Critical Investigation: Project proposal

The next step in our critical investigations is to develop our presentations into detailed academic proposals. 

You will be given a one-to-one tutorial to help you find the right angle and issue to concentrate on but first need to develop a blog post working through the following headings and tasks:

Working title

Include your specific text in the title and either 'how or 'why' or both, e.g.: To what extent and why are video games such as 'Grand Theft Auto’ becoming more violent? This list of last year's critical investigation titles may help you write your question.

Angle

How will you approach this question? E.g.: What impact are these increasingly violent games having on their audience? Is this simply a moral panic of the 21st century or is further regulation required?

Hypothesis

What is your current opinion or viewpoint on the media debate? That is: what will you be testing through your research and investigation? E.g.: Video games are psychologically damaging for young people, and audiences have become increasingly desensitised to screen violence.

Linked production piece

What are you planning to make as your linked production piece? E.g.: Newsnight-style documentary video report looking at the impact of violent videogames on young people.

MIGRAIN

Apply the Key Concepts to your text/topic by using the questions from the Summer Research Project to help you. (Include at least five bullet points per key concept). Include as many media keywords as you can.

SHEP

Apply the Wider Contexts (Social, Historical, Economic, Political) to your text/topic, including at least three bullet points on each one.

Issues/Debates

Select at least five and say how each relates to your study, using the Media A-Z to help you think about this. Your research and essay plan will need to factor these issues and debates into your work:

• Representation and stereotyping
• Media effects
• Reality TV
• News Values
• Moral Panics
• Post 9/11 and the media
• Ownership and control
• Regulation and censorship
• Media technology and the digital revolution – changing technologies in the 21st century
• The effect of globalisation on the media

Theories

Select at least five and say how each relates to your study, using keywords/specific theorists' names from the Media A-Z:

• Semiotics
• Structuralism and post-structuralism
• Postmodernism and its critiques
• Gender and ethnicity
• Marxism and hegemony
• Liberal Pluralism
• Colonialism and Post-colonialism
• Audience theories
• Genre theories
• Contemporary Media Landscape

You may need to further research these theoretical areas. 

Research plan (media texts, academic texts and websites)

Media texts
What your main focus will be, E.g.:
Call of Duty
Grand Theft Auto

Other media texts
(at least five related examples)

TV documentaries
Research videos online, e.g.:
BBC One - Panorama, Addicted to Games? http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wlmj0

Academic texts/books
(a minimum of five, including author/full title/year, e.g.:)
Barrie Gunter: The effects of video games on children: the myth unmasked (1998)
James Newman: Playing with videogames (2008)
Nancy Signorielli: Violence in the media: a reference handbook (2005)
Peter Vorderer, and Bryant Jennings: Playing video games: motives, responses, and consequences (2006)

Internet Links
1. At least FIVE from Media Guardian or Guardian Culture or another newspaper website.
2. At least FIVE from university websites/academic papers online. Use Google Scholar as a starting point.
3. Any other relevant sites/articles - the more the better.

Use our archive of 2017's top-grade Critical Investigations to help you. (You may also want to look at those from previous years too: 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013).

You have 10 days to complete this detailed proposal before you need to start your research in depth. Good luck!