It has been a
long time since I have posted on this blog, but a lot of stuff has happened. I
will admit my first literature review read like a book report. The subtopics
were disjointed and I failed to justify and connect most of the sections. The
first problem I had was flowing from each section with seamless transitions.
This issue showed me that I needed to move a couple of sections around to make
my paper actually make sense and actually make an argument instead of reading a
brochure. Additionally, my sources did not have strong descriptions of their
methods making their credibility lackluster. When I finished my first draft of
my literature review I realized that I was neglecting how important the “Why we
watch reality TV” section was as I was not justifying why gratification was
significant. I did not pick up on that gratification was a part of the pleasure
principle, meaning that humans need gratification from entertainment to please
their psychological needs. Therefore by looking at Survivor and piecing out the
elements that are both consistent and added in throughout the years I will be
able to see what gratifies the audience, thus showing what we as society value
in entertainment.
I am pretty
content with my final literature review, but I know that it will have to be
changed after I finished my methods and my research to ensure that the entire
paper flows together and there is no extraneous information. My final question
turned out to be “What components of reality television competition programs has Survivor
employed over its 16 year run to continually appeal to traditional television
viewing audiences? Hopefully this question stands strong as I move through my
methods, results, and discussion.
Moving forward
for the methods assignment I need to find four film composition content
analyses to help me figure out the best way to analyze Survivor’s composition.
I hope this assignment will be helpful in showing how to make the content
analysis as objective as possible to ensure the credibility of my argument
stands strong as well as how to make my content analysis is as correct as
possible. Right now I am 100% sure that I can and I will watch all 33 seasons
of Survivor. If it turns out that this is too big of a task, I will randomly
select a certain number of episodes from each season using a random number
generator and analyze these specific episodes. I am confident moving foward and hopefully everything works out.
(apparently the gifs won’t load… I will fix this later)
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Hi Catherine! Since I read your paper I understand a lot of the improvements you made and I'm really happy to hear that those translated into a more meaningful paper and focus. That happened in my research too.
ReplyDeleteNow that the lit review is done, it sounds like you know what you have to do but piecing things together will be the next task. Have you thought about how you will connect all of the different points? One thing you could look at that I saw were coding and how the numbers translated to prevalence and such. I think this could be interesting if you look at the prevalence of a certain device in one season versus another to show adaptation?
Overall it sounds like you have a very good direction with your research! One more section before you can watch all of survivor!
Hey Catherine! I'm happy that you learned a lot from writing the lit review and arrived at a solid question. Your mindset that the lit review will need to be adapted to flow with your methods and results will also be very useful in the future. I like how you are thinking about objectivity being one of the main issues when laying out your specific method. Do any of the film composition content analyses you have looked at so far do a good job laying out specific components of the film to either quantify or analyze? If so, that is where I would start looking/thinking in order to apply those methods to your research specifically. Great job so far and good luck with the final big assignments we have ahead of us!
ReplyDeleteI agree with Audrey that it'll be ideal to find some sort of an already-used model that indicates how to go about a content analysis, if possible. I know that you're doing something really unique, so perhaps you can adapt something from an already-existing coding tool.
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