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Journalists document history on the fly and provide analysis of each day's events as they unfold.
They like nothing more than finding a timely resource of information about news that's happening in the here and now that can help them interpret events for their audiences.
That's what happened recently to Vance L. Kornegay, an associate professor with the School of Journalism and Mass Communications, when he was given the opportunity to work with a database of political TV advertising and use it to help journalism students study how the mass media works.
"This is exciting," said Kornegay, noting that academicians are always looking for ways they can get access to timely proprietary data to give students a real-world look at how their fields function.
Kornegay came to the project through Randy D. Covington, the college's director of advancement, who had been working with Robin D. Roberts, a 1976 journalism graduate and president of National Media Inc., in Alexandria, Va. The firm tracks all political advertising in the top 100 markets in the country, including Greenville, Spartanburg, Columbia, and Charlotte, N.C.
The company normally sells the tracking data to political campaigns so they can keep tabs on the opposition's advertising. But Roberts also offered to make portions of it available to the School of Journalism and Mass Communications to see if it could also be developed into educational materials.
Kornegay seized on the idea for a sabbatical project and has spent the fall semester processing the ad data from the three markets and making it available to students in a kind of field test to see if it might provide any educational opportunities.
After data is e-mailed to Kornegay each day about when and where senate and gubernatorial political TV advertising appears in the South Carolina markets, he recodes it and publishes it on the Web in a format students can easily access and use without specialized software.
Kornegay visited the school's classes in integrated marketing and public opinion and propaganda to show students the database and suggest ways they could use the information for statistical and other analyses of the campaign. Possible uses include such things as studies on advertising strategies in individual markets, analyses of how TV audiences are targeted for political advertising, and statistical studies on individual ads' effectiveness.
One student has begun studying ways the gubernatorial campaigns have targeted African-American voters through the shows on which they advertise. Others have queried Kornegay with research ideas and asked if he can make certain information available to them.
"My hope is that we'll be able to take the lead from some of the students who might suggest things we can do with the database that we didn't think about," Kornegay said. "I want to involve them in a collaborative process and develop something that will be a good resource for studying political advertising."
In addition to developing the resource for use in journalism studies, Covington has focused on bringing other USC units into the project. He and Kornegay have met with faculty from the Department of Government and International Studies to see if they might use the information as well. And Covington is eyeing possibilities for developing grant opportunities for other ways the data could be used in instructional methodologies.
Covington believes there is an opportunity for significant funding for the project through foundations and grants. "There is enormous interest in the effect of advertising on our political system," he said. "The data base is a tool for analyzing and understanding the impact of soft money, negative ads, and other crucial issues," he added.
Kornegay would like to take use of the database nationwide for other colleges and universities, possibly through a supplemental textbook with a CD that would provide a case study type of approach to political advertising, or a Web portal approach were USC might take raw data and make it accessible via the portal for anyone in the nation who wants it.
The consciousness raising part of working on the project for Kornegay has been learning database publishing and seeing the value of how he can take data sets and create the tools that students can use to analyze them. "It's important to flesh out the best delivery system for getting the information to the most people in a relevant fashion that is easy to understand without a lot of special software or training," he said.
"Database publishing can be a valuable tool if faculty can gather raw data and then publish it on the Web so students can manipulate it. That to me is more valuable than just giving them the raw data and then trying to teach them how to use it."
The political campaign data set is the link titled, "Political Advertising Database" on the School of Journalism and Mass Communications Web site at www.jour.sc.edu.
10/02
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