Angela's Stock Report: The Edward Effect (Whether We Like Him or Not)

Formula = (Price_1 - Price_2) x Number of shares

Disney
52.07 - 49.72 = -2.35
-2.35 x (5000/52.07) = -225.66


Lions Gate
14.96 - 16.53 = +1.57
+1.57 x (5000/14.96) = + 524.73

524.73 - 225. 66 =  +$299.07 

Who and what to blame?

The "ceiling effect" in profitability of physical mainstream media products makes sense since (1) there are limits to the common denominator formula (2) physical markets tend to be much smaller than online markets. 

But these limitations don't apply to online stores. On the internet, while online stores can still carry "mainstream" products to aim at the common denominator audiences, the online environment eliminates the two possible ceiling effects with 1) low to zero cost for storage and distribution and 2) elimination of geographic markets. In other words, online media stores have the best of both worlds in terms of offering endless content amd having countless potential consumers, both of which are reason enough for the triumph of long tail effects.

I think the competition media companies in the physical world whines about (for the lack of a better expression)  is not necessarily one of "online vs. traditional" per se - but one of "who is better at satisfying the needs, or even quirks, of their customers/audiences?"  The news industry faces the same problem.

Legacy media industries, arguably, never took the time to fully understand consumers/audiences in their geographic region to cultivate loyalty and rapport, and to improve customer/audience satisfaction. For example, Borders in Brooklyn, NY should not carry the same items as Borders in Lubbock, TX, but chances are they probably did carry identical things for the reasons Chris Anderson detailed, and I think this is really a shame because "localness" is one of those attributes that online stores can never take away from physical stores. 

In sum, market negligence in the physical world is a worse enemy than the "traditional vs. digital" debate accounts for. In other words, in order to stay competitive in the 21st century, unless physical stores can carry as much content choices as online stores do to entice their customers/audiences, they better figure out what their unique attributes are -- stop talking in terms of "what I can offer you" and start elaborating on "how I can meet your X and Y needs in ways that the online stores cannot." 

From meaning to perceived importance: Predicting news consumption with news utility (working title & research idea)

-- Story line --

Economics suggest people innately seek to maximize utility, but scholars rarely discuss the utility of news to audiences. They often explore "why people consume news" (which has proven to have lukewarm predictive power from the uses and gratifications literature) but not how useful news is to audiences. This study offers two ways to understand news utility (what is news and how important is it?), and examines how they predict news consumption.

-- Research questions --

RQ1: What does "news" mean to audiences?

RQ2: How important is news to different news audiences? 

RQ3: How does the audience's definition of news influence perceived importance of news? 

RQ4: How does the audience's definition of news influence their news consumption from a) local newspapers, b) national newspapers c) network national news, d) cable (CNN, MSNBC, FOX), e) local TV, f) social media (Facebook & Twitter), g) aggregators (Yahoo & Google) ? 

RQ5: How does perceived importance influence news consumption from a) local newspapers, b) national newspapers c) network national news, d) cable TV, e) local TV, f) social media, g) aggregators?

Good news for Mary and me

"Walt Disney quarterly profits increase 14%"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20261872

When Zach is 10

... print news from big name organizations (e.g., Dallas Morning News, NYT) will be luxury good. Print newspapers will be a symbol of social status, and Zach's generation (if not those younger than Zach) will be taught that quality news is something desirable and valuable.  It will still be an era of information surplus online, but people will have learned to "pay for quality" both off and online when Zach is 10. Hopefully.

"Thou shalt not kill...

[especially] the cash cow."

I can understand why the news media would pay attention to Christensen's disruptive technology (beyond the fact that Christensen's consulting firm serves many in the industry), but it remains unclear to me how the concept is useful to the news media, if at all...

1. While presenting a paper related to disruptive technology this summer, a pro-disruptive technology media scholar commented that the value, or essence of disruptive technology lies in the question of "when" -- i.e., it's not about whether the product based on disruptive technology will take over or not, to which its proponents believe unequivocally the answer to be 'yes,' but when it will take over the existing market in a landslide.

Maybe I'm wrong about this, but to me this is precisely where disruptive technology fails because it does not, and cannot predict when it will happen; only that it will happen "someday" and major players in existing markets better be ready when that "someday" arrives. How this is more helpful than, for example, "we better all repent before armageddon comes" is hard to say...

Is it unreasonable to propose that a "when" model is only useful when it actually predicts the "when?"

2. The examples given at the beginning of the article suggests that products based on disruptive technology are likely to replace the precursor; however, there is scant evidence suggesting that the Internet will be 'the' disruptive technology in media. The Internet has brought about sweeping changes in the media landscape since the early 1990s, but all existing media empires are still standing today, and most of them still profit predominately from their traditional products in 2012 (e.g., newspaper, book, music, magazine and movie industries). How much longer must the 'online experiment' on go before media industries recognize that maybe their core value, or 'cash cow,' lies in their traditional product and that this cow may remain healthy and prolific in the foreseeable future?

3. The article suggests that "the disruptive architectures created other important attributes..." (p.45). I agree that the Internet has many internet-specific attributes that appeal to news consumers (e.g., multimedia, immediacy, etc.), but the question is not about how appealing these "disruptive attributes" are, but whether they are "appealing enough" to lead to different viable business models. At least in the newspaper industry, the initial answer seems to be "not appealing enough."

Research critique

1. What am I missing here?

• Immigrant acculturation -> studying international students' college adjustments?
• The study starts off by saying that intercultural communication is important especially for understanding how immigrants acculturate to foreign socities, but instead of studying immigrants or acculturation, it studies international students' college adjustments... 

2. U&G-related issues

• "Old wine in new bottle?"
• "To find out what's going on" -> "To find out what's going on in China"
• "To make friends" -> "To make Korean friends"
• "To learn about current issues" -> "To learn about current issues in Korea"

• "What's the contribution?" (e.g., Any reason to believe these would be different among international students when it comes to Internet use?)
• "To pass the time when bored"
• "To be entertained"
• "To find information related to class assignments"

3. Discussion points from the paper: 

• "The internet does not uniformly facilitate or impede international students' adaptation, but rather serve as an additional means by which they can pursue different goals that may or may not contribute to a smoother transition" 
• "Apparently, when international students' media use is heavily gravitated toward their home country, it hinders their adaptation to the new environment, posing greater emotional challenges"
• "Online communication with existing friends (through IM) improved adolescents' subjective well-being, while talk with strangers (through chat in a public chat room) had no significant effect"

Proper(?) reaction:

Rhetorical questions

I really like the juxtaposition of the two readings for tomorrow's lecture on attention economy. The coexistence of information surplus and attention deficit is indeed bad news for us on many levels -- from the possible development of inferiority complex among news junkies (e.g., "omg I can never keep up with all the news I want, what's wrong with me?") to information overload among news avoiders (e.g., "omg why am I bombarded by the news even on Facebook?!"), just to name a few.  The old and wise often say "moderation is the key to long-term peace and contentment, but whether we want it or not, and for better or worse, the Internet has long declared information moderation "overrated." 

While filters may help us screen out unimportant information (e.g., junk mails) in the attempt to save us time, another equally, if not more important problem that I see in the age of attention deficit is our inability to prioritize things in our lives. Especially in capitalist societies, we are taught at a young age to do whatever we can to meet the demands of school and work, and sometimes we, like Rob Lippincott, lose sight of what matters to us most in our daily struggle to tackle everything that requires our attention (which is, sadly, 99% work related for many of us).

To me the problem extends from information economy to modern society, and is in dire need of our attention (no pun intended) as we spiral down the capitalist abyss that is unrealistically obsessed with growth and productivity. To paraphrase what one of my professors at Penn remarked a few years ago: The internet has fundamentally changed academia -- the expectation now is that we can work from anywhere and at anytime -- as long as we work all the time.

At what point will we learn to take a break from time to time to reassess priorities in our lives and adjust accordingly? For example, just because we can work from anywhere and at anytime doesn't mean we should work from everywhere and all the time... but we do. 

Some lessons are harder to learn than others, but hopefully this, the art of prioritization, is one we will all master sooner rather than later.

What are your priorities in (1) the age of information surplus and (2) life? 

Media studies: What's helpful (or not)?

Gauntlett raised a good question in the 2004 chapter: What is the point of academic research on media studies when whatever we produce tend to lag behind real-time evolution by months if not years given the way academic publishing processes are? 

I think the point is that academic and trade publications have different aims in what they do -- whereas the former cares more about understanding the why and how for in-depth understanding and theory-driven purposes, the latter tends to care more about how to make profit from cursory, real-time snapshots of reality. Nonetheless, I think both streams of research can learn from, if not complement each other, but first academics need to start thinking outside of the box -- especially in the new media environment where there are still a lot more unknowns than there are known things -- stop asking the trite question of "what is your theoretical contribution?" and start paying attention to all quality empirical work that may fill in the knowledge gap. "Theory" is not confined to the few constructs with fancy names and that are put on the pedestal in the old media environment. Instead, I think theory should be broadly applied to any explanation or prediction that helps us better understand why and how the new media environment differ (or not) from the old media environment. Some of these explanations and predictions may not have a name yet, but given time patterns will emerge and that's how new theories are developed, is it not? 

On a different note -- I disagree with Gauntlett on two accounts:

1. It is not true that "with some effort" anyone's website can be seen on the web (p.16). Especially given the exponential growth of information in recent years (granted his article was written in 2004) and the way google algorithms are, there is simply no easy way for anybody's website to be noticed just by following what he suggested. 

2. I think Gauntlett's closing remark on one's need to make one's own website in order to succeed in web studies is overly simplistic and disrespectful of the diversity and complexity in both qualitative and quantitative academic media studies.   What would he suggest scholars who study the antecedents and effects of pornography do, I wonder?

Angela's $tock portfolio

Lions Gate

• Industry: Movie production, theaters 
• Direct competitors: DreamWorks Studios (privately held), Imagine Entertainment (privately held), and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. (privately held) 
• "The Twilight Effect on Short-Term Investment" 
• Breaking Dawn II comes out November 16th

1. Twilight 2008:                  $328,133,300
2. Eclipse 2010:                    $698,491,347
3. Breaking Dawn I 2011:     $701,989,889
4. Breaking Dawn II 2012:          ???

• It's not just the movie revenue, it's the entire franchise.
• Lions Gate's stock went up drastically after purchasing the studio (Summit Entertainment) that produces Twilight Saga series in January 2012, and it went up in Feb 2012 when they announced that the Part I DVD will be released. 
• Ever since the Twilight Purchase Lions Gate's stock has performed better when compared to the rest of its competitors in the industry, and it seems like Breaking Dawn II could be a happy finale both plot and revenue wise. :)

Disney

• Industry: Entertainment 
• Don't have a separate one for Walt Disney Studio Entertainment, but this could be better.
• Same logic as Lions Gate (I went through all the upcoming movies in the next three months trying to identify the upcoming "blockbuster movies" 
• Disney's animations have always been a hit worldwide, appealing to kids and adults:

1. Tangled (2010):             $590,721,936
2. Cars 2 (2011):                $191,450,875
3. Toy Story 3 (2011):       $1,063,171,911
4. Wreck-It Ralph (2012):           ???

• Wreck-It Ralph Trailer: http://youtu.be/87E6N7ToCxs
• Diversity: From its ownership of parks and resorts, consumer products, TV stations, etc., it could be a horizontal victory for Disney all around because of Wreck-It Ralph
• Disney world
• Lunch bags
• Toys
• T-shirts
• TV show (e.g., The Emperor's New Groove -> The Emperor's New School)
• Glad to hear Mary's friend in finance approves!

--

Upcoming movies include:

• Mirage
• Silver Linings Playbook (November 21)
• FOX
• Life of Pi (November 21)
• DreamWorks
• Rise of Guardians (November 21)

Evidently (or not so evidently), Twilight and Wreck-It Ralph are going to be the winners in the next 3 months. :)

Is audience engagement media effects studies in disguise?

I somehow get the sense from reading Napoli's discussion on "engagement" that maybe what is really of interest is "media effects" from Communication. Specifically, how effective advertisements or product placements are in leading to purchases (p. 98). 

In the field of Communication, at least in terms of scholarly conception of media effects, we have witnessed the shift from "powerful effects" (i.e., the magic bullet theory), "minimal effects" (i.e., limited effects) to "moderate effects" (i.e., contingency effects). While the debate is on-going, there is general consensus that mass media are not all-powerful, but that their effects depend on many factors such as audience characteristics, environmental influence, medium specificity, etc. 

It sounds like most media professionals still operate under the powerful effects paradigm in their attempt to understand and measure audience behaviors, and perhaps it is in their best interest to believe in such a framework since they've already poured so much money into the business, but what if they are wrong?  What if, like Communication scholars find, powerful effects don't exist? 

Regardless of how advanced audience metrics or how fancy advertisements become, audiences are evolving at the same time too. Such co-evolution will always, at least I'd like to believe, thwart media effects because we learn to adapt to the new environment to minimize unwanted stimuli (e.g., how many of us really "see" pop-up ads these days anymore?). In a way, maybe this suggests that audience metrics will never be satisfactory to advertisers if their ultimate criterion is to be able to perfectly identify and measure factors that influence purchasing behaviors. 

Perhaps I am overly simplistic in making this statement, but on some days I think maybe the only "media effects theory" that really counts is priming (in the sense that some scholars argue agenda-setting is a kind of priming effect, and framing is not a 'theory' per se), and I wonder if advertisers are doing themselves a disservice whenever they deviate too far from the basic principles of priming in their attempt to manipulate human desires and take over the world...

What are we & what do we want?

I am intrigued by exploring the origin of western journalism and its relation to modern journalism and its problems -- In Bettig & Hall, they talk about how journalism really started in the late 15th century in Venice when the printing press found profit in informing political and business elites up-to-date information about the market and political sphere -- in other words, it functioned a lot like the Financial Times today, a niche product that focuses on a particular group of people who derive personal benefits from such consumption -- these elites paid for the news then because the content was of utility to their daily lives...  

But if we fast forward to the 21st century with the new news paradigm and the new targeted audiences (which evidently went from the political and business elites to mass audiences in the era of commercial journalism), it seems hard to argue that the general public would have the same kind of "needs" for what is now considered news to the point that it justifies and necessitates purchase.  Just like what Logan and I discussed in class last week -- the problem, or one of the problems, with the news industry today is that it is trying to make people pay for something without people's knowing exactly "why" they should need the information that they are being asked to pay for.

Can "news needs" be cultivated? I believe so, but I think it would require the news industry to reevaluate what "news" means and what it is that the audiences lack.  This is connected to Jarvis' discussion of Google -- Google listens to its audience's demands in every way possible -- both legitimately and sometimes even seemingly creepily; moreover, Google creates the kinds of demand and dependence that consumers have for its products at the price of zero (e.g., I can't imagine living without gmail nowadays even though I know Google creepily analyzes everything I write and receive in my emails to better figure out how to serve me 'useful ads') that it offers advertisers ample opportunities to reach and seduce us. 

It may not be individual journalists' job to "listen" to what their audiences want, but I think it is the news industry's responsibility to figure out how to offer the kinds of news that is relevant and important enough to their targeted audiences to the point that they will be willing to pay for it --The news industry needs to stop blaming the audiences. Who in their right mind would be willing to pay for something that is not considered "useful?"   

What are we? Product or customer? 

Maybe it's time the news media figure this out...

--

p.s. Watch this clip that I think epitomizes how well Google "listens": http://youtu.be/dx-cX7W03RI

Bits and pieces

1. I struggle with not knowing how to comment on the readings for 9/26...  There is a lot of new information from these chapters for me to learn, but I am afraid I am still at the stage of not knowing how to put the bits and pieces together.  

2. Re: The "Why?" on p. 161 ("A magazine company may find that it obtains the bulk of its advertising revenue in two months during the spring and two months during the fall...")

I can be wrong, but at least for fashion magazines, I believe it has to do with the timing of when the new clothing collections come out (which is typically in the spring and fall). Especially for high-end brands, most of their customers who read those kinds of magazines would probably be more inclined to make purchases while things are 'fresh off the runway' than otherwise... Just a wild guess!

What is to gain at the price of zero?

The definition the book gives for product differentiation made me wonder if this is precisely why news companies are fine with online news' becoming commodified -- because most of them are working for the price of zero, yet product differentiation is only worthwhile when the value added by differentiation is greater than the cost for a company to supply the differentiating characteristics. 

I wonder, though, how are they going to start making people pay if they continue to commodify?  It seems a little shortsighted for them to equate "value" with only revenue and not other things like audience engagement that may indirectly bring the company profit in the long run (i.e., more engaged audience -> more likely to click on things on the site -> more likely to see ads on the site -> more likely to make advertisers happy -> more ad revenue for newspapers). 

Dan Ariely has a very interesting chapter on the cost of zero cost in Predictably Irrational, and I think the newspaper industry may benefit from reading it. Long story short -- When things are "free" we act differently. We forgo rational "cost-and-benefit analysis because, well, there is no literal 'cost' when it's at the price of zero! I don't know the answer to "so what can newspapers get out of offering the news for free (other than traffic, which they clearly lose when compared to Google...)?" But newspaper folks are smart people (right?) -- I'm sure, and hope they will figure something out that is equivalent to CNN's making the audiences watch a 30-second commercial (that feels like forever) before each of their free online news story to satisfy the advertisers but also meet the needs of news audiences that want news "for free."

Who is to blame?

There is really not much journalists can do if newspapers believe, and are right in their claim that the primarily cause of their financial crisis is "loss of advertising revenue" (table 4 in Chyi, Lewis & Zhang, 2012), because then the money problem is not [directly] due to most news consumers' unwillingness to pay for digital content, which goes back to an entirely different argument on value creation, etc. Rather, the money problem lies in most, if not all advertising departments' inability to effectively please their clients, the advertisers, in today's media environment. 

I've asked this question when Jim Moroney came to give a talk at Rosental's entrepreneurial journalism class last year, and I continue to wonder about this question today -- notwithstanding the importance of quality journalism in reaching and keeping news audiences, which is clearly something that newspapers are doing wrong with their incessant layoffs that, while cut cost, significantly weaken their "iron core"  (Alex S. Jones, Losing the News: The Future of the News that Feeds Democracy) -- if newspapers' predominate economic problem lies in their loss of advertising revenue (news consumers were never commercial newspapers' primary target in the past for revenue anyway), why do we seldom hear industry discussions on the need for new advertising models in the midst of their frequent discussions about paywalls, etc.? Even in their discussions of "new business models," most focus on finding ways to charge news consumers rather than improving their advertising strategies-- have they already declared it a losing battle against Google?

"It wasn't that the newspaper didn't have an audience. It had a huge audience. But it was increasingly an audience that read the Web edition, where advertising sells for a fraction of what it brings in the print edition" (Jones, 2009, p. 176).

News as credence goods?

Thinking back to Jim Moroney's speech at ISOJ this past April (http://vimeo.com/43911345) and after reading the textbook's discussion of search goods, experience goods and credence goods, I wondered whether news companies suffer from news' being seen as credence goods by consumers where product in-differentiation, among other things, contribute to its inability to create demand?

In a way this goes back to Picard's point last week about the need for journalists to create "value," which Moroney defines as the interaction between relevance and differentiation in his talk. Nonetheless, the problem here lies in that credence goods by definition implies a direct relationship between price and demand -- while this kind of makes sense if we were to compare those free newspapers we often see in restaurants or on the streets and local newspapers in print, it becomes inapplicable when we move online because online news is still largely assumed and expected to be free regardless of the brand, etc... 

Looking forward, I wonder if news apps would become the new credence goods in the future if news companies continue to struggle with product commodification and the quest among the public for good quality journalism persists? (e.g., "I will rely on App A for news rather than App B because the former is more expensive, which surely implies better quality if nothing else...")

Dr. Jensen's questions and snowball effect

In considering "human nature," that is -- if we were to assume there are predictable, regulatory and quantifiable patterns to how human beings think or behave, I think we a priori have to accept the premise that "human beings are rational."  

As a quantitative researcher myself, I think such a positivist ontology is what allows for theoretical deduction based on empirical testing (after all, what would be the point of studying human behaviors if we believe human beings are fundamentally irrational and unpredictable?); however, such assumption is also what may become troublesome for studies of economics, for example, because as rational as we would like to be, we are by and large not rational beings -- our emotions often get in the way of our rationality; our utility-based evaluation of short term benefits versus long term consequences (and vice versa) is not always clear-cut, and our seemingly "rational" decisions are often based on things that we cannot parse out or articulate.

This is not to say that human beings are essentially unpredictable and there is no future for quantitative research in social sciences. In fact, I think most of us do share some fundamental traits that are predictable and may constitute "human nature." For example, most of us prefer being rewarded than punished in most cases, and most of us are creatures of habit under normal circumstances.  Nonetheless, the question is -- at which level of specificity does our assumption of "human nature" begin to falter due to too much variance in all kinds of known and unknown factors that influence our decision making? 

Going back to Dr. Jensen's questions about human nature and the design of an economy, which I clearly don't have the answers to... I think a question that may be also worthy of discussion or examination is --  At which point do the "noises"  (e.g., emotional responses, short vs. long term considerations, etc.) outweigh the underlying predictability we model after in studies and designs of economics? Recent history in domestic and world economy suggests that we haven't found the answer yet, but one thing is certain: "insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results" (Einstien).

Perhaps asking different questions is not the solution nor proper response to the questions that have already been raised, but for someone like me who often have more questions than answers, I can only pray that some of my endless questions will somehow lead to the right way of seeking the answers... 

"So what?"

The moral of the story is -- journalists need to make their products useful to audiences "if they want to make money." After all, usefulness is highly correlated with value, and value is what makes [most] people pay.

In other words, while journalism may be important because it "contributes to the functioning of democracy and encourages civic engagement, etc.," the million dollar question is:  are these reasons enough to make people pay? Picard doesn't think so, and a closer look at average Americans' [un]willingness to pay for the news would suggest as much.

In my view, the more important, or practical question that journalists need to answer is the "so what?" from audiences: "so what if journalism facilitates democracy? What is in it for me? Why should "I" pay?"

Looking back in history, the U.S. has rarely been a nation with high political participation rate - many citizens don't cast votes during elections, and even among those who do vote many are neither politically informed nor civically engaged. In other words, while most people would agree that democracy is good and important (an argument journalists and journalism scholars alike often make in justifying the importance and value of journalism), many actually don't do much, if at all, to uphold this normative belief, let alone be willing to pay for it... 

There comes a time when idealism [must] collide with reality for survival -- in journalism such collision is not new or surprising, but when will journalists stop hiding behind the motto "the public should read and pay for our paper because it's good for democracy" and start looking for answers to "so what?" Soon, we hope.

She's got questions...

I must preface my post by confessing that the last and only time I took economics was in 12th grade, and so my apology in advance if my questions make me sound like simpleton (though maybe I am!).

1. The textbook defines economics, as "the science that studies how the economy allocates scarce resources, with alternative uses, between unlimited competing wants" (p.3). To me the key components in this definition seem to include (1) scarcity in supply and (2) insatiable demand. However, if we are trying to understand the economics of the news industry in today's media environment, it seems reasonable to assume that the current dynamic includes (1) too much supply [in terms of news information] and (2) too little demand [for news in the face of entertainment in this high choice environment (Prior, 2007). I wonder, then, if this helps explain, in addition to other factors such as their mistrust in Christensen's disruptive technology thesis, etc., the news industry's inability to figure out a viable economic model for their operations?  In other words, can economics apply to the state of the news industry today given it entails phenomena that seemingly contradict the basic assumptions of economics?

2. Does the law of demand only apply to things with ceiling effects of some sort (e.g., that the supply would eventually run out)? I understand that supply and demand are closely linked with strong negative correlation, and the definition of economics seems to suggest as much (e.g., scarce supply), but then what happens if there is unlimited supply of something -- what would the slope of the curve look like if we extend the X-axis on the hypothetical graph of supply and demand that we are drawing, since it is unlikely that at limitless supply demand will cease to exist?

3. In terms of substitution effect (p.18) -- I wonder if substitutes only apply to "comparable goods?" And if so, what would be the definition of "comparable?" For example, if I wanted to buy a car and I am thinking about getting a Honda, Toyota or Hyundai would be "substitutes" in a classical sense because they are different brands of comparable nature (e.g., same price range, etc.), but I may even consider getting a sports bike (e.g., Aprilia RS125) and it would in theory still count as a "substitute" because it serves similar purpose (e.g., transportation) despite vast differences in terms of price, safety concerns, etc. 

Nonetheless, what happens when we move from more concrete things such as cars and motorcycles to things that are more discursive in nature, such as media content? Particularly -- does entertainment count as "substitutes" for news? (This goes back to Markus Prior's point that in high choice environment "people forgo news in favor of entertainment") And if so, doesn't this in a way suggest that "time" is actually the IV rather than content ? (e.g., entertainment counts as substitute for news because it is simply a "choice of genre" given time availability, and thus the issue here is more so time displacement than anything else). I buy the argument that digital media are "inferior good" compared to their traditional counterparts, but what about "media content" if we leave the medium alone for a while and focus on different genres instead? How "good" is content?

Who envies whom?

I agree with Clarke & Primo's perspective on social sciences' "physics envy," but I wonder if the issue they raised is ultimately one of ontology, namely -- maybe the problem lies in social scientists' zealous idolization of positivism in their quests to find "The Truth" when they primarily deal with the most fickle, confused, and questionably rational subjects on this planet: human beings. After all, whether as the observer or the participant in a scientific study, who is to say what either party sees or reports is "objective" from a positivist lens? 

In other words, it is not about the "method" of choice, but the ontological drive that the researcher employs to examine the phenomenon at hand. Whereas in physics there may be ultimate "answers" (e.g., E=MC^2), in social sciences, quoting one of my favorite lines from Solaris -- "there are no answers, only choices [in how we see, measure, and interpret things]." 

To me one of the most exciting things about social sciences lies in its attempt to understand the intricacy, or 'grayness' of human world. And so who is to envy whom? Hard to say... 

Social scientists need to embrace the unique unpredictability of humanity in their quests to investigate the world from a systematic, replicable manner, and to see in every gray difficulty great opportunities rather than the other way around.

p.s. On an unrelated note, maybe it's because I've just taken Dr. Lasorsa's Theory Building class last semester... but if the purpose of theories is to explain AND predict things, then I think 'theories' a priori need to be empirically testable and replicable, contrary to what Clarke and Primo suggest. I'd be interested to hear what others think about this.