There have been many articles, tweets and posts claiming the death of print such as Michael Rosenblum's Guardian piece below written after the cessation of the print version of Newsweek magazine. Digital mass extinction?
We say not quite yet :)
Findings from a national study of 1202 Canadian readers (taken online so they are more inclined to be biased towards the digital) finds a surprising number like their reading, especially for pleasure, to be in the form of print.
Here is a sample of the findings, free to use in whole or part -- as long as the source is acknowledged. Cheers.
Dufferin Research Canadian Reading Report
In an increasing D-I-Y research world we are D-I-F-Y (do-it-for-you) kind of people.
And we D-I-R (do-it-right) because it's hard to un-do a bad business decision in today's world.
There is a disturbing trend in our industry and among many client companies to mistake the mining of big data (including web based transactions of any kind) by automated processed as valid “research” without question. It can be, but is not unconditionally so.
It is data collection, and like ALL data collection, what is being collected requires validation and this seems to be sorely missing in many processes today.
I can understand this; much of this is due to necessity. There is so much data, that it cannot be managed by people, only by machines. We require filters to sift through the morass of minutiae that is growing by the second online. But filters are crude tools. The underlying assumption in a lot of mining data (the use of filters notwithstanding) is that all data mined is equally valid because it exists.
Being trained as a historian, this makes me cringe. Everyone knows (or should know) the web contains a huge amount of erroneous data, lies, and misinformation. There is no filter for bullshit and crap.
These data sources are indeed literally “facts” (in that they exist & are verifiable in their existence) but more properly I would say they are digital artifacts, and these artifacts are being gathered and analyzed in dashboards everywhere. Existence does not equal either truth or even valid opinions.
We in the research & analysis business need to be at the forefront of discerning what digital artifacts are valid source materials for analysis for market and social research projects. It's not an easy job. I think there will always be need for some human interaction with data in order to make sense of it to other humans (and clients still fall into that category).
I love the use of the latest technologies in my job, but as a means to an end, not as an end in itself.
And do not believe for a moment in the death of survey research just because we can “listen” instead of “ask”. It is easier to filter respondents than it is to filter terabytes of data. And we don’t have to sift through a morass of data that has nothing to do with the research process just to get to that which does.
A questionnaire is focused whereas listening to the generic “conversations” online is like gathering opinion data on the service in a restaurant by eavesdropping on conversations among diners. Many people are not talking about the food.
One of the key take-aways from the Carbon Economy Summit in Toronto on June 6th was talk by Dr Bair Feltmate of the University of Waterloo where he declared that debating whether climate change was real was a mute point. Actions to reduce carbon in the atmosphere can be mitigated, and perhaps we can delay the severity of the effects, but it's a done deal. Climate change is here, we can slow it down, maybe, but the point where it could be stopped is past. It was refreshing to here as this has been my opinion for quite some time.
So we need to deal with adaptation. And while Dr Feltmate didn't put it this way my sense was that if you live in low lying areas, you'd better start building your dykes now if you want to avoid swimming down main street later. For more details about the speakers and the conference content see http://www.carboneconomysummit.ca .
Ana Pavlovic of Dufferin Research (our resident expert in the science of climate chnage) will also be attending the WaterSummit http://www.watersummit.ca in Calgary on June 28th.
In addition to the science about Climate Change, there is also the important business of doing the public opinion research necessary to develop the polices needed by governments and corporations to get on with the business of adapting to climate change and mitigating the effects as best we can. And of course this is what we do.
Words fail me.
This is not what the authors call an "example of buzz tracking and analysis", this is complete nonsense.
