This week, our class began conducting audio and video interviews regarding our chosen topic for our feature story. The topic I chose to interview individual about was the declining popularity of Facebook among millennials. I chose this topic because I notice that I spend increasingly less time on Facebook today, than I used to several years ago when I first made my account. This made me curious as to if and why other young adults are starting to use Facebook less and less.
Common themes I saw in many of the articles questioning the declining popularity of Facebook among younger generations included potential factors like political bias and ‘fake news’, especially during the 2016 Presidential Election, and the emergence of newer technologies and platforms that younger generations simply prefer over Facebook. I made sure to take these factors into account when I created my interview questions.
By Sunday evening, I had only managed to complete my two audio interviews but made plans for my remaining three video interviews to be conducted within the next two days. One thing from my audio interviews that I will certainly take into account for my video interviews is that for a two-minute interview, I had way too many questions that each required a somewhat lengthy answer. My first audio interview lasted around 10 minutes, and my second interview lasted 34 (whoops). This unfortunately will require a decent amount of editing on my part, but now that I know that I only need maybe a quarter of my total questions to get the answers I’m looking for, I will definitely rework and fine-tune my questions before I conduct my video interviews.
As for pictures, I’ve managed to acquire a few, though I want to wait and hear more responses from my interviewees before I find related images to their opinions. I’m mostly using personal examples from my own social media platforms of older individuals’ behavior, the ease of connection and communication with other people, and the user-friendliness of different app interfaces.
One response I’ve received in my interviews so far that’s surprised me is that both people I interviewed didn’t seem to be too bothered by the saturation of older laggards making Facebook accounts and learning how to use the platform. They also didn’t believe that the ‘ fake news’ and political climate of Facebook during the past Presidential election significantly affected their opinion or amount of time spent using Facebook.