Author: tegansereno

1. https://toriswagyblogs.wordpress.com/2020/10/15/project-beta-3/comment-page-1/?unapproved=248&moderation-hash=b0980ae53ba162977901ffbd469aaf4e#comment-248

Hi lovely! To start off, I just wanted to say that I really liked how refreshing it was to see the layout of your video. The transitions were really nice, you were on camera and very well-spoken so I think that really assisted in the flow of what you were saying and it helped with my concentration on the video itself. Moving on from that initial point, I like how you have shown a clear update from your pitch to your beta. I think it’s very easy to do a pitch and then forget about it until your DA is due but you’ve really shown your audience how you’ve progressed with your research and you’ve also added further points amongst it which you want to investigate further which is really cool. The one thing I would say is that I’d love to see more of your research and what academic articles have to say about it compared to your opinion. I did find this one that I thought would be cool to check out and even slyly asking your friends about it during a stream could be a good observational method for your study? https://myslu.stlawu.edu/~clee/docs/lol.champion.usage.fdg.2015.pdf
This article keeps its tone casual so it’s super easy to read but super informative at the same time! Hope it helps you xx

Comment:

Tori’s Beta video and post first struck me to be very easy to read and understand. I really liked the way she approached the video (sitting at the camera and having a casual chat) as it made what she was saying easier to relate to. At times the focus was a bit lost along the way but for the most part, the tone of the video was good. Tori aims to discuss League of Legends and the ‘skins’ that one can acquire through the game and why these are so popular. I tried to be as helpful and focused on the research aspect of things as possible as I know this is a major focus of the beta process. I suggested that Tori has a couple of academic sources under her belt and even suggested one myself that I thought was interesting after I read it. I suggested that she use the live streams she is doing to get her friends opinions as this is a great observational tool. I believe my comment was helpful in the sense that I provided, good actionable, simple solutions to heighten her experience with creating her beta. Her research made me look up ‘League of Legends’ and made me interested in playing it. I learnt something new about the online gaming community and was drawn in by her fun, casual tone. I think I improved within my comments as I was more specific and felt more educated on providing feedback.

2. https://floramaryliu.wordpress.com/project-beta/

Hi lovely! Firstly I would just like to say that I really love the name of your DA. It’s really catchy and it instantly caught my eye. It really suits what you are trying to do so well and I think that it’s such a great starting point. Just in terms of your Digital Artefact, I would have loved to see a project recap plan just so I knew what you were trying to achieve before coming into it blind but as I read through I got the jist of things as you spoke about your first Mario Kart blog. I think the first comment I would like to make regarding your project would be to not only use your peer comments but start commenting on reddit forums as this topic is one that would be extremely popular amongst gaming fandoms and internet fans alike. I think that you would find that there is much discussion surrounding the comparison of new and old technology especially in the gaming realm. I think you will find that it’s really valuable to search other platforms as I know how hard it can be to gain traction when we start from scratch on these things. To help you out, I did a bit of background research and while I’m sure you’ve had a look at these sources, I thought this one was particularly useful after having a read through it. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1354856507081955. It’s really jammed packed with info but once you break it down, it has some good info on the camparison of gaming media from old to new and the affect this has on society. Good luck with everything! 

Comment:

Flora’s blog post was initially quite bare. I couldn’t find a space to leave a comment on her blog and her video wasn’t initially up, however, the information she had provided in the contextual piece provided me with enough information to add some suggestions and feedback throughout. Flora’s visual and formal features of her DA such s the colours and name of the blog really stood out to me. They were very well-thought out and drew me in to research more. I tried to focus on the further research that could be undertaken with this project. I provided an online journal that could be helpful in terms of what she was trying to achieve with comparing old and new technologies of games. I also suggested that in terms of social research, she may use reddit to gain further research online regarding fanbases of older technology. I thought this may add tot he nostalgic vibe that she was going for in her DA. Flora’s DA was one that interested me as it made me think about the projects in a new way. It was a fresh take on media paratexts and the way audiences react to them so I think that she has so much potential with her project.

3. https://lydiamcgahey.wordpress.com/2020/10/15/beta-blog-2/

Hi lovely! I love this topic! It instantly made me feel so nostalgic and want to click back on my old sims game and play for 5 hours straight. My first point would be that I really love the way you have included points from the research you have found as it’s such a major part of the beta process. You have shared your information in a really succinct and clear way that communicates you know what you are talking about. I really like how you shown a positive feedback loop through the development of your pitch to beta also. I think you should consider using your audience in the sense that you could post on reddit and instagram to look for opinions as there are such wide fanbases for both of these online games. You would have so much information to delve through! I think another good source for you to use would be the Teens React to childhood games videos on Youtube. A really good social media source that keeps the information casual whilst giving you good first-hand observation of what actual people think about these games that you are studying! Good luck! 

Comment:

Lydia’s DA was one of my favourites to read due to the interesting topic, fun vibe and readability of the whole project. I think I improved the most within my personal feedback when attempting to discuss Lydia’s project. I found myself researching to help out of complete interest for what she was discussing and I think this also helped my research techniques for my own project. This is due to the researching of more social aspects of the media such as Youtube. I learnt that research doesn’t have to be academic in order to be helpful. We can find so many helpful, informative sites with a focus on observational research just as Lydia has shown. I think readers will be so interested in what Lydia’s DA produces due to the nostalgic factor of her writing and the personal notions that they may bring up, just as it did for me.

When it came to designing a digital artefact that would relate to aspects of gaming practice, I struggled due to the fact that I, myself, am not a gamer. However, through the use of mind-mapping and research, I found myself within a particular niche that I enjoy whilst also finding a really interesting topic to investigate for myself. I will be delving into the question of why we, as game consumers, consume the disturbing nature of horror games marketed towards us. This will be taken a step further into discussing Aristotle’s query into the human psyche and why we are attracted to things that disturb us. I think that investigating this in term soft h gaming design world will be incredibly interesting as it provides the opportunity to compare to other forms of horror design whilst allowing myself as a non0gamer to investigate the gaming community at a new perspective. As the video game industry is outpacing the movie industry as time goes by, horror games such as Five Nights At Freddie’s trending on platforms such as TikTok, the psychology behind the media is incredibly interesting. While we have in the past investigated the possible violent effects of video games, I find it interesting to take this a step further and ask why we ingest this media in the first place if it is designed and marketed to be ‘scary’. Some background research that interested me and would be incredibly useful in my study was found on Digest (2020).  Teresa Lynch and Nicole Martins of Indiana University looked at college students’ experiences with horror video games and found that about half of their sample (53 per cent) had tried playing such games and been frightened by them. They also found that: horror games produce these fright responses by targeting our evolved defence system (evolution has shaped us to be easily scared by the dangers that threatened our ancestors). Users being paratexts to the game and actually bringing the game to life is what makes games scary so investigating why we do this continually and on a somewhat addictive level will be incredibly beneficial. 

I focused on the iteration stage of this project and utilised the feedback that I had received to make the appropriate changes that would ultimately benefit the project. These changes are listed within my beta but have shown to be extremely helpful for myself and moving my project along its course.

Research

My academic and social research has been one of the most effective parts of my Digital Artefact so far. In terms of non-academic research, the observation of YouTube videos and social media such s Reddit and Instagram has been incredibly helpful in terms of finding out why people think the way they do about the gaming world. It has helped on a casual basis to find out why these individuals personally wish to play these games and why they continue to do so/ how they cope.

In terms of academic research, I have listed two sources below that I utilised as a starting point for my DA. These two scholarly sources were extremely helpful in terms of finding out the psychology behind what I am researching the professional opinions of those more suited to the topic. This allows me to base my own research off of this and come to a conclusive answer. The two sources I found most helpful were Horror Video Games: Essays on the Fusion of Fear and Play by Bernard Perron and Gaming Horror’s Horror: Representation, Regulation, and Affect in Survival Horror Videogames by Tanya Krzywinska.

Within this week’s BCM206 lecture, we drew comparisons to the modern era and the class-based Feudalistic system of the 9th-15th century. According to Oxford Languages (2020) Feudalism is defined as “the dominant social system in medieval Europe, in which the nobility held lands from the Crown in exchange for military service, and vassals were in turn tenants of the nobles, while the peasants (villains or serfs) were obliged to live on their lord’s land and give him homage, labour, and a share of the produce, notionally in exchange for military protection”. The comparison starts to come in where traditionally the class systems represented kings, lords and peasants, whereas now it represents investors, techs and entrepreneur startups. Instead of land we see the environment being the internet.

A super interesting look into this week’s topic is explained in Amy Goodman’s interview with Russell Brand.

While investors may incorporate aspects such as monetary means and resources for entrepreneurs to develop platforms, online users (modern-day ‘surfs’) actually create content which means that we don’t really needs the platforms, the platforms actually require us to function. Lawrence Lessig explains this exrtremely well with his descriptions of “Disney creating something very new, based upon something relatively new”.  Disney was always parroting the feature-length mainstream films of his day. . Early cartoons are filled with knockoffs and retellings of ancient stories. Disney added to the work of others before him, creating something new out of something just barely old. This can also be seen in the Brothers Grimm tales.

Feel like quitting your job and starting your own business online? That’s exactly was Jeff Bezos did and now his net worth is a growing US$157.4billion. Bezos saw the growth of the internet and realised more and more people would be going online in the future, and so Amazon was created; the world’s largest internet company. How wild is that?

The term ‘Long Tail Effect’ was coined by Chris Anderson in 2004, allowing businesses to profit from selling a smaller amount of ‘hard to find’ items to many customers instead of selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items.

Before the internet, there was no other way to buy something other than physically going into a shop and purchasing it. Since the internet, there have been endless possibilities and you are able to buy pretty much anything if you look for it and this is evident through the emergence and rise of mass social media. ‘The internet imposes no barriers to entry, no economies of scale and no limits on supply’ (Clay Shirky).

Mitew, T (2020), ‘The Attention Economy and the Long Tail Effect,’ lecture slides week 6, BCM206, University of Wollongong

‘Long Tail’, https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/long-tail.asp, Accessed September, 2020

Hi everyone! For my BCM241 DA I’ll be discussing the true crime media niche with specific points aiming at why individuals consume disturbing matter if it is meant to shock and scare us. Why are we, as humans so invested in these disturbing stories if it generates feelings of dread or horror?

I’ve always been drawn to true crime stories so deciding on this as my pitch was quite an easy decision. I really needed to narrow down my field site and research plan to make sure that I was researching a relevant topic that would have a definitive outcome. My research plan is basically to start an Instagram based on a different true crime media platform a week. Week 1 may be the true crime podcast “Teacher’s Pet’ whilst Week 2 may be the Ted Bundy tapes documentary found on Netflix. 

The posting regarding this media will allow me to observe the behaviours and commentary of my media audience in order to determine how users react to these disturbing sources and therefore become a basis for my research into why we, as consumers, still enjoy subjecting ourselves to disturbing matter online. I will also be taking notes on my own personal thoughts and feelings during and after consuming this media.

1. https://ethanspearsblogs.wordpress.com/2020/09/07/nba-2k21/

Comment:

Hey Ethan!

To start off, I really like the way you have introduced the game you are studying and provided a bit of background context for those who may not have a lot of background knowledge on the game. I did notice a couple of spelling and grammatical errors such as the sentence that read “to their style of game from game into real life as well as their ratings, I will look at how the game is as where they have excelled from my league, to career mode and my player, “. I did find this a tad hard to read but the information within was really great as it offered me some context into what we can expect from the pitch! Moving onto your video, I really liked the information you gave, especially when providing your own personal opinion. I like that you’ll be reviewing the game yourself. I’d love to hear a bit more about how you think your research will turn out. I’m super interested to find out whether 2k does have an impact on modern life and I like that you’ve provided a bit of background research into what Lebron James had to say about that too, it really gives your research more credibility at the starting point! I found this article that I thought would be really helpful for you. https://gamequitters.com/are-professional-athletes-addicted-to-video-games/. Check it out and I think you’ll find some good info on the perspective of an athlete plain these games. Could provide even more backing to your research! 

Critical reflection:

Ethan’s blog post for his pitch aims to analyse the 2k Basketball gaming franchise in a number of different pillars. Ethan aims to create a blog that will discuss the games features, styles and whether the game has any impact on real-life gameplay. 

I feel like the readability of Ethan’s blog was at first, quite hard to understand, being a few grammatical errors present. However, upon digging deeper and watching his pitch video, a lot of aspect were cleared up for me. I tried to be as in depth as I could with my comment so to summarise, I started by suggesting a brief tidy up of the post due to the aforementioned grammatical errors and continued into an overview of the video provided. I did a fair amount of background research to ensure I was providing Ethan with helpful and accurate information and you will be able to see a source that I carefully picked out based on what road Ethan was heading down with his research. I tried to include what the subject material was asking of us in terms of being specific and including targeted field sites. I based this mainly off of my tutorial attendance and research into what makes a good field site. I observed how research may come into play here and how researching scholarly articles and a range of these will help with research range and credibility. I started by researching within Google Scholar myself in order to provide Ethan with some great academic sources and the source that I found does this. I aimed to answer Ethan’s question of how athletes react to gaming and found this source 

https://gamequitters.com/are-professional-athletes-addicted-to-video-games/. This source provides a helpful outlook into why gamers may come addicted to gaming and how gaming impacts their life. While this may be an extreme take on what Ethan is looking for here, I believe it will be a helpful start in his research process. I suggested that Ethan provide a hypothesis at the start of his research as this will be extremely helpful with the creation of feedback loops and project progression. It will really highlight the contrast in his end result. I believe that my comment was highly engaging as I truly put the effort into immersing myself into his project and provided my personal opinion on how I would tackle his topic. I tried to be open and suggestive rather than strict and judgemental. However, I could definitely look a bit more into the background of the topic before diving in for round 2. I really enjoyed this experience and felt as though I was engaged with my classmates work and found myself excited to learn more. 

2. https://immerseintomedia.health.blog/2020/09/03/ruby-reviews-pitch/

Comment:

As a non-gamer I think you’ve pretty much hit the nail on head with your pitch. I can really relate to your perspective as a student with little experience in the gaming world so I think that makes it even more relatable to your audience. Your video is instantly really easy to watch and connect to and I found myself wanting to watch more to see where it was heading. I think the inclusion of you comparing information form different sources in order to form an opinion is incredibly useful especially as you may not have the most experience in this realm of research. I think it can only make your research more credible. I love that you’ve taken the perspective of game shows. I like that it doesn’t necessarily leave the gaming realm but it takes notions from it that I believe will only aid your project as more people will be able to relate to that. Who doesn’t watch millionaire hotseat at the end of the day??? I think the fact that you’ve got a good plan on where you’re heading will be great for your project as it will relieve the pressure of posting each week and the fact that you’ve kept your audience in mind when positing also shoes great understanding of your audience. What I would love to see out of this in the end is a conclusive statement on what you found out of your research. Will the game shows aid the lives of those participating? Does it reflect gaming world cultures? One source I found interesting when researching this that may or may not help out is : https://www.jstor.org/stable/2118342. I had some good information on the cultural impacts of game shows and this could be good in analysing game users behaviours when participating.

Enjoy the process!

Critical Reflection

Within her post, Ruby aims to delve into the world of game shows in the way of reviewing and analysing them for viewers who may be interested in watching them. She plans to do this through the media source of Twitter. 

The first thing that struck me regarding Ruby’s pitch was the fact that it looked at gaming from a different perspective. I like the fact that although this topic may be intimidating to non-gamers, ruby has complimented the topic whilst putting her own spin on it which was a massive bonus for me. I think this will increase the readability for the project for users and will open up accessibility for her online. This was a major point I made within my comment. For this reason, this blog post was one of the best for me to review. I tried to do a bit of background research through the perspective of a non-gamer and found that the source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2118342. I found that this academic article had some great information that ruby could use in regard to her research on game shows. This particular article assessed the risk and effects that accompany gaming itself and may provide some great context and background information to be utilised in her findings. I suggested that she perhaps find a hypothesis or a statement that she hopes to evolve or uncover over time that she can use her research to find. This project was my personal favourite due to its relatability. It also taught me to think outside the box with my project in terms of ‘what gaming is’. 

3. https://brookemelyndabcm.wordpress.com/2020/09/04/bcm215-pitch-learning-about-games/

Comment:

Hey Brooke!

I think you’ve got a really great basis for a good DA here!. I think to start off, I would have loved to have seen a bit more specificity right off the mark about what your DA will be about and what you’re hoping to find as I was left a bit unclear about where it could be heading after reading the first paragraph. Saying that, I really liked the context you gave on the growing cultural significance of video games in the 21st century and how the world is shifting to view the importance of the games audiences are consuming. 

I think what would really give your project more bang for its buck would be to narrow this down straight off the mark. I really love that your going to your audience for suggestions on what to review and you seem to have a good idea of what you may be interested inn reviewing, I also like that you’re interspersing older and new games to assess their cultural impact over time. I think what will really make your posts stand out to all communities will be if you provide background to each game and give a basic overview of what one could expect out of it from a non-gamer perspective. 

I found this source for you to check out: https://open.lib.umn.edu/mediaandculture/chapter/10-4-the-impact-of-video-games-on-culture/. What I think you could do that this source does amazingly would be to narrow down examples of games and then use them to reflect on their cultural significance. The authors use Super Mario Brothers and Pac-Man as cultural shifts and it really helps to make their case!.

Critical Reflection:

Brooke’s pitch focuses on the cultural impacts of gaming within the 21^st century. First off, I did find this pitch hard to read due to the unclear nature that is initially presented. The first point I made was that Brooke could have been a tad clearer and more concise within her first few sentences in order to let viewers know what her project will be about and what she hopes to gain from it. I liked that Brooke would be using her audience to assist her media output e.g. asking viewers for what they would like to see. She has a basic plan of what games she would like to review, and she has interspersed newer and older games which I think opens up credibility and accessibility for all audiences. I think that I gave some really useful suggestions in terms of conciseness and the pointedness of her topic. Brooke’s post was one that needs some more drawing out but has the potential to be a really great investigative report. I contributed an online academic source that I believed may help her in narrowing down what she could speak about. The source is provided gives really great examples of games throughout the last century and really digs deep into their cultural impact. I think Brooke could gain some inspiration from this and learn the techniques that these investigative authors have used to really make the most out of her research. I really liked investigating Brooke’s topic as it made me look at gaming in a fresh way that I don’t think I would have picked up on had I not signed up to comment on her pitch. Having to look into gaming cultures made me realise that there is so much more to gaming than. I first thought and I think Brooke’s viewers will realise the same once this pitch is narrowed down and progresses along the way.

When it came to designing a digital artefact that would relate to aspects of gaming practice, I struggled due to the fact that I, myself, am not a gamer. However, through the use of mind-mapping and research, I found myself within a particular niche that I enjoy whilst also finding a really interesting topic to investigate for myself. I will be delving into the question of why we, as game consumers, consume the disturbing nature of horror games marketed towards us. This will be taken a step further into discussing Aristotle’s query into the human psyche and why we are attracted to things that disturb us. I think that investigating this in term soft h gaming design world will be incredibly interesting as it provides the opportunity to compare to other forms of horror design whilst allowing myself as a non0gamer to investigate the gaming community at a new perspective. 

As the video game industry is outpacing the movie industry as time goes by, horror games such as Five Nights At Freddie’s trending on platforms such as TikTok, the psychology behind the media is incredibly interesting. While we have in the past investigated the possible violent effects of video games, I find it more interesting to take this a step further and ask why we ingest this media in the first place if it is designed and marketed to be ‘scary’. Some background research that interested me and would be incredibly useful in my study was found on Digest (2020).  Teresa Lynch and Nicole Martins of Indiana University looked at college students’ experiences with horror video games and found that about half of their sample (53 per cent) had tried playing such games and been frightened by them. They also found that: horror games produce these fright responses by targeting our evolved defence system (evolution has shaped us to be easily scared by the dangers that threatened our ancestors). Users being paratexts to the game and actually bringing the game to life is what makes games scary so investigating why we do this continually and on a somewhat addictive level will be incredibly beneficial. 

My Media Niche

After deep consideration and consultation, my media niche is one that I believe will come together to create an informative and interesting research project. As I was simply interested in true crime and the way it impacted society, I decided to take this a step further. I will be investigating the audience reactions of true crime on social media through an active blog page. Throughout this, I will be examining why we engage with true crime when it generates these feelings of possible negativity. 

Background Academic Research

Breaking down paradigmatic and theoretical frameworks are essential for my study and in order to do this, I will be investigating academic sources from all media platforms to discern this. The biggest part of ethnographical research is collecting, analysing and interpreting data so this is the major aim of my theoretical framework. 

My target when starting the framework of my research was to target towards the why aspect of my question. Why do we, as individuals invest ourselves into disturbing matter? Why do we investigate that scares us? I found a particular source that will be extremely helpful in divulging this further. 

Ellen Wayland- Smith’s online article ‘East of Eden: On Rachel Monroe’s Savage Appetites’ (2019) investigates not only the text at hand, but steps further when discussing being “murder-minded” and having a mind always leaning towards the motives of murders. She states that she would  “seek solace from jangly nerves and a shaky post-2008 job market by bingeing back-to-back Law & Order: SVU episodes”. The blending of investigative journalism interspersed with history and cultural criticism provides amazing framework for an early researcher investigating their audience in an analytical way. I believe that unpacking this carefully curated source will assist me in viewing my audience interactions in a new and innovative way, without biasing me towards one particular view. Having this background knowledge is vital. 

Ethics

When researching, we must seek to protect and hold our audience at the upmost of importance (2020). We cannot dehumanise our subjects and must respect their anonymity and confidentiality. Ethnographic research must tread lightly around this due to its heavy reliance on observational study methods. 

Mertens’ states within their text ‘Ethical Use of Qualitative data and findings’ (2014) that “Ethics sur- rounding the use of qualitative research needs to take into consideration the rigor and ethical nature of the research activities that precede use, as well as those inherently connected with decisions about the use of the data and findings”. 

This basically means that when conducting research and choosing sources, we must have our participants best interests at heart throughout the whole process. The presence of online research opens up the possibility of harm greatly due to the increased possibility of anonymity being foiled or confidentiality breaches. As Winter and Lavis (2019) state “Ethnography has been increasingly adopted by researchers across varied disciplines to study virtual spaces and communities”. Due to this new territory, the reliance on ethics must be focused on directly. In order to ensure I am ethically researching, I will be adopting Elgesem’s (2002) tactic of full disclosure and active listening. Online ethnography permits lots of flexibility so the adaption of “active listening” is core to my study. This means the sustained engagement with words and images that surround and give meaning to each post, including the captions, comments, and loops and webs of conversations that ensue. This allows further attention to context and provides a holistic understanding of digital culture and those who participate in it. Observing Instagram users thus means adopting confidentiality administration as I will be observing their comments and only including it in my study with express permission from users. This will therefore allow me to avoid deception and ensure the care of all participants involved

This week’s discussion revolved around liquid labour and the evolution from a standard workplace environment to one that requires its workers to be available 24/7 due to an increase in technology and structure free from space and time. Whilst back in the “old days” we saw people travelling to and from work and only calling the boss if they were sick. In present times, the constant flow of information made available through iphones and gadgets allow us as a society to be fully reachable whenever someone feels like picking up the phone. 

Deuze sums this up nicely in his statement “adapting to changing management practices, new technologies, and cultivating creativity and talent cannot be necessarily tied to a nine-to-five working weekday” (2006, p 4). This highlights how the expectations of workers these days has shifted into a more intense pattern.

When reflecting personally, I am able to see the initial attraction to working from home due to the latest COVID-19 outbreak. However, overtime I have realised the constant pressures that accompany a shifted working environment and the added pressure of relying on these technologies that see no space and time. 

Ever since I was a 15 year old student sitting on the bus watching true crime YouTube videos, to today, a 21-year-old who studies criminology, I have been thoroughly interested in true crime and social media. After narrowing my niche, I found that whilst true crime was interesting, it was extremely broad and in order for this to be a true autoethnographically study, I needed to use self0reflection to explore personal experience. So how could I do this? In order to view how true crime on social media affects community and culture, I need to insert myself into the experience. I plan on researching if true crime on social media has a detrimental or helpful effect on the human psyche. I plan on tracking mine and others experiences with true crime online and therefore viewing if the constant and repetitive nature of viewing true crime documentaries and partaking in true crime discussion allows one to immerse themselves in the case e.g. googling, researching, potentially looking to solve cases or whether it has an effect on ones mind e.g. feeling down, feeling hopeful, engaging with other fans. The main question I will be researching is “Does true crime on social media affect users positively or negatively”. 

Through the narrowing of my niche, I hope to open up the eyes of my fellow age-group and social media users regarding how they intake the media they are consuming. I hope that this study will open up a new form of consciousness surrounding possible harmful material online and make users more aware of how the media they consume affects them. 

My Research Plan 

Forming the basic of my research, the methods of autoethnography and observation must be considered. Observation is “used to test theories and develop new knowledge” (2020). It relies on senses and judgements related to personal subjectivity. This will be detrimental to my research method as I will be viewing true crime documentaries 3 times a week on different platforms (e.g. Spotify, Netflix and literature) and taking notes on my feelings, thoughts and actions in a field journal. This will provide my study with some freedom to explore my findings. I will be recording my every feeling and thought after consuming this media. This will be strictly overt, participatory observation. The next method to consider is autoethnography. Autoethnography has been typically characterised as an [autobiographical] genre of research and writing that Carolyn Ellis (1997) notes is “both a [process and product], that is both evocative and emotional”. After observing, I will then participate. I will engage with fan communities, speak to others who may share my feelings and gain their similar/differing perspectives. I will be doing this on reddit and twitter. This is my research, I am trying to illustrate analytic insights, develop new knowledge and offer original ideas, by bringing in other research and information to expand and augment my perspective. Who combination of the two will be my primary method of research, both regarding my own experience and those in the same community as myself. 

My Schedule 

I will begin by viewing different platforms of media and recording my observations and reactions to these happenings. I will log all of my feelings prior to posting on a curated, specific Instagram page made specifically for communicating with other true crime fans. I will record how users interact with me and the content in which I’m posting, whether this encourages my viewing habits, feelings towards the crimes and eagerness to immerse myself into the story of those I’m studying. I will j0urnal each week and after each post, setting aside 15 minutes to post once a week on my Instagram feed, reddit and twitter. I will record my feelings and habits over each week, hopefully clearly viewing how the regular interaction with true crime affects the human psyche. Basically, I will journal my thoughts and feelings, observe my Instagram communities’ feelings towards true crime and monitor my progress after a prolonged period of viewing real-life atrocities. 

Week 4-6 Journaling and Observing

Weeks 6-8 Observation and anonymous user questionnaire

Weeks 8-10 Journal check-up and compilation of data 

Weeks 10-12 Research writing and further compilation