don't explain

Posted by clint

on May 14, 2008

(Broken record: this is an Amsterdam-related post.)

How primarily do the Dutch interact with their news and commercial media, and how has this shaped the general commercial structures and mediums of the industry?

In general, the most analogous conceptual framework by which this question lives is the synecdoche. The consumption of products in an economic sense drives the development and availability of those products from the supplier, and so in many ways the physical existence and prominence of media reflects synecdochically upon the consumption of media.

Through this observation, we can explore new and indirect methods of studying media consumption among the Dutch. Rather than query directly for the public usage of media, we can take the relative production of each medium as an indirect measure for that same usage data. In this way, we can get a complete picture with hard data with much less variability.

Caution must be taken, however. The premise of our question is that the consumption of media potentially shapes the production and mediums of media - that is, consumer demand drives the industry. Thus, if we simply take the numbers on the production end and infer the consumption numbers, we completely fail to address our research. In this way, it can be seen that in fact our very research question is based on the goal of addressing the extent of the synecdochical relationship between physical media existence and production and consumption.

Perhaps a better structure and case study is required. Here is a revised question and research method.

How has De Waag Society adapted itself for new media techniques in furthering its goals, and how effective have these methods been?

This can be studied by first determining the historical methods De Waag Society used in publishing content and otherwise utilizing the media, then by conducting expert interviews present-day to determine the current methods. Then, people who have previously interacted with De Waag can be polled to determine the effectiveness of those methods.
Perhaps a better structure and case study is required. Here is a revised question and research method.

How has De Waag Society adapted itself for new media techniques in furthering its goals, and how effective have these methods been?

This can be studied by first determining the historical methods De Waag Society used in publishing content and otherwise utilizing the media, then by conducting expert interviews present-day to determine the current methods. Then, people who have previously interacted with De Waag can be polled to determine the effectiveness of those methods.