According to two research question, the paper will be split into two independent chapters- Study 1 (research question1) and Study 2 (research question 2), both chapter includes methodology, result and discussion. As an exploratory research, this paper adopts a qualitative research methodology under an interpretive paradigm to investigate the impact of the campaign on the industrial and societal level in China. (Smoothen the paragraph) Study 1 aims to find out the impact of SK-II Marriage Market Takeover campaign on the industrial level in China. In order to answer this research question, the researcher decided to use in-depth semi-structured interview. The methodology, result, discussion will be presented in this chapter. (Smoothen the paragraph) Methodology Justification of the chosen paradigm The intent of the research is to understand whether the campaign has influenced the communication industry in China. The interpretive paradigm was deemed the most suitable for the research due to its potential to generate new understandings of an emerging social phenomenon in the social science arena, such as the societal change to be investigated in this research. (Paraphrase the paragraph) Qualitative research was chosen as a suitable approach for the research since it is used to study an occurrence within the environment in which it naturally occurs and supported by social meaning from the individuals who were subjected to the occurrence (Denzin and Lincoln, 1994: 2). Among all the qualitative technique, the researcher selected in-depth interviewing because it allows researchers to elicit information in order to achieve a holistic understanding of the interviewee’s point of view or situation; it can also be used to explore interesting areas for further investigation. (Paraphrase) Data Collection This paper relies on primary data collected from in-depth interviews with Chinese professionals in mass communication industry. The author interviewed 15 professionals in China’s mass communication industry and academia. All but three of the interviews lasted for at least 1.5 hour, and all interviews were recorded and transcribed. These interviewees used to work or are working in mass media, associations, academia, agencies, and PR, advertisement units of organizations. (Smoothen) Sampling/ Recruitment of Respondents The in-depth interviews were conducted using the purposive sampling technique. Purposeful sampling is a technique used for the identification and selection of informationrich cases for the most effective use of limited resources (Patton, 2002). This involves identifying and selecting professionals who have communication background that are especially knowledgeable with the impact of the SK-II Marriage Market Takeover campaign. (Paraphrase) Among the 15 participants, 4 were recruited through acquaintances in China, 11 of them were recruited from the social media platform Weibo. For the former technique, I began by asking friends, and ex-coworkers to recommend interview candidates in China. For the latter method, contact to experts was initiated with a personalized Weibo letter request for a recorded, anonymous phone interview with a short description of the research purpose and central phenomenon attached. (Paraphrase) The researcher sent Weibo’s letters to 78 influencers and bloggers who have the background in the field of communication inquiring about their willingness to participate in research. For those participants with verified identities on Weibo, many of whom have large number of followers and thus with an opinion leader status. (Paraphrase) All the interviewees were, or are, employed in academia, journalism, information technology, public relations agency and advisement consulting firms. Their job status ranging from chief director, senior-level practitioners to junior employee of the organization. All of the professionals had a college or higher degree, except two who had an associate’s degree. Half had a master’s or doctoral degree, and close to one third had overseas education or work experience. Most of the professionals were employed at the time of their interview. Participant’s information regarding their professional experience and demographics are shown in the Table. (Smoothen) Research Design A semi-structured anonymous interview design with open-ended questions was deemed most appropriate. This choice was based on the following considerations: (1) it gives the participants ample time and scope to express their diverse views (Nohl 2009). (2) Results obtained can be compared among each other since all participants are required to express their views about the same general themes (Nohl 2009). (3) it allow not only for assessing the participants' opinions, statements and convictions, they also allow to elicit narratives about their personal experiences (Nohl 2009). (4) Open-ended questions allow the participants to freely voice their experiences and minimize the influence of the researcher's attitudes and previous findings (Creswell 2005). (Paraphrase) In order to learn the subject’s perspectives, the author posed open-ended questions about their current lives, past relationships, and expectations for their futures, and allowed conversation to flow. As shown in the Table, the semi-structured interview included six sections: 1) background information, (2) personal goal, (3) relationship and marriage, (4) perception toward female, (5) the industrial impact of the Marriage Market Takeover campaign, and (6) an open-ended question regarding participants’ explanation of the discourse change of the ‘leftover women’. Because each informant’s perspective varied, follow-up questions varied. (Smoothen) Data Analysis Procedure All interviews were conducted and transcribed in Chinese. The researcher followed the grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2008; Strauss & Corbin, 1990) to explore coding categories and major themes. In the coding process, the researcher allowed new features to emerge and reconceptualize and redirect the study accordingly. Specially, the researcher read the interview transcripts multiple times, coding them first to generate initial categories such as “dabating,” “spark more campaign,” and “educating.” Regarding of the research question which aims to find out industrial impact, on the basis of the coding, several themes emerged. I then went back to the data to reexamine these themes, and I consulted new literature related to these themes. (Paraphrase) Limitations of the Research While phone interviews allow for a great flexibility in scheduling the different conversations, a drawback of this technique is that the researcher cannot get in direct contact with the participants. Creswell noted that this can cause “limited communication that may affect the researcher's ability to understand the interviewee's perceptions of the phenomenon” (Creswell 2005:216). In order to minimize the costs and facilitate the recording of the conversations, the researcher used 'Voice over IP' (VoIP) technologies for the interviews. The quality of the recorded Inteconversations was generally good, only in one instance did minor connection issues arise which slightly exacerbated the transcription process but did not adversely affect the quality of the transcribed data. (Paraphrase) Validity, objectivity and reliability of the research design. Although it is argued that qualitative research lacks validity and reliability, researchers follow the techniques that would help maintaining the validity and reliability of interviewing. These include: avoiding asking leading questions, taking notes not just depending on tape recorders, conducting a pilot interview; andgiving the interviewee a chance to sum up and clarify the points they have made. (Paraphrase) According to two research question, the paper will be split into two independent chapters- Study 1 (research question1) and Study 2 (research question 2), both chapter includes methodology, result and discussion. As an exploratory research, this paper adopts a qualitative research methodology under an interpretive paradigm to investigate the impact of the campaign on the industrial and societal level in China. (Smoothen the paragraph) Study 1 aims to find out the impact of SK-II Marriage Market Takeover campaign on the industrial level in China. In order to answer this research question, the researcher decided to use in-depth semi-structured interview. The methodology, result, discussion will be presented in this chapter. (Smoothen the paragraph) Study1 Methodology Justification of the chosen paradigm The intent of the research is to understand whether the campaign has influenced the communication industry in China. The interpretive paradigm was deemed the most suitable for the research due to its potential to generate new understandings of an emerging social phenomenon in the social science arena, such as the societal change to be investigated in this research. (Paraphrase the paragraph) Qualitative research was chosen as a suitable approach for the research since it is used to study an occurrence within the environment in which it naturally occurs and supported by social meaning from the individuals who were subjected to the occurrence (Denzin and Lincoln, 1994: 2). Among all the qualitative technique, the researcher selected in-depth interviewing because it allows researchers to elicit information in order to achieve a holistic understanding of the interviewee’s point of view or situation; it can also be used to explore interesting areas for further investigation. (Paraphrase) Data Collection This paper relies on primary data collected from in-depth interviews with Chinese professionals in mass communication industry. The author interviewed 15 professionals in China’s mass communication industry and academia. All but three of the interviews lasted for at least 1.5 hour, and all interviews were recorded and transcribed. These interviewees used to work or are working in mass media, associations, academia, agencies, and PR, advertisement units of organizations. (Smoothen) Sampling/ Recruitment of Respondents The in-depth interviews were conducted using the purposive sampling technique. Purposeful sampling is a technique used for the identification and selection of informationrich cases for the most effective use of limited resources (Patton, 2002). This involves identifying and selecting professionals who have communication background that are especially knowledgeable with the impact of the SK-II Marriage Market Takeover campaign. (Paraphrase) Among the 15 participants, 4 were recruited through acquaintances in China, 11 of them were recruited from the social media platform Weibo. For the former technique, I began by asking friends, and ex-coworkers to recommend interview candidates in China. For the latter method, contact to experts was initiated with a personalized Weibo letter request for a recorded, anonymous phone interview with a short description of the research purpose and central phenomenon attached. (Paraphrase) The researcher sent Weibo’s letters to 78 influencers and bloggers who have the background in the field of communication inquiring about their willingness to participate in research. For those participants with verified identities on Weibo, many of whom have large number of followers and thus with an opinion leader status. (Paraphrase) All the interviewees were, or are, employed in academia, journalism, information technology, public relations agency and advisement consulting firms. Their job status ranging from chief director, senior-level practitioners to junior employee of the organization. All of the professionals had a college or higher degree, except two who had an associate’s degree. Half had a master’s or doctoral degree, and close to one third had overseas education or work experience. Most of the professionals were employed at the time of their interview. Participant’s information regarding their professional experience and demographics are shown in the Table. (Smoothen) Research Design A semi-structured anonymous interview design with open-ended questions was deemed most appropriate. This choice was based on the following considerations: (1) it gives the participants ample time and scope to express their diverse views (Nohl 2009). (2) Results obtained can be compared among each other since all participants are required to express their views about the same general themes (Nohl 2009). (3) it allow not only for assessing the participants' opinions, statements and convictions, they also allow to elicit narratives about their personal experiences (Nohl 2009). (4) Open-ended questions allow the participants to freely voice their experiences and minimize the influence of the researcher's attitudes and previous findings (Creswell 2005). (Paraphrase) In order to learn the subject’s perspectives, the author posed open-ended questions about their current lives, past relationships, and expectations for their futures, and allowed conversation to flow. As shown in the Table, the semi-structured interview included six sections: 1) background information, (2) personal goal, (3) relationship and marriage, (4) perception toward female, (5) the industrial impact of the Marriage Market Takeover campaign, and (6) an open-ended question regarding participants’ explanation of the discourse change of the ‘leftover women’. Because each informant’s perspective varied, follow-up questions varied. (Smoothen) Data Analysis Procedure All interviews were conducted and transcribed in Chinese. The researcher followed the grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2008; Strauss & Corbin, 1990) to explore coding categories and major themes. In the coding process, the researcher allowed new features to emerge and reconceptualize and redirect the study accordingly. Specially, the researcher read the interview transcripts multiple times, coding them first to generate initial categories such as “dabating,” “spark more campaign,” and “educating.” Regarding of the research question which aims to find out industrial impact, on the basis of the coding, several themes emerged. I then went back to the data to reexamine these themes, and I consulted new literature related to these themes. (Paraphrase) Limitations of the Research While phone interviews allow for a great flexibility in scheduling the different conversations, a drawback of this technique is that the researcher cannot get in direct contact with the participants. Creswell noted that this can cause “limited communication that may affect the researcher's ability to understand the interviewee's perceptions of the phenomenon” (Creswell 2005:216). In order to minimize the costs and facilitate the recording of the conversations, the researcher used 'Voice over IP' (VoIP) technologies for the interviews. The quality of the recorded Inteconversations was generally good, only in one instance did minor connection issues arise which slightly exacerbated the transcription process but did not adversely affect the quality of the transcribed data. (Paraphrase) Validity, objectivity and reliability of the research design. Although it is argued that qualitative research lacks validity and reliability, researchers follow the techniques that would help maintaining the validity and reliability of interviewing. These include: avoiding asking leading questions, taking notes not just depending on tape recorders, conducting a pilot interview; andgiving the interviewee a chance to sum up and clarify the points they have made. (Paraphrase) Study 2 aims to identify the linguistic patterns of ‘leftover women’ in Chinese social media platform, and explore whether such patterns have changed after the campaign. Furthermore, it attempts to explain how these patterns and changes are related to their wider patterns of sociocultural contexts. The methodology, result, discussion will be presented in this chapter. . (Smoothen the paragraph) Study 2 Methodology Justification of using discourse analysis as the Qualitative Technique From the social constructivism perspective, changes in language use are often linked to wide social and cultural process, and hence have come to appreciate the importance of using language analysis as a method for studying social change (Fairclough, 1992). Critical discourse analysis (CDA) conceptualizes languages as a form of social behavior & social practice, and it attempts to make human beings aware of the reciprocal influences of language and social structure of which they are normally unaware. (Paraphrase the paragraph) When it comes to the investigation of the ‘sheng-nu (leftover women)’ discourse, it is worth noticing that discourse analysis may be more suitable than content analysis. Because when judging whether a text contains negative stigmatization toward ‘leftover women’, it is difficult to judge solely by the words that appear. Because the stigmatization toward ‘leftover women’ are often presented in the form of humor such as popular joke which uses subtle language in a manner that makes offering objections difficult. (Smoothen the paragraph) Therefore, a fix coding scheme as content analysis uses may not be suitable for the study. On the other hands, discourse analysis usually works with general research questions aiming to grasp implicit meanings and the very nature and characteristics of the social phenomenon analyzed. In this condition, the ‘codes’, in a certain sense, emerged in the course of the analysis, not stem from a pre-fixed coding scheme. This very nature of the analysis is that it allows the main focuses and topics emerge in the process. (Paraphrase) Data Collection Sina Weibo In order to explore how the public opinion toward ‘leftover women’, which is reflected in the social media platform, changes before and after the campaign, the researcher selected the Chinese biggest social media platform ‘Sina Weibo’, as the source of data collection. In the current literature, Weibo has a central place in producing public opinions on a variety of topics related to public issues in China (e.g. Feng & Yuan, 2015). It has been viewed as a strategic tool in social movements, especially for the empowerment of grassroots advocacy (Huang & Sun, 2014; Liu, 2015). Overall, Weibo’s significance has been connected to ‘enlightenment’ and ‘progress’ of China, as a recorder of the social changes that took place in Chinese society. (Paraphrase) Sampling Since the research question aims to find out the differences of ‘sheng-nu (leftover women)’ discourse before and after the campaign, the researcher uses diachronic analysis which examine the discourse at different sections of the time and compares them. By comparing these synchronic cuts, the analysis provides insights into the changes and continuities of discourse strands over time. (Smoothen) The SK-II Marriage Market Takeover campaign was launched in April, 2016, the researcher’s initial though was to analyze the contents which were posted one year before and after the campaign. However, concerning that the change of the leftover women discourse may be a continuous process, the researcher selected ‘three years’ before and ‘one year’ after the campaign to see the change. (Smoothen) In order to have the most abundant information which the researcher is able to analyze. The author calculated the total posts from each month, each week to each day. Since the total post number of week and month are both too huge to measure, the researcher eventually chooses the day with highest posts on average from 2013 to 2017, and that is the sixth day of the Lunar New Year. (Smoothen) Research Design Sina Weibo allows researchers to retrieve messages posted during a specified period through keyword searching. With ‘leftover women’ as the keyword, the researcher retrieved all the posts of the sixth day of the Lunar New Year from 2013 to 2017. In the process, the author considers a single Weibo post (original or reposted the first time I captured it) as the starting point of the analysis. The analysis of texts includes the following types of Weibo posts: (1) Official speeches of certain group (not government), (2) User-generated contents, (3) User reposted of other contents. The researcher printed out all the content of the Weibo and followed inductive coding techniques described in Strauss and Corbin (1990). Documents were reviewed line by line. (Smoothen) Data Analysis Procedure The researcher printed out all the content of the Weibo and followed inductive coding techniques described in Strauss and Corbin (1990). First, posts were reviewed line by line, notes are taken on ideas and topic they include. Second, the researcher defines a small number of general codes and tracks large themes. Third, larger themes was divided into subtopics, sub-themes. Patterns and unique themes were used to answer the research questions. Next, the researcher read every post again and categories the data. At last, the researcher calculates and identify the trend that could be understood holistically. (Paraphrase) Limitations of the Research When categorizing the code, some contents are difficult to categorize since it uses subtle language, images, metaphors or symbols that may contain multiple layers of meaning (Neuman, 2006: 326). The researcher has to work back and forth between the text, coded categories and their subcategories and search deductively for relationships between them. Even though the researcher has carefully teased out the subtle and various meanings of words, coupled with an informed understanding of the broader structures within the data, some contents may be categorized to different group by other researcher since meaning is never fixed and everything is always open to interpretation and negotiation. (Paraphrase) Validity, objectivity and reliability of the research design. Despite the fact that reliability and validity are measurements of objectivity, which is a central research issue in quantitative research. In qualitative research, however, subjectivity is the more salient research issue. On the whole, qualitative researchers appreciate that: (Paraphrase) Research is not a wholly objective activity carried out by detached scientists. It is . . . a social activity powerfully affected by the researcher’s own motivations and values. It also takes place within a broader social context, within which politics and power relations influence what research is under- taken, how it is carried out, and whether and how it is reported and acted upon.(Blaxter et al. 1996: 15) In this condition, objectivity and neutrality, then, are impossible to achieve. (Paraphrase) However, according to Khoo‐Lattimore (2012), the qualitative research can increase validity through ‘theory-based generalization’ (p.92), therefore, the researcher tried to related the findings of the study to the literature in order to arrive the theoretical propositions or concepts. In term of reliability, since in qualitative inquiry, the researcher itself is the main research instrument, the research can never be wholly consistent and replicable. However, one way to achieve some measure of reliability, the researcher has set up an audit trail which allows other researchers to follow the same process as you have done. (Paraphrase)
Purchase answer to see full attachment