Hometown News: Reaching out for Connectivity

The purpose of this study is to take a closer look at how Hometown News reaches and impacts its internal and external audiences. We do this externally by examining whether Hometown News is effectively reaching its external audience with its current production and distribution methods. Internally, we look at whether stated Hometown News objectives impact morale and reinforce pride on the men and women who wear the uniform each day. This examination cites many problems including the lack of connectivity and salience of military issues with the general civilian population. This project proposes three research question: Is the American general public aware and do they understand military affairs? Does Hometown News have effective reach? and, Does Hometown News reinforce individual pride and promote morale among troops? From these three questions we developed two surveys one internal, and one external. We used methods that will attempt to measure effective reach externally, and morale and pride internally. We employed two general attitude scales using six bipolar adjective pairs in the external survey, and two parts in the internal survey. This initial probing research seeks evidence of effectiveness of Hometown News products as well as how it can maximize its efforts in telling the general population of what we do (military), how we do it, and why.