Special Study - coming together

Today I really get to grips with my Special Study.
I’ve been humming and haring about what it actually is I want to talk about, I’ve been swaying between truth, trust, technology, implementation, interpretation and media…but I am now solidifying my thoughts, and aiming for the questioning of media (how it is delivered, the extremes in bias, the ambiguity of so much information, how and who can “we” trust to tell us factual, neutral information…)

I’ve started to formulate a plan of attack; I’ve created a skeletal template for the dissertation. I have also spoken to Chloe (Gabi’s wee sister), and she’s recently finished an MA in Edinburgh, so she has a good idea of the sort of structure and planning I should be implementing…very helpful.

I’ve also started to formulate a plan of research, now I know the direction I am headed in. I have been trawling websites looking at some of the basic search words – conservative, liberal, news, watchdogs, rightwing, leftwing, racist, Christian and Muslim. I have been using google as the main portal for searching sites, but when I reach a site with many more external links, I can often wander off and get lost in the myriad of interconnections.

I have also found YouTube a fascinating source of material. It is incredible the networking feature of the site, searches can return interesting videos to watch, but the list of “associated” videos in a menu on the right hand side of the site is a very rich research seam to mine. I am also interested in the criteria for search returns (in YouTube and google). When searching for “liberal”, it is interesting to note that there are returns for “conservative truth” (citing “the real truth, not that liberal hogwash”) – so as I can see, the knowledge that these bias sites have of the opposition, ensures that they can fight for their voice to be heard, even if a search word is entered that is the direct opposite of their content.

I have created a director program that I save my visited sites as screen dumps, and I will use these in some animated form (I am thinking a blizzard of screens, flickering at an unreadable pace – this (I feel) sums up the magnitude of my task, I’ve been overwhelmed by the countless sites, offering opinion (“fact” to most of the sites), and I certainly do feel lost and confused as to what I can believe and what I have to take as propaganda. This very notion makes me think of the cultural, historical and opinions we all face in our lives, which shape us into who we are, and what we stand for. How can two 11-year-old kids sing race-hate songs, and not question the moral and ethical implications of their actions? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcB03eD8c30) - Muslim kids being brainwashed too, into hating people, ideas and ways of life (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw2EisVqKZ4)