Critical Investigation: Task #2

Academic research and bibliography

As you know, a detailed bibliography is crucial to reach the top grades in your coursework. Most of you have already started researching using books or journal article PDFs so this is simply an opportunity to pull it all together.

New Notes and Quotes minimum word count: 4,500 words by Wednesday 22 November.

We've now got a superb selection of academic texts in DF07 - many only added this year. These include the following:

• Media, Gender and Identity by David Gauntlett
• Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks
• Feminist Media Studies by Liesbet van Zoonen
• Gender Trouble by Judith Butler 
• After Empire by Paul Gilroy 
• There Ain't No Black In The Union Jack Paul Gilroy
• Media Regulation by Lunt and Livingstone
• Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
• Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age by Clay Shirky
• Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices Edited by Stuart Hall 
• Power without Responsibility: Press, Broadcasting and the Internet in Britain by James Curran
• The Contradictions of Media Power by Des Freedman
• The Cultural Industries by David Hesmondhalgh
• Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide by Henry Jenkins
• Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World by Jonathan Gray
• The Internet is Not the Answer by Andrew Keen
• Misunderstanding the Internet by James Curran, Natalie Fenton, Des Freedman

You can also refer to our historical Essential Reading List which contains titles of 45 of the most important books for the Critical Investigation, most of which are either in the school library or DF07. If you haven't used any of these yet, make sure you take advantage of these excellent resources this week.

In the essential reading list, those underlined are the twenty most important or useful in previous years but, obviously, not all of the texts on this list will be directly relevant for you. Whichever book you choose, you'll need to spend a fair amount of time searching through it (especially the contents page and, particularly, the index) to find the key words, quotes and ideas that will impress the examiners.

Finally, you should definitely look at our archive of PDF journal articles available on the Media Shared drive. These are considered at the same level as academic books and there is likely to be something that relates to your topic. If not, you can use Google Scholar to look for PDF journal articles that do cover your text or media debate. You'll find our PDF archive at: M: > Resources > A Level > Critical Investigation

For absolutely everything you quote or refer to you in your essay (i.e direct quotes, specific references to theories/statistics/reports etc.), you must include references. Crucially, you'll need to reference quite a few of these recommended books and journal articles if you want an A or B grade. These will be footnoted in your essay (this is called a citation). The more academic sources you have, the stronger your essay will be - so borrow them from the library, look at them in lesson or make a note of them for the trip to the BFI Library. If the book belongs to the Media department, you will have to do your research in class or in DF06 during a free period - the books can't leave school unfortunately.

Task #2 is to pull this information together in an updated Notes and Quotes blog posting of all your notes and quotes so far INCLUDING a complete bibliography of your research so far. 

Make sure you include the following:

• Author-Year-Title-Place-Publisher info;
• Quotes (+ Page References) from the book that can be linked to your study;
• A short explanation of each one explaining how it is relevant to you/your topic, any notes, ideas or reflections that occur to you when reading. Does it reinforce your argument? Does it challenge your hypothesis? Is it what you were expecting?
• Finally, post up on your blog a Complete Bibliography (so far) to include ALL the books you currently have quotes from. It MUST contain at least TEN different academic books or journals as well as all your online and Media Magazine sources.
• Note: your FINAL bibliography will be much more extensive than this - we are simply looking for a minimum of 10 academic sources from your research so far.

Most people find formatting a bibliography very difficult the first time - there are quite specific rules that you need to follow and universities are very fussy about how it is presented. Use this 'Guide to writing bibliographies' to help or try this really useful bibliography formatting and creation tool: 'BibMe'. Personally, I recommend using the Microsoft Word referencing feature to make managing your bibliography as simple as possible.

Task #2 deadline: Wednesday 22 November