The paper sets out the broad processes involved in globalisation especially in the communications and media domains. While there are global changes happening there remain massive disparities in uptake and availability between markets. Equally large-scale differences exist within each market. The futura.com study based in the United Kingdom is designed to look at the impact of change using a panel-based design and multiple measures of different forms of change - technological personal social national. This approach has allowed a complex segmentation analysis based around peoples attitudes to change to be undertaken. The results of this social segmentation show that this is an efficient and meaningful means of discriminating between different groups of people in terms of their attitudes behaviour and beliefs. This approach to researching changing markets is ideally suited to multi- country studies.
The paper sets out the broad processes involved in globalisation, especially in the communications and media domains. While there are global changes happening, there remain massive disparities in uptake and availability between markets. Equally, large-scale differences exist within each market. The futura.com study based in the United Kingdom is designed to look at the impact of change, using a panel-based design and multiple measures of different forms of change - technological, personal, social, national. This approach has allowed a complex segmentation analysis based around peoples attitudes to change to be undertaken. The results of this social segmentation show that this is an efficient and meaningful means of discriminating between different groups of people in terms of their attitudes, behaviour and beliefs. This approach to researching changing markets is ideally suited to multi-country studies.
The social and technological changes which are under way in Britain, as in most developed countries, have direct implications for commerce and government. The increasing ease of access to new information technologies may well lead to radically different forms of social interaction and consumer behaviour in the coming years. However, relatively little is known about how such pressures for change will impact on society. This paper sets out the rationale and approach which will be adopted in a major longitudinal study of the United Kingdom in a time of change. Data from pilot studies are reported.
Politicians and broadcasters alike concerned that the balance of television coverage should be fair to all side's during elections and over those much longer periods between them. In the production of news and current affairs, the BBC's Charter and the Broadcasting Act, which covers the independent broadcasting sector, require television and radio services to be informative and impartial, while arrangements are negotiated between broadcasters and the major political parties to determine the distribution and production of party political (and election) broadcasts. However, there are often occasions when the requirement to report political events with "due impartiality" conflicts with the journalistic criterion to fill news programmes with events that are newsworthy, especially if one party happens to be making all the running.