Beard&atitle=Webmasters+as+mass+media+gatekeepers:+a+qualitative+exploratory+study&title=Internet+research&volume=9&issue=3&date=1999&spage=200&issn=1066-2243
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