Middletown will be under the microscope again by a team of Ball State researchers.
The Middletown Digital Media Study is one of the first studies conducted by the new Center for Media Design.
Information will be gathered over the summer and results reported by the fall, said Robert Papper, one of the three researchers at the head of the study and a professor of telecommunications.
The study's goal, Papper said, is to determine how people use different kinds of media and how often.
"People commonly consume more than one medium at a time," Papper said. "There is a lot of mixed usage."
Researchers will randomly select 1,200 residents and gauge their media habits through a telephone survey, a daily diary or a day of observation by a researcher, said Mark Popovich, another researcher and professor of journalism.
Mike Holmes, chairperson of the department of communications studies, also heads the study.
Popovich said he and the other researchers hope the results of the study will show that Muncie residents use the media much like the rest of the country. If that is shown, then Muncie can be a hotbed of research to create digital products.
Papper said the study was inspired by watching national trends of media usage, which show that Americans use more than one type of medium.
Both Popovich and Papper said the creation of more jobs for the Muncie area is one possible outcome of the study.
Papper said the study may produce a new industry of information gathering that will require employees such as statisticians and other types of researchers.
Popovich said these potential new jobs could help Indiana's economy.
Another outcome of the research could be new digital technology and services that not only benefit residents, but Ball State as its research facilities grow, Papper said.
Papper said he hopes the study will also produce some solid statistics of media usage, compared to vague numbers used in past studies.
"It's not that those figures are wrong, but they are too simplistic," Papper said. "A lot of popular perceptions of the media and media usage are inaccurate."
For example, Papper said most people think that less Americans get their news from broadcasts because of dwindling nightly network news ratings. But the truth, Papper said, is that cable broadcast ratings are on the rise.
The Center for Media Design is funded by the Lilly Endowment grant.
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