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2001:11 11th September. International On-line Communication Research |
Hynek Jeřábek, Eva Veisová |
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This working paper presents the initial results of a unique international on-line research conducted on attitudes and communications behaviour in the hours after the attack on
11th September. First reactions, the emotions of people, and models of communication be-haviour were the most important problems in our research. The most important result was the surprising discovery about the continuing importance of interpersonal communication in our group of 'Internet people': 99% of all respondents discussed these events with other people, friends and relatives; 90% of them for one hour or more and 66% of the total sam-ple continued for the rest of the day. Data collection was initiated two days after the attacks and was conducted in three languages (Czech, English and German). A total of 2578 valid, completed questionnaires were collected, the majority of them in the first week after the attack. Most of our respondents were Czechs (2090), but we also received 488 completed questionnaires from people from around the world. The sample is made up of 59% males and 41% females. Our respondents are young, highly educated people. Almost all of them use the computer for communication (95%). We are introducing the question of the meth-odology of on-line research. Repeated answers from different sub-populations and some theoretically anticipated intercultural differences are of particular significance in our meth-odology.
Summary
This international on-line communication research emerged spontaneously on 11th Sep-tember 11, 2001 in reaction to the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. The re-search managed to gather data from more than two and a half thousand respondents from the Czech Republic and throughout the world. Its aim was to trace by means of the Internet the immediate response to this exceptional event as evinced in the attitudes and behaviour of people from around the world.
The events of 11th September, 2001 had a significant, direct and immediate effect on people all over the world. The research aim was to determine what the first, immediate reactions of people to the events were and what kind of communication behaviour they displayed, and to do so before respondents could forget or could become influenced by mass media communication, which could affect their statements. In order to initiate the research quickly and to be able to obtain responses on an international level the research was planned from the outset as an open, on-line study. The Internet was selected as the medium for questioning as it enables a rapid collection of data on a large scale and facili-tates the immediate, ongoing and flexible processing of data. For us it also represented the only economically accessible approach for data collection. This survey method of ques-tioning, in which volunteers submit responses through the Internet, also raises considerably complex methodological questions. In what circumstances and by what means is it possible to formulate general observations on the basis of information gathered that relates to groups of sub-populations?
For the most part the respondents were Czechs (2090), but we also obtained 488 completed questionnaires from foreign nationals coming from many other countries in the world. The sample is made up of 59% males and 41% females. These respondents are young and have a higher than average level of education. Almost all of them (95%) use the computer for the purpose of communication.
When conducting an Internet survey of the population, if only a small section of the population has access to the Internet (in the Czech Republic at the time the survey was held this meant roughly 25 to 35% of the population) it is impossible to create a sample that would represent the entire population of the inhabitants of the state (or of several states). However, even in this type of research we are still striving to find a generalisable state-ment. It is necessary to discover, substantiate and defend - or even apply already used - methods for generalisable statements from data that is not representative. This methodol-ogy differs considerably from traditional methods of working with data drawn from public opinion research, where the main results represent percentage ratios of various opinions within a representative population.
The methodology founded on the use of data provided by the volunteers is based on:
1) recurring identical statements in mutually distinct sub-populations;
2) significantly differing statements of diverse sub-groups of respondents;
3) theoretically substantiated implications, wherein it is possible to logically derive an equally probable or even more probable relationship of a more general nature from ob-served partial relationships.
From the methodological viewpoint the research may be viewed as a groundbreaking project, which to a certain extent acts as an indicator of the future path electronic survey questioning could take.
The 11th September survey can be characterised as an open project, the ambition of which, in addition to assessing the results received thus far, is to make the data and the results broadly accessible and to share them with other research teams, to try to initiate further communication researches and develop the methodology of Internet research and the methodology of analysing data drawn from this type of research, and consequently to create an international platform for communication research.
Thanks to the rapid co-operation of the Network Media Service the survey was launched 13th September, 2001 in three languages - English, German and Czech - on the following Internet addresses: www.nms.cz/usa/en www.nms.cz/usa/cz www.nms.cz/usa/de The questionnaire contained 41 questions and was completed by the respondents them-selves on the Internet and submitted by them to the above Internet addresses. The data was collected on the server of the respective addresses. We presented the results, summarising the responses of 1 577 respondents from the first week after the events, on 21st September, 2001 at the international conference of the World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR) in Rome, and more extensive results stemming from the complete data of 2 578 respondents were summarised in our presentation at the regiona WAPOR conference in Warsaw on 11st November, 2001.
The most important outcome of the research was the discovery that interpersonal communication for our 'Internet population' continues to be important: 99% of respon-dents discussed the events with other people, friends and relatives; 90% of them for a pe-riod of one hour or longer and 66% of the entire sample for the rest of the day. People most frequently learned of these events from television. This point can also be confirmed in many other researches conducted throughout the world, and it applies also in the case of our special 'Internet population', though to a lesser degree. The second most frequent source of primary information on the attacks for our respondents was 'personal contact'.
The events of 11th September were most frequently described as 'terrorism' (84%), or as 'a tragedy' (71%). In their thoughts on the perpetrators of the attacks respondents most frequently indicated 'a well-organised group' (81%). The most frequent response to the question of the immediate emotional reaction to the event was 'I was shocked'. Women more often acknowledged fear as a reaction in the moment when they learned of the at-tacks than men did. There also emerged significant differences between sub-populations from particular continents. The closer, and thus more real threat that the attacks signified for the population of respondents from the American continent was reflected in the more aligned emotional reaction of fear among men and women, unlike the case of these sub-populations in Europe.
The results obtained from the spontaneous reactions to open questions confirmed the distribution of answers to the variants offered in the closed questions in all of the fields examined.
We examined the communication behaviour in the hours after the attack through the use of a broad battery of questions on the frequence of telephone conversations on both grounded and mobile telephone lines, and on the extent of personal electronic communica-tion during the exceptional situation. It was found that our specific 'Internet population' demonstrated no particular increase in the number of telephone conversations (the increase was traced among approximately one-fifth of respondents). Data on the manner and fre-quence of electronic communication in a situation as extraordinary as that of 11th Septem-ber are to a large degree unique and could therefore be useful in a future comparision with the results of other Internet or even traditional communication research.
Keywords
11th September, interpersonal communication, communications research, communication research, international research, on-line research, on-line research - methodology, atti-tudes, communication behaviour, Internet, electronic survey, WAPOR, terrorism, emo-tional reactions, e-mail
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