Media And Generations Essay Samples

The study of Jacobsen and Forste (2011) “The Wired Generation: Academic and Social Outcomes of Electronic Media Use Among University Students” is aimed at assessing the influence of e use of various types of electronic media among first-year students and their academic performance. The first primary hypothesis of the study was that electronic media use may result in a displacement effect on face-to-face social interaction. The second hypothesis tested by the authors was that usage of electronic media is negatively associated with the students’ academic performance due to its distractive function.
The main dependent variables identified within the study were the following: fall semester GPA as a measure of academic performance and face-to-face social interaction. The main factors of influence were electronic media used by the students including online social networks, email, chats, cell phone/texting, video/online games, TV/movies and other online activities. The information about electrnic media usage was obtained through time-diary and survey data. The authors estimated their models using OLS regression techniques. To account for possible violations and avoid biasing the slopes, Jacobsen and Forste (2011) exercised robust regression techniques. Specifically, they used M estimation, a type of robust regression intended to “down weight influential observations in the dependent variable while excluding highly influential outliers from the analysis” (Jacobsen and Forste, 2011.)
The results of the study showed a negative relationship between the electronic media usage and academic performance. Also, the authors detected a positive association between social networks use, cell-phone communication, and face-to-face social interaction, so the sudy proved that social media facilitate offline face-to-face social interaction. The study is relevant and also consistent with previous research body on the topic; but has its limitations. It’s relevant only to first-year students. Also, not all the highly influential social media (for example, Twitter, Youtube) were studied; so there’s a necessity in futher research.
The paper by Bolton et al. (2013) “Understanding Generation Y and their use of social media: a review and research agenda” was aimed at summarizing the existing body of knowledge about Generation Y’s use of social media and also at assessing the implications for individuals, consumer market and society. The paper has descriptive and summarising character and is dedicated to describing Generation Y’s use of social media, studying impact of different factors on social media use and reviewing the impact of digital social media use for people and businesses. The authors identify the following variables or factors, influencing social media use in Millenials: environmental (economic, technological, legal, cultural, and political), individual (socio-economic status, age, personal values and preferences, age and lifecycle stage) and dynamic (social norms, goals and emotions).
The method of the research includes analysing the systematic differences of Generation Y from other generations in terms of preferences, values and behaviour; it describes intra-generational variance arising from the multiple factors mentioned above and assesses the influence of social media use. Also the study offers the further research agenda. The study findings prove that social media transform the life of Generation Y (“digital natives”, Bolton et al., 2013.) The social media use is driven by a need to social interaction. Many factors (environmental and individual) impact social media use. There’re a lot of positive outcomes of social media usage for individuals: development of social capital, increase in physical well-being, etc. But there’re also drawbacks such as distortion of intimate relationships, loss of control over sensitive personal information, etc.
The study by Bolton et al. (2013) reveal the limitation of existing body of research on Generation Y use of digital social media: it focuses primarily on the USA with a little information on the global level; it “tends to study students whose behaviors may change as they move through lifecycle stages” (Bolton et al., 2013); it relies on self-reports mainly and doesn’t study in-depth the implications of social media penetration for economy and society.
5) What are the results of the study? 6) How is this relevant?

References

Jacobsen, W.C. & Forste, R. (2011). The Wired Generation: Academic and Social Outcomes of Electronic Media Use Among University Students. Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking. Volume 14, Number 5, 2011. DOI: 10.1089/cyber.2010.0135 Retrieved from https://sociology.byu.edu/SiteAssets/Faculty%20and%20Staff/Publications/Cyberpsychology.pdf
Bolton, R., Parasuraman, A., Hoefnagels, A., Migchels, N., Kabadayi, S., Gruber, Th., Komarova Loureiro, Y. and Solnet, D. (2013). Understanding Generation Y and their use of social media: a review and research agenda. Journal of Service Management. Vol. 24 No. 3, 2013. pp. 245-267. DOI 10.1108/09564231311326987. Retrieved from http://www.ruthnbolton.com/Publications/GenYJOSM.pdf