Psychographic Interview Questions

For my interview, I knew I wanted to focus on specific media outlets used and my interviewee’s trust in them. I chose to interview my roommate Alyssa, so the interview took place face to face in our apartment. Alyssa is a 22 year old, white female. She is from the suburbs of Chicago. I chose to interview her because not only was it convenient, but her demographic is very similar to mine and I wanted to see if we had any differences. The focus of my interview was to see what media outlets Alyssa uses, and how much trust she has in them. The first question I asked was the first on the questionnaire. This question was asking which topics she is interested in when looking for news. This question allowed multiple answers, which is why I chose it.

I figured this was the case, many college students rely on social media for more than just posting. The next question I asked her was which social media sites she gets her news from. I asked this because I wanted to see which sites she was trusting. She selected Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus.

The next question I asked was where she got her news this past week. I asked this question to solidify that she really only gets her news from social media. She answered that she got her news from the internet, which helped me filter out other new outlets. The next question I asked was where she gets most of her political news from. I felt like this was an important question because it is the most complex topic, out of the ones she said she stays updated on. Once again, Alyssa said that she gets her political news from the internet.

Following this question, I went a little more in dept. The internet has many different sources. Some are good and trustworthy, others not so much. When I asked Alyssa which sources she uses, she answered with multiple. Alyssa said a large majority of her insight, regarding politics, comes from Facebook, CNN, Google and New York

The first question was how often she speaks about politics, and she said A few times a month. This was one of the tip choices for the Paw’s responders as well, which shows that people do not like talking about politics. The next question I asked was how much she likes talking about politics, she answered not much. This was one of the top responses in the Paw’s survey as well. Solidifying the fact that most people rather keep politics private.

The last question I asked was not on the survey, it was more out of curiosity. I wondered if she hated talking about politics because she felt uninformed. Her response was that she feels informed, but rather keep it provide. To me, this shows that while she reads from a lot of different sites, she know which ones are more accurate.

This survey helped show me that although someone might not trust a site or article, they might read it anyways. Alyssa read most of her stuff off Facebook. She was aware that sometimes she read things that were unreliable. She also stated that others were very enlightening. This proves that social media articles can be good and bad, depending on the