Popular Media vs. Scientific Journal

Popular Media vs. Scientific Journal -- Multitasking research

Popular Media Account and Primary Source Account: A Comparison of Research Reporting

For any member of the academe, it is inevitable that we stumble upon sources that are in the realm of what we call popular media. Some of our research works, on the other hand, require us to use primary or first-hand accounts which can be found mostly in the form of journal articles published by institutionalized academic organization and prestigious bodies alike. In some (if not most) cases, findings from one source are corroborated by the findings of the other kind of media, but how were these findings presented? Are there similarities and/or differences by which results of studies were shown?

The main purpose of this article is to look into a popular account of a piece of psychological research and a primary source account of that research so as to be able to come up with a comparison of how research findings were presented in these two media. A brief discussion about research reporting shall first be presented in order to lay the fundamental framework by which this discussion shall revolve. On to the main objective, a short description of the method and sources used shall be presented to be followed by the observations gathered from the comparison of research reporting in the domain of popular media and primary source media.

I. Method

The topic area that I have chosen for this study is multitasking. For the primary source media, I examined the study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences entitled "Cognitive control in media multitaskers." This article was authored by Eyal Ophir, Clifford Nass, and Anthony D. Wagner. It was published on July 20, 2009.

This same empirical study was reported in the Stanford University website entitled "Multitasking works? Not really, Stanford study show." The article was written by Adam Gorlick and Jack Hubbard dated August 24, 2009.

Basically, the results of this empirical study is that those who are engaged in media multitasking are more likely to be interfered by what is known as irrelevant information stimuli because the brains of multitaskers have reduced ability in filtering out these irrelevant stimuli (Ophir, Nass, and Wagner, 2009, p.15583).

II. Research Reporting

Before going any further, I believe it is fitting to first provide a description of what research reporting actually is. According to Nachmias & Nachmias (1996, p.556), "research reports aim at answering five basic questions, "who," "what," where," "when," and "how." Underlying these is the sixth question, "why." That is, the purpose of a research report is to relay findings that are empirically and logically related to some conception of causation, to a theory."

As such, we will be looking at how theses six basic questions being addressed by a research report are presented in both popular media and primary psychological research source. We also aim to look at the reports by the kind of language used as well as the structure it followed.

III. General Findings: "Multitasking" on Popular Media Account vs. Primary Psychological Research Account

On Answering the Six Basic Questions in Research

The most of the basic questions in research that I have just recently mentioned were both addressed by both media representations. We gathered from both that recent findings of (when) the experiments (how) conducted among university students who are heavy and light multitaskers (who). Results showed that light multitaskers performed better on the series of experiments that require concentration and ability to switch from one task to another (what). Results suggest that heavy multitaskers underperformed because their brains are unable to filter out irrelevant stimuli (why). The where question or the research coverage was addressed by the psychological research account but was already left out by the popular media article. The answers to most of the basic questions are already covered by the abstract of the psychological research which can be found in the first page. As such, in a glance, you can have access to the gist of information gathered by this empirical work. On the other hand, the answers to these basic research questions are gradually unraveled as you read along the popular media article.

On the Structure

The primary source article follows the usual format of a research report. It has an abstract on the first page, an introduction, clear and detailed objectives, narration of the results and discussion. One can also read about how the entire study was carried out via the materials and methods portion. The popular media source, on the other hand, follows the usual featured article format. The first sentence usually attempts to catch your interest and followed by the introduction of the research. You cannot expect detailed narrations of how the research was done. It focused more on the findings of the research.

While the primary source provides a detailed discussion of the findings, the popular media settled for a secondary interview with one of the authors of the study.

It can also be observed that the primary psychological research is lengthy while the popular media can be read in just a few minutes.

On Language

The primary psychological account is more sophisticated that the popular media article. It can be seen in how scholastic the approach of the former was -- statistical language was also used in several parts of the journal article whereas popular media article employs a down-to-earth, related language.