HW 2/14

The presearch process made me think of ways I could narrow my topic even more. I think I need to really narrow it because media is a huge field and if I could stick to one media item I could find more facts or information on it. My research question was “Is media in the U.S. too light on censoring language and adult content?” This seems too broad so I’m going to narrow it to, “How has the change of TV. Censorship affect the youth of today in America?” I narrowed my topic from media to television because young children cannot read an article but they can all watch something on the television.  And also I said “change,” which can help me find more information for my research topic. I can find old articles on television shows that had issues with censorship and compare them to today’s issues with television censorship. I checked out the book Media, Children, and the Family HM258 .M3743 1994

HW 2/12

This research process is different than how I usually do research but also a little bit the same.  I’ve used a libraries search engine to find books I needed for research projects but I have never really used the GIL-find. I have never used the advanced search before but it seems to be helpful but also aggravating because it is so sensitive to your words. Using Google in the past would always have something related to what I typed in, however, not everything is reliable on Google. I am not really confused about anything thus far that we covered in class because I knew it previously before the class.  I do wish however  that we would talk about going to locate the books related to our topic or finding other resources available in the library that may not be a book or a specials collection resource.  

HW 2/7

For this class I could look up old magazines from the special collections to research on my topic of censored media. I can look at the difference of the past to the present day and see how they have changed. I can look at ads that are the same today and compare how they are presented in the article or magazine to see the changes from time. I could use special collections resources for other research papers in other classes such as history or English. Special collections have content that may not be accessible through the internet.  Special collections are an important part of the research process because you could always look up content that use to be available only in the past. Such things as old photos or old novels, that are not available to the public. They have things that you may not have even heard about that you could use in your research paper for facts.

HW 1/31

My topic I’m going to choose is; has todays media become less censored to young viewers than what is accepted or allowed. When researching for my topic under the GIL-Find Catalog, I had positive and bad results.  Just typing in “censorship in media,” came up with many results. However when I typed in “censorship uncontrolled,” no results came up. But just typing in “censorship in media,” did not come up with the exact information I needed. Most of the results were media in school libraries. That has been old news about how some books are not allowed in school libraries because of historical race issues and also sexual content. I am more interested in media such as television and magazines.  When searching ”censorship on television,” some government related points came up which should be useful to me. A primary source I can use for my project would be the book, Anatomy of Censorship. Why the censors have it wrong, by Harry White.

Information Sources for my Topic

There are many types of information sources such as; news sources, government documents, journal articles, books and popular magazines that will hold information that I will see for my topic. Psychology and sociology will have a huge interest on my topic just because of the studies on people and certain reactions they have towards the media and censorship in the media. Groups or people that may have an opinion on my topic would probably be the government and small organizations as in the media people themselves. Publishers of magazines will be well on this topic to avoid law suits or people unsubscribing from their magazine. TV show creators will also be well on top of this topic to avoid the same issues that the magazine publishers will. Video game creators will have information of what is too far with showing stuff that is too graphic. Government will be my main focus on finding information on my topic because they are in charge of what America sees.

Researching Keywords for Research Project

Keywords or aspects of my topic that I discovered that might help me create a question are censorship of course, and media. However I found more keywords that are useful for my research project.  Using Galileo, I found results for foreign country censorship. There is even an entire debate on blocking social media. I found topics about government in America and their control on censorship.  Social media censorship will probably be the largest bit of information that I will find just because our lives constantly have media in them. Today’s class changed my approach on my research topic by making me think a little bit more in depth on my topic. I can research on foreign censorship topics such as China. I can even research how censorship has faded compared to the old days of when you were not allowed to cuss on television.

Two research topics for final

I’m not quite sure if we are allowed to just pick any kind of research topic we want, but if I could pick any two topics then I would choose either what is the best website for purchasing online or censorship in the media. I always shop online because it is fun to look at things I haven’t seen before. I always go to amazon but I wonder if there are other websites that could be cheaper or have an even more variety of stuff I can buy. My second choice is censorship because I want to know what the rules or laws are for it. You see stuff in movies, online, and on TV that you are not quite sure are allowed or I wonder how they get away with the things they show or even say. If I had to pick out of these two I would pick censorship because I can find a lot of information on it.