Critical Investigation Task #6

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. Remember, one of the key media debates that you should look 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 Media Magazine (our online pdf archive is here), and MediaEdu (spend time, in particular, looking at the theory, new media and key concepts resources)...both are excellent and contain information pitched for Media students and teachers. Log in details for Media Edu are here.
• 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. It 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 2015, from 2014, from 2013, from 2012, from 2011, and from 2010: 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 can only 'borrow' a key quote from another person's essay if you go and research the source yourself and make it part of your bibliography. Remember: it is incredibly easy to tell when an essay takes a sentence or paragraph from another writer and Greenford High School has a plagiarism committee made up of senior teachers in the school to deal with cases of deliberate cheating.

Over the holiday and into January, continue with your internet research, using the Google Search Tips you've been shown and all the fantastic online resources outlined above.

Task: Post up AT LEAST 20 additional quotes, with full article titles (and hyperlinked web addresses) added to your bibliography along a brief explanation about which section of your essay plan it could fit into. 

Due: January.