Primary Research – Sample Polling
In pursuit of tracking down McMaster students (target audience of The Silhouette), I conducted a quantitative sample of my fellow students that surround me over the course of two days to inquire about their engagement with The Silhouette. I thought it would be interesting to survey students that I interact with on a daily basis to see if there is a correlation between our consumption of the Silhouette. My data sampled 16 females and 9 males between the ages of 20 and 23 whom are undergraduate students at McMaster University. This sample included my housemates, friends and classmates. Of the 25 students surveyed, there was an overwhelming number of students who does not read the Silhouette (23 were non-readers, 2 were). Only one student followed the Silhouette on Twitter and none of them like their Facebook accounts.
However, when I asked my peers about their social media consumption there was an overall consensus that they all use Facebook on a daily basis and about 80% use Twitter daily. This led me to think about the people I surround myself and how their social media behaviours and consumption patterns may influence me. I live on the upstairs floor of my student house with two of my roommates (out of 7 total) and we all have iphones, thus the signature double vibrate tone and ‘tri-tone’ text tone is commonly heard on our floor. What’s interesting is that we if we each get an invite to an event (usually via MSU Campus Events or one of the nightlife events marketing company catered to McMaster students that we all “like”) on Facebook, you can hear all three of our phones going off at the same time the event invite is received on our iphones. This demonstrates the concept of students subscribing to news through social media and how they are actively consuming information and plugged in.
Social media definitely works if you want to get our attention. We’re participating and shaping the social media landscape each day. As students of McMaster University, if we are interested in a particular SM news source from the school – we WILL subscribe i.e. MSU Campus events/ Nightlife events marketing companies.
In gathering this sample, I can see how students around me are uninterested/have not been persuaded to consume information from the Silhouette, which impacts their ability to be influential as the ‘student voice’.
Hey, it's Van! 