Search results

The purpose of this paper is to establish the place of the printed book in the era of technological advancement with the assumption that the print media is facing imminent death in the face of readily available and convenient online information. Also the paper aims to assess how the development of new technologies have affected the production, circulation and readership of the printed book, especially among the young generation.

Explanatory study was used with closed-ended approach to collect data from 50 students of the Technical University of Kenya and 5 key informant interviews with selected book publishers in Nairobi. The uses and gratification theory was used to explore the knowledge-seeking behavior among the respondents.

Findings showed that more than 80% of the respondents preferred the internet to the printed book, which, according to them, has no future in the face of technological advancement. Book publishers, on the other hand, felt that the printed book has a bright future among specific audiences who are committed to it, and especially those in the rural areas who have no access to the internet. While they agreed that the internet has posed a major challenge to the sales and readership of the printed book significantly, it is helping in marketing the printed book as opposed to killing it. New bookshops in Nairobi and modern libraries in high schools, tertiary institutions and universities demonstrate that the printed book is not dying soon.

The researcher experienced challenges in data collection as the respondents were busy preparing for final examinations and hence many of them were not willing to spare time to fill the questionnaire. To solve this, the researcher had to spend more time to collect data as opposed to if the students were free and ready to participate in the study without any pressure.

The findings can be used as a basis for further research to widen the scope that can help bring a wider perspective to the topic. The results can also inform policy guidelines on the topic and also contribute to the body of knowledge.

The topic touches on social phenomena that are affecting a number of young people and their information-seeking habits in the era of digital revolution. The way the young generation seek and use information should be of interest not only to academic staff but also to policymakers.

The paper is original based on primary data that was collected by the researcher from the respondents. It is backed by secondary data to bridge the gap between theory and practice.

For several hundreds of years printing has been the only effective channel for spreading mass communication. During the 1900s several new media channels have been invented and, with the addition of the Internet, this has both changed the way media is consumed and has increased the competition between different channels. This qualitative case study of 37 firms reports on how relationships are used in the printing industry to relieve some of the impact of the competitive forces from new, and easily accessible, media as a means for marketing and, furthermore, on the impact on the printing industry as an industry. The results from the case study show that there are both internal and external effects of forming relationships and those vertical, as well as horizontal, relationships are of great importance to create a sustainable competitive situation for the printing industry. Relationships are used to increase both the strategic flexibility of the firm and the flexibility of the print media channel. Furthermore, the study illustrates that the printing industry, and print as a medium of communication, is drifting gradually away from the actual customer due to the new paradigm of value creation.

COVID-19 affected all global activities. The print media industry was one of the affected fields. This research investigates the challenges and opportunities that COVID-19 brought to the Ethiopian newspapers. Political Economy of Media theory is used to analyse data obtained from documents and in-depth interviews with managers of two leading media houses; the government-owned Ethiopian Press Agency (EPA) and the private Capital newspaper. The findings show that print media faced two key challenges. First, their circulation decreased due to the COVID-19 as a result of the economic recession. This was compounded by the second challenge, based on the fact that not only don’t these newspapers own printers, they also lack a established formal distribution infrastructure. As a result, they still had to pay highly for printing while selling copies at a reduced price. However, media hybridisation, innovative projects, and sponsored pages helped the newspapers stay on the market. This study recommends that newspaper publishers run their printing machines, expand the media technology, change the attitude of print journalists, and capacitate them to utilise media hybridisation as important solutions.

This study aims to explore consumers’ motivations in the adoption of either print or digital forms of media, given the fluctuation of trends and attitudes in magazine consumption in the USA. This paper utilizes cognitive lock-in and the power law of practice to further the understanding of digital adoption through an interdisciplinary lens.

In this study, initially, five focus group sessions, including 53 qualifying non-student participants randomly placed into groups of 10 or 11, were held. Next, a 2 × 2 between-subjects quasi-experiment, using 163 undergraduate students at a large public university, was conducted.

The findings show that although the digital medium is considered less expensive, more convenient and more environmentally friendly, the print medium is regarded as more familiar, personal and visual. Further, whether the media type is a book or a magazine, consumers report higher perceived value, hedonic value and attitude toward print versus digital media.

The potential to digitally attract and lock-in consumers in the media industry has immense implications. Individuals consume media because of fashion marketing, personal space and advertisements, among other reasons.

This paper contributes to existing research by uncovering qualitative and quantitative insights into media consumption through a multilayered analysis of focus group participants and a quantitative experiment. The findings indicate that both the power law of practice theory and cognitive lock-in are plausible explanations for the choice of print over digital media format.

This paper aimed to investigate reading format preference of undergraduate students with regard to various categories of information sources and use of social media information sources for academic and non-academic activities.

An exhaustive literature review was carried out in a very well organised way using total 56 publications which include 48 research papers, four conference papers, two books and two reports, which were selected for analysis on the basis of prescribed data schema and adopting the inclusion and exclusion criteria matching with the research objectives of the study.

Undergraduate students preferred text books in print format for passing the exams, and use of search engines and Internet sites were rated as the most crucial source for the academic information. In particular, Wikipedia, YouTube and Blogs were the most frequently used social media information sources by undergraduate students for their academic activities. However, Facebook and Twitter were most prominently used for social interaction.

The population of the study was restricted to the homogenous group of users, i.e. undergraduate students to examine their choices and preferences for their academic and non-academic activities. Further research studies may be conducted covering the more diverse and heterogeneous user group of postgraduate students and research scholars of different disciplines.

Generally, many previous research studies depicted users' preference for print and electronic media format without paying special attention on the usage of a variety of information sources by user groups. However, the present study is a value addition to the existing literature which emphasised the use of various categories of information sources, particularly by undergraduate students in print and digital format for different purposes in the digital environment. A major shift from the use of print media to digital media to social media information sources by undergraduate students for their academic and non-academic activities.

This paper aims to examine whether advertisers attempt to engage consumers with online information presented in print advertisements by investigating whether they respond to consumers’ motives for using advertisements and whether these engagement practices have improved over time. By creating connections among different advertising channels, marketers strive to be more effective in building brand equity, online traffic and sales.

The Uses and Gratification theory is utilized as the framework to content analyze the content and presentation of web references in 2,613 advertisements from 2008 and 2,159 advertisements from 2012. Chi-square analysis is used to compare the content of web references in both time periods.

Even though past literature suggests that consumers use media and advertising to satisfy a variety of informational, personal identity, social and entertainment needs, advertisers respond with mostly ineffective and generic informational web references that fail to address those needs.

The study suggests that advertisers may have difficulty adopting the new advertising paradigm which identifies customers as active respondents of advertising. Web references analyzed in this study do not address consumers’ motives for advertisement use.

Advertisers have not been effectively utilizing cross-promotion when it comes to directing traffic from print advertisements to Web sites. More attention and resources should be given to cross-promotion to ensure effective coordination between media types.

This study questions advertisers’ current approach toward cross-promotion. Findings help advertisers evaluate and develop better practices to encourage consumer engagement with web references placed in print advertisements to drive traffic to online stores.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of centrifugal disk finishing (CDF) technique on the surface and subsurface characteristics of the fused deposited modeling (FDM) parts in both theoretical and experimental aspects. From theoretical aspect, a novel theoretical model is developed as a function of layer deposition orientation, layer thickness, finishing working time, density ratio and hardness ratio to estimate the surface roughness profile of FDM part at different finishing conditions and finishing time intervals. Meanwhile, from the experimental aspect, an experimental campaign was performed under different mechanical and mechanical-chemical finishing conditions to verify the theoretical model and also assess the surface and subsurface characteristics of the polished parts.

The theoretical model commences with an approximation of surface profile of the FDM part through a sequence of parabola arcs, continues with the calculation of reference line and machined surface profile and leads to a formulation of surface roughness of as-printed and polished surface. In the experimental section, the FDM parts are polished under dry, pure water, 25% and 50% volumetric aqueous acetone solutions finishing conditions through CDF technique.

The comparison between experimental and theoretical results reveals 9% mean absolute error between theoretical and experimental results. Meanwhile, Rq reduction percentage of polished parts under dry, pure water, 25% and 50% aqueous acetone solutions are 66.1%, 54.5%, 56.9% and 67.2%, respectively. The scanning electron microscopy results reveal severe layer damage in dry finishing condition, while the application of 50% aqueous acetone as a polishing solution completely eliminates layer damage. Another promising finding was sticky material phenomenon on the surface of polished part under 25% finishing condition. The Shore hardness test illustrates that the surface hardness improvement of the polished parts under dry, pure water, 25% and 50% aqueous acetone solutions finishing conditions are 8.4%, 2.25%, 4.36% and 10.8%, respectively. The results also revealed that the dimension variation of polished parts under dry, pure water, 25% and 50% aqueous acetone solutions are 0.634%, 0.525%, 0.545% and 0.608%, respectively. The edge profile radius of the as-printed part is 134 µm, while the edge profiles radius of the polished parts under dry, pure water, 25% aqueous acetone solution and 50% aqueous acetone solution are 785.5 µm, 545.5 µm, 623.5 µm and 721.5 µm, respectively, at the polishing time of 720 min.

This paper fulfills an identified need to study the benefits of the mechanical-chemical polishing technique in comparison to mechanical and chemical polishing strategy of the FDM parts for the first time. Beside the experimental campaign, the novel analytical formulation of surface roughness as a function of mechanical properties of abrasive media and FDM part and finishing specifications provides a valuable insight in the case of material-removal processes.

News research scholars define immediacy as constant news updating, whereas scholars in other fields conceptualize it more broadly as meaning closeness. The present study explicates the concept of immediacy and proposes a multidimensional notion of news immediacy that reflects physical and psychological closeness to the news.

A scale for measuring multifaceted immediacy was developed and tested in a between-subjects design experiment. Four dimensions were extracted from the analysis: transportation, involvement, vividness and timeliness.

The results reveal greater immediacy in online than print news contexts. Involvement is key to the experience of immediacy in both contexts; yet the feeling of being transported to the places of the news events was stronger among online than print news users. The latter relied more on vividness of the news presentation to attain closeness to the news.

Implications of the study were discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to study how young vocational school students in Finland frame themselves and their participation in society and whether they are seen in various media. The explorative research, with n = 213 vocational school and prepatory VALMA students as co-researchers, tells us that young vocational school students use value framing to create understandings of themselves as participants in society and in media. The purpose is this to present the breadth of their thinking and to draw conclusions from the empirical data produced solely by the co-researchers.

Explorative multidisciplinary research was done as co-research with n = 213 vocational school students in Finland. Research includes theoretical background and focuses on empirical qualitative data to further illustrate the explorative nature and results of the study.

The findings of the explorative co-research tell us that young vocational school students use value framing to create understandings of themselves as participants in society and in media. Co-researchers view themselves as missing in traditional media but find freedom on social media. Content from various media is viewed as reliable and trustworthy but also as problematic propaganda based on personal value framing. The relationship with traditional print media is strained because young people feel that media has othered them and continues to frame them negatively. While they look for that entertaining content across the media spectrum, bullying is an ever-present concern.

This study focused only on vocational school students in Finland. A broader sample of young people, or of minorities, could produce profound results on media literacy, relationships and power relations in the society. Also, framings of the various international media would provide content for analysis. More profound analysis of the data shall be done in the next phase of the research.

Study time was limited. More in-depth study will follow. Implications to future research, media consumption and framing should be done with a larger group of researchers and youth.

Social implications towards framing of youth in various media and the transfer of these framing as knowledge in larger society. This includes notions of power of various actors in media and in society at large.

Multidisciplinary explorative co-research on the topic is largely missing from academia. Additionally, the voices of those in the fringes of society is muted, whilst also those youth studying the vocational schools.

The paper aims to show which media are accepted by students in higher education and which are not. It explains how library media services and other text and information media are related to each other and what part they play in the whole media and learning environment. It examines which library services are most important to students and on which areas university libraries should focus when developing strategies for the future.

Two student surveys and one teacher survey were carried out at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in 2009 and 2011. They measured the acceptance of 45 media services by using a fully standardized print questionnaire. Possible influence factors were also evaluated.

The acceptance of electronic text media amongst students is still growing, while acceptance of print media is decreasing. The use of external text‐related services is growing, while the use of the internal library catalogue is declining. A certain student user type who prefers text media seems of high interest.

The paper suggests that libraries should focus on the different types of electronic text in their strategy and should refrain from implementing media services with a low rate acceptance, for example wikis, Twitter or weblogs.

The research carried out here draws a comprehensive picture of how students use media in their studies and how they accept the different kinds of media services compared to each other. The survey reveals hidden structures and classifies media and media users into certain types.