Oct. 31 - We are a group of three UT students - Paige, Stacy and Mark - who are are performing a sociological survey for our SOC 302 class under the direction of Dr. Fulton. Today marks the first formal day of our project; we met in class to discuss what our survey will measure and how we plan to organize the data collection. We decided on the project to be as a follows:

"A survey of the ways and the frequency in which on-campus UT students receive their news and their stated intent for doing so. This blog will serve as a way for us to record and publish our actions and findings as they occur, as well as to allow others to comment and/or provide insight and critiques on our work.

We plan on using the sociological concepts of impression management, to determine if students view the news as a tool to use in conversation with others, and cultural capital to see if students view receiving news as something that increases their knowledge of the arts and of their world around them to maintain social status."

As of now our group has decided on using surveys and several interviews with students to gain an accurate picture of how and why UT students get their news. We have decided that we will select one non-journalistic class (to avoid a potentially biased sample) in which to hand out our surveys, but we have yet to determine the content of the questions. As for the interviews, we plan to interview a variety of students such as those who live in dorms, who are a members of a fraternity/sorority, journalism students, as well as those who we know personally. We plan to post more of our group's decisions and progress soon. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!