Digital media offers oceans of 'real data' but cannot of itself identify the human meanings. Semiotics enables us to identify the structures which define meaning but is entirely qualitative. We combined both to create 21st-century Qual & Quant.
Over the past decade citizens' action groups and initiatives in areas such as disarmament or environmental protection have made increasingly clear how important the power of public opinion is. On the subject of ecology, more than any other, we are witnessing a worldwide change in attitudes. This will significantly affect the way people think, not only with respect to their personal lives but also in economic terms, in their roles as producers or consumers and it will influence their political attitudes and behavior. Why is survey research becoming an increasingly popular tool even in the field of journalism? The reason is that it is impossible to capture the trends and shifts in the climate of public opinion without survey research. Regular and systematic probes into the climate of opinion open the way to a new kind of precision journalism. German magazines such as NATUR, CAPITAL and QUICK have cooperated with the Institut fiir Demoskopie Allensbach in designing projects in journalism that have become an integral part of their issues. This paper will describe the conception behind, initial experience with and results of this cooperative venture between journalism and survey research from two points of view; from the perspective of survey research and from the perspective of the editorial staff of the environmental magazine NATUR.
Over the past decade citizens' action groups and initiatives in areas such as disarmament or environmental protection have made increasingly clear how important the power of public opinion is. On the subject of ecology, more than any other, we are witnessing a worldwide change in attitudes. This will significantly affect the way people think, not only with respect to their personal lives but also in economic terms, in their roles as producers or consumers and it will influence their political attitudes and behavior. Why is survey research becoming an increasingly popular tool even in the field of journalism? The reason is that it is impossible to capture the trends and shifts in the climate of public opinion without survey research. Regular and systematic probes into the climate of opinion open the way to a new kind of precision journalism. German magazines such as NATUR, CAPITAL and QUICK have cooperated with the Institut fiir Demoskopie Allensbach in designing projects in journalism that have become an integral part of their issues. This paper will describe the conception behind, initial experience with and results of this cooperative venture between journalism and survey research from two points of view; from the perspective of survey research and from the perspective of the editorial staff of the environmental magazine NATUR.
The impact of mass communication -- the ability to effect cognitive change among individuals -- has been labeled the agenda-setting function of mass communication. Here may lie the most important effect of modern mass communication, the ability of media to structure our world for us. As political scientist Bernard Cohen has summarized it, the mass media may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but the media are stunningly successful in telling their audiences what to think about.
Data Transmission will enable large and powerful computers to operate and exercise control over distances and, with switched networks, to intercommunicate with one another. Though public opinion remains sceptical the combined strength of the technical developments of the computer allied to communication links raise intriguing possibilities for mankind, including a move from an industrial society to an information society, allowing a fuller life. The paper therefore details the marketing research effort which has already gone into this problem both in the past, and recently, for the United Kingdom and in pan-European studies. An account is given of two very large scale market surveys, firstly the Scicon study which covered the United Kingdom in 1968, followed by the PA investigation carried out in 16 European countries during 1972.
The question I would like to raise here is how much consensus or agreement has there been on Cold War issues among the peoples of the West European nations. I am not talking about policy-makers in this paper, but about the populations which stand behind the policy-makers. The occasion for the analysis is a feature called WORLD POLL.