Julio Aguilera
RA #2
Professor Andrews
October 26, 2010
Election Awareness
After conducting a survey intended for 50 NDNU undergrad and grad
students I came to a conclusion that the media provides enough information out
there to make internet users aware of the current election in the state of
California. As an avid internet user I am aware of what is going on nationally and
globally, but this survey helps me better understand the interest in my peers on
the election from a different point of view. After only receiving 42 responses
through text I went ahead and used that information to analyze the true purpose
for internet use around people my age.
I discovered that must of the students find some time away from their
studies and extra curricular activities to surf the web. By using the results from
the survey by the largest margin I can comfortably say that the majority of my
target audience were between the age of 22-25, the highest result for hours
spent on the internet daily were less than 3, the majority of the audience was
aware of the election with 29 knowing its next month, and a remarkable number
of 39 were aware of the proposition 19 being on the ballot. The numbers show
me that although websites such as Facebook may be somewhat distracting to
students, it’s still a method for media, and something must be working to allow
college students to be aware of their own states election. I believe some home
pages such as Yahoo!, AOL, or even YouTube do a very good job and keeping
their websites fresh to all current media available, and sometimes that quick
glimpse at a news article is enough to make students aware.
In relation to younger students I feel like the need to be self-aware is
necessary for the older student, as many try to inform themselves of the current
activities around them. I see that the need to be aware of the election for the
student is more acceptable in the older student, perhaps as a conversational
topic. Or simply to know what is going on in their state, the correlation between
the age groups was different and leads me to conclude that the results are the
way they are because people chose to be informed, and not because they
accidently find out.