While the Middletown Media Studies team has traveled from coast to coast showing its presentation on how Americans use media on a daily basis, it made its first presentation to the Ball State community Tuesday.
Research from the three Middletown Media Studies is being used by national corporations such as Pepsi Co., Warner Brothers and Procter & Gamble, Mike Bloxham said, director of Center for Media Design Insight and Research.
Ball State received money from Lilly endowments and faculty came up with the challenge to complete the most extensive and correct media study that anyone has attempted, telecommunications professor Bob Papper said.
The Middletown Studies research team consists of Papper, Michael Holmes, a communication studies professor and research fellow for the Center for Media Design, and Mark Popovich, professor of journalism. Holmes was unable to attend the presentation because of a family emergency.
The presentation featured a short overview of facts and figures from the results, Popovich said.
Middletown Media Studies I project began in 2003 to reconcile the differences the team found within other research, Papper said. For the study people were observed in their daily media interaction, he said. They were later interviewed and many people misperceived how much they used media in their daily life.
In the second study, more than 400 people from Muncie and the Indianapolis area were observed for one day to record how much media they used. A total of 5,000 man hours were spent doing observations, Popovich said. Each observer was trained on how to use the data collection smart keyboards in-house software to record data every 15 seconds. The research was broken down by where each medium was used, age groups, personality style, civic engagement, uses and gratification.
The study shows 18-24 year olds spend less time online than any other age group besides people 65 years old and older, according to the Middletown Media Studies presentation. Not all 18-24 year olds are all college kids and have easy access to computers, Papper said.
Computers are the second-most daily-used medium. The older people get, the more they use television and newspapers, according to the study.
"Television remains the 800-pound media gorilla," Papper said.
TV is the most frequently used in the home, radio in the car, and computers at work. Almost 100 percent of the observers multi-task, using two or more media, 30 percent of the day, Papper said.
"Computers...have trained us how to do more than one thing at a time," he said.
After the presentation, a three-person panel addressed questions and comments about the story.
The panel included Bill Moult, a founding partner of Sequent Partners in New York, an industry fellow for Center for Media Design, and former president of the Marketing Sciences Institute. Roger Lavery, dean of the College of Communication Information and Media at Ball State, and Bloxham were the other panelists.
One of the topics they discussed was changes that will improve the next studies.
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