Article for Scotland...

Media in the Local Community

 

 

Balwearie High School

 

Balwearie High School is large school situated in the west of Kirkcaldy with approximately 1750 pupils. It was built in 1964. Our schools facilities include a swimming pool, 2 games halls, an AstroTurf pitch, hockey pitch and a full sized running track.

 

 

Some of the subjects our school offers are: English, PE, art, geography, chemistry, physics, biology, drama, Spanish, French, German, music and technologies.

 

 

There are many extra-curricular activities currently run in Balwearie including: Erasmus, football, netball, rugby, basketball, hockey, dancing, athletics and for the first time we have a ski team.

 

 

Kirkcaldy (The Local Community)

 

Kirkcaldy is the largest coastal town in the east of Scotland in Fife with a population which is approximately 50000 people.  People who are famous who come from Kirkcaldy are: Gordon Brown (former prime minister), Guy Berryman (part of the band Coldplay) and David Potter (Arsenal Footballer).

 

Survey Results

We conducted a survey about how people in our community like to access their local news through the use of a survey website called “Survey Monkey”. The category with the most responses was females under 18. This may be due to the fact the Erasmus group consists of more females than males therefore they may be more likely to ask friends of the same gender.

 

 

 

 

The answer to our main question, “What media source do you use to learn about news in your local community?” was Social Media (28%), closely followed by Newspaper and TV (both at 20%), then Radio (17%) and the least popular was Internet News Survey (15%). This is surprising because many people use tablets and smart phones therefore making it easier to access online articles and boosting the percentage of people using Internet News Surveys. However there is no surprise to see Social Media at the top of the table especially as most of our respondents are under 18.

 

 

 

Taken into account the ratio of men to women we found that both genders were equally as likely to pay for news despite recent statistics which suggest women are more generous than men.

 

 

 

 

 

Article for Portugal...

Social Media in Democracy

 

 

Social media in democracy has played a vital role in electing politicians, local and foreign affairs and almost any major political event. In Scotland we have been involved in some of the most important and historic elections in the UK in the past. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have all been used to voice political support and opinion, they can have the power to change opinions and the results of votes and can help people find out about local areas and what is happening near them.

 

This wonderful source however is not as available as we may think. In North Korea the internet does exist alongside social media but you can only access government propaganda, and anything that goes against the leader Kim Jong UN and the brutal regime is censored. This is the same in China where media has to coincide with the governments wish for the people. So, so many people have no access to the outside world as their controlling government don’t wish to seem weak compared to other countries. They lie about other nations to seem more powerful.

 

We need social media and the following results from our survey are focusing on the 0-17 year age bracket as this is our age group and therefore the segment of society we were most interested in.  We recently asked a series of questions such as:

 

• Do you ever use any form of social media?

          81% said yes and 19% said no.

 

This is a clear result that tells us that people aged 0-17 do have a form of social media.

 

• Do you use social media to find out about politics?

63% said yes and 27% said no.

 

This tells us that this age range feels social media should be used to find out about politics

 

• Should social media be used to express political opinion?

31% said yes and 69% said no.

 

This tells us that people aged 0-17 feel social media should be used to find out about politics but not to express political opinion.

 

We were asked what we felt about social media in democracy and if it is good or bad to express opinion here are our answers

 

Tomas: I feel social media should be used for political expression and learning more about politics. It is a free world and if people control our right to political expression then we do not live in a democratic society

 

Sam: I feel social media is important because it allows me to find out what is going on in the world and to keep up with my interests, which I’d otherwise struggle to keep up with.

 

 

Andrew: In my trusted opinion, I feel that social media makes our lives better as we are able to keep in contact with friends. I don’t feel that social media should be used to express political opinion as people want to watch a funny video not see what you think about the latest election.

 

 

Eve: I feel social media makes our lives really good and makes it easier to do a lot of new things. I think social media is good for political expression and makes it easy to show people’s views.

 

Raven: In my opinion social media in democracy and in society in general is a very good and positive thing. It allows us to express our opinions and beliefs online and means we can be loud but don’t have to announce who we are.

 

 

Megan:

 

 

As a group we all have nearly the same opinion which is mainly positive as it enables us to give our beliefs to the world. Social media does encourage negativity so people backlash and argue online. The meaning of democracy is that everyone is given the rights to be free with opinion and belief (which is also a human right) and the invention of social media allows us to communicate better and put our point across to a larger audience.