Group meeting….Task 5 Researching People….

For this weeks task we were asked to identify the kinds of knowledge that you can produce by conducting interviews and focus groups. We then chose one of these methods to address the issue of friendship in social media and create an interview schedule/focus group agenda and conduct your interview/focus group with carefully justified participant(s). As a group we sat together to discuss the type of interview we were going to do and the questions. We decided to conduct an individual one-on-one interview. We picked this type of interview because we believed it will give us the chance to talk to the interviewee alone to get substantial information rather than in a focus group.After deciding on the type of interview we were going to conduct we then had to decide on the type of questions we were going to ask, wether it will be a leading question or an open question. So we jotted 4 questions and they were……..

1. Do you use social media? If so have you used it to make friends? (we concluded this is an open question because this question is highly connected to the task ).
2. Do you know all your friends on social media?( we decided this was also an open question).
3. Do you think social media is a good way to make friends?( we concluded this to be a closed question because the answer would be either a Yes/No)
4. Do you have Twitter\YouTube? If so do you consider your followers as friends?

After coming to an agreement on the type of interview we were going to conduct and the type of questions it was now time to go fishing 🙂 ……….Luckily we found a student seated in the Ellen Terry Building we then informed him that we were conducting interviews one-on-one to people for a schools project work asked if he will be willing to be interviewed and that if in any time he feels uncomfortable he should ask us to stop. We then asked him the questions which he said that he has social media and does use it to make friends in the exception of Facebook. He then said he has over 700 followers but only talks to about 7 of them. He then said that he has met some of friends on social media that he hasn’t met before. He did think social media was a good way in making friends but not places like Facebook. He  then agreed with the last question and said he did have a Twitter account  but doesn’t think but doesn’t consider his followers as friends and how they are just people who just watched what he tweets. We then went onto the streets to ask another person. We found a young man who was also willing to be interviewed on camera. we asked him the same question which he said he does have social media and has used it to make friends. He then said that he doesn’t really know all his friends in social media and that he’s only met some of them but not all. He then went on to say after being asked if he thought social media was a good way to make friends that is was a good way but one has to be cautious and very careful about it. He then agreed that he had aTwitter account but didn’t consider all of them his friends. Another student in the Ellen Terry Building said that he was ok with being interviewed and was happy to be filmed. He said that he did have social media and sometimes did use it to make new friends. He also then said he mostly did that on Twitter but not really on Facebook because that should be used for mainly personal people. He then said he doesn’t know all his friends on twitter buy on Facebook he does but has never met his Twitter friends in person.He said he did think social media was a good way to make friends because he had seen a lot of people doing it and that he does have a YouTube account and that he didn’t consider his friends as followers but rather people who just subscribe and watch his posts. The people we interviewed were actual Coventry University and that it was easy to access them as they walked passed us on the street. The people we interviewed were all likely to be on social media as there was a target age range which was between 18 to 23 and these are the people we see everyday. From the lecture on Monday i believe we used all the steps we covered in the lecture on the steps on how to interview an informant. We made sure we asked permission and informed the informant whether he/she would be comfortable to be interviewed on camera and that it was used for a University project work. Today has made me learn different types of questions and how they get you different types of answers and when the informant is informed on what the interview is going to be used for helps the informant feel comfortable and gives them a chance to express their views.