Critical Investigation Task #5

Up-to-the-minute additional web research


Although books carry more authority, the internet is an excellent resource and you should be searching regularly to identify additional ideas and references related to your Critical Investigation.

In particular, you will find up-to-the-minute, current information and opinion about your topic and this always scores highly with the examiners so it's important to continue online research all the way through until you hand in your final essay. A great example just this week: Beyonce releases a new album that bypasses traditional music promotion AND makes a point in the feminism debate - that fits many of our critical investigations and is just one story from the last week. Another crucial platform that you really ought to cover - New Media and Digital Technology - is constantly changing and you're already finding stories for that topic weekly for the exam too!

Remember, key places to keep track of this are...

• A Level Media Studies subscription sites - we have paid for you to have free access to both the MediaMagazine (search the archive or browse through past copies), and MediaEdu (spend time, in particular, looking at the theory, new media and key concepts resources)...both are excellent and contain information pitched just right at your level of understanding. Passwords are here: MediaEdu and MediaMagazine. 
• broadsheet newspaper sites, especially MediaGuardian (it's essential you get into the habit of reading this every week, preferably on a Monday), and the Independent Media;
• media education sites - the biggest and best is MCS; but there's also Media Literacy, Film Education, Screen Online...
• film review sites like IMDb (use the 'external reviews' link on the sidebar whenever you're on a chosen film) and Rotten Tomatoes;
• film magazines online like Sight & Sound, GuardianFilm, Empire, and Senses of Cinema;
• Wikipedia, naturally: a useful starting point for any web search, but make sure you avoid referencing this directly...it makes you look like a beginner. Provides, however, a good overview and, essentially, a list of 'References' and 'External Links' at the end of each entry;
• the best student essays from 2012, from 2011, from 2010, from 2009, from 2008, and from 2007: in particular, look at their quotes (usually highlighted by a footnote number) and bibliographies (at the end of each essay) as they will have often identified some of the best quotes for your topic. But, as ever, be wary of the temptation to plagiarise - you should only 'borrow' a key quote from another person's essay if it's completely relevant and fully referenced! Remember: it is incredibly easy to tell when an essay takes a sentence or paragraph from another writer.

Over the holiday and into January, continue with your internet research, using the Google Search Tips you've been shown to help you refine your searches and, of course, the Google academic search engine: Google Scholar.

Task: Post up AT LEAST 20 additional quotes, with full article titles (and hyperlinked web addresses) and a brief explanation about each one saying how it's linked to your study. Due: January.