Last week I started my actual research for the thesis. With the deadline of June the 21st creeping closer, there is still so much to do… This morning I got up at 7 a.m. (!) to do an interview over the telephone with a Belgium publisher.
So what will I be doing for this thesis-thingy? I’ve got scheduled five more interviews this month with people from three major travel guidebook publishers in The Netherlands and I already talked to the biggest publisher of non-fiction books of Belgium. Since there are about 5 big publishers of travel guidebooks in The Netherlands and I am talking to 4 of them, I feel my coverage is pretty good.
During the interviews I will be asking the publishers questions about how they see their future in a changing media environment. How do they feel about the availability of free travel information online? Do they feel threatened by this? Are they developing new media publications or applications themselves? Is the content of paper guidebooks changing because of the rise of new media?
All these questions are boiling down to one point: How are traditional publishers going to survive? Or as stated in my main research question: How is travel information being shaped in the travel publication industry in response to the rise of new media tools?
To answer this question, I divided my research into three pieces; travel information, new media tools and content. Through the interviews, the first two points will probably get covered. However, I am struggling with point three: content. To find out how content differs according to medium, I should do a content analysis. But I have never done that before, so I’m pretty much clueless there… Also I still need to write about 30 pages of theory review :-s.
With about 5 weeks to go I still need to do a content analysis, 5 interviews and write a whole thesis of about 60 pages. Better get back to work…
