University professors investigate media outlets used by students

In an effort to save print journalism, professors from the Telecommunications department are conducting a study to monitor media usage.

"The general concern for media scholars is the future of journalism," said Gi Woong Yun, assistant professor of communications. "The reality is people are getting their information from the Web, from Facebook and CNN.com instead of the Toledo Blade, New York Times or The Detroit News."

Communication professors are conducting a study to find where college students gather their information and through which mediums.

Yun said the Netbook Study will require 10 volunteers who are given laptops with software that will monitor and record their activity. The home page of every computer will be set to an online newspaper or a search engine. Participants will be able to keep the laptops for the three months and then will be required to give them back at the end of the study.

"The study is trying to figure out how much students read the online papers, how much time they spend on online news and how much they use social networks," said graduate student Xiaoqun Zhang.

"Young people don't like to read the paper both online and off-line," said Louisa Ha, chair of the department of telecommunications. "Online reading is a little better, but still not good ... people think they use a lot of online papers, but no."

To maintain student privacy, Yun said participants will be given consent forms to complete. He said everything participants need to know is outlined in the consent forms. Once they've been turned in, their names will be deleted from the records and they will only be identified by their identification numbers. None of the information can be linked to who students are.

Yun said the study will start sometime in May with summer participants and then again in the fall.

The basic question the researchers said they hope to answer with this study is how to make journalism survive and prosper.

"We need journalism to keep a healthy society ... you have to read the newspaper. It's public knowledge," Yun said.

In the future, Yun said he hopes this study can acquire more funding to not only conduct the study with college students but to expand it to the general public as well.